Don't Ask Why

When it comes to behavior, I suppose it's human nature to wonder and ask why. Sometimes the cause and effect is so clear it's transparent - I could've become an alcoholic but instead I married one because it was familiar and felt like home - but other times, there's a randomness about people, a spiteful kind of cloudiness that make their actions impossible to explain or comprehend. My friend, Michael, is one of those people and while he would rather die than admit it, it's becoming painful to him. It's also painful to watch.

At best, he is - as are we all - badly flawed, a spiteful, vain, defiant and raging narcissist, self-involved and self-centered to the point of self destruction. Strike at him and he will strike back a hundred times over and as maliciously as he can. Nothing will be off limits, nothing will be too vindictive, nothing will be too hateful to say or too vulnerable to attack. He prides himself on his ability to be cruel, to devastate and cripple an enemy. When his words ignite a firestorm of protest and come back to haunt or harm him or his business, as they inevitably do, he simply becomes more venomous and more embedded, refusing to see that his actions add fuel to an already out of control fire, flatly refusing to back down even when it's for his own good. Whether he doesn't care or just can't help himself is a mystery although the damage he does and the wreckage he leaves in his wake are clear enough. I've watched it for years and have never been able to make sense of it. He's a “Rules Don't Apply To Me” personality, carelessly arrogant and often without a shred of empathy. He is not, and he admits it freely, a nice person nor does he want to be. It's impossibly sad to watch him drive person after person away. These wounds are self-inflicted, I remind myself, when he defends his actions with claims of self defense or of being pushed across some imaginary line. He can't be reasoned or persuaded into a different mindset and it's futile to try. He won't make room for even the possibililty that he might be wrong or, more to the point, might not be completely justified in being cruel. All's fair in war and retaliation.

I've lost count of the hour after futile hour I've tried to convince him that this scorched earth policy doesn't work, tried to explain that he can fight back without being vicious, that personal attacks always backfire and reflect horrendously on him and cost him business. There have been times when I've thought he was treated unfairly and I've defended his positions although never his words. I've ranted and raved about consequences, about making a bad situation worse, about fighting fairly, all to no avail. During this latest incident, he came across a website dedicated to hating him and actively campaigning for his business to fail. It shocked him and pierced his callous skin but not enough to make a difference. He slipped into the pretense of it not bothering him with barely a blink but the mask slipped a bit and I saw the pain. What did you expect, I said to him, more roughly than I needed to, “That they'd embrace you for attacking them?”

The very moment the words were out, I regretted them. As much of a son of a bitch as he can be, as much as he so often deserves it, I take no joy in seeing him suffer. Beneath the hard core exterior, beneath the arrogance and the venom and insecurity and self induced misery, there is still someone who can be hurt just as he hurts others. That he cannot or will not mend his ways may be the saddest thing of all.

Apart from the economics and the fact that during a very dark hour he was the only one to extend a helping hand to me, the real question is why do I stay. Misguided loyalty, perhaps, or a fear of the fire outside the frying pan. The fact is I mostly like what I do, like being able to dress in jeans and sweatshirts, like the hours and the freedom. And if I dig deep enough into my own flaws, the fact that I'm needed, not a little bit but a whole lot. I'm as close to indispensable as you can get and leaving him would feel way too much like a betrayal. We make a good working team, he and I, close enough to finish each other's sentences yet far enough apart to be feisty when we disagree. I despise his racism and right wing extremism but admire his unflagging optimism and perseverance. He despairs of my liberal politics and friends and is undone by my indifference to personal fashion. I am a planner and preparer, a hopeless listmaker with a desperate need to be organized and neat. He is as scattered as a handful of confetti in the wind and leaves everything to the very last minute. He's always late and I'm always early. I can laser focus on a single task for hours while he can't hold a thought for more than ten seconds. He remembers details of conversations from 10 years ago and in the time it takes me to go from his desk to mine, I've forgotten whatever I didn't write down. Except for the old opposites attract theory, how it works and why we haven't beaten each other senseless is a mystery but somehow, some way, we have managed to find enough common ground to continue - a shared love of animals, perhaps, or a zero tolerance for stupidity - either way, until now it's been adequate.

This particular upheaval has been especially difficult because he targeted someone I care very much about and gave how I might feel about it, a barely passing thought, shredding any idea that my feelings might matter more than those of his perceived enemies. When I refused to take his side and say he was justified, he accused me of disloyalty. I accused him of hate and malice. We got nowhere.

We are all flawed and imperfect but most people I know are trying to be better. Michael is not among them and sometimes, neither am I.