"If you ever wish great pain on anyone, there is only one thing you really have to do: wait."
-Pere Lapin on Revenge
My father's attitude was very simple: Why bother to go to all of the that effort when you could do nothing and achieve the same result? As a physician who often worked in the ER ,he saw the variety of suffering that could befall people. What was the point of planning and conniving? Could you really do better than a drunk driving accident or even a careless moment with a lawnmower? And even if you could, it violates the law while karma is completely legal and free.

Up until about five years ago, I thought my father's theory was bullshit. I wasn't going to engage in revenge, I didn't have that kind of energy what with grad school and my disability, but I didn't believe the universe was that just either.

I met Vampire Hunter D when I was twenty one. The moment I saw him I desperately wanted him-gold eyes, high cheekbones, strawberry blonde hair, built like a greyhound. The kind of guy I could wrap my legs around and squeeze for days. I, of course, never expected to get him. I had just spent four years surrounded by gorgeous gay men. On the one hand, I got a lot ofmake up tips, but it didn't do a lot for my self esteem. So imagine my surprise when I ended up watching the sunrise with him as we sat in a doorway on eight st.

Vampire Hunter wasn't just beautiful. He was learning architecture and so he knew about a field that I had very little background it, but he would talk about inflatable bridges and urban nomad habitats with such intesity that I was fascinated. And, of course, there were summer days where all we would do is lie in his apartment on the futon on the floor naked, drinking kool-aide out of a coffee pot and listening to that awful rap remix of Roxanne drift in from the apartment upstairs in between making love. I could feel the motion of him for days afterwards, like getting off a ship and still feeling the ocean while on land. He insisted that I was the devil. Used to call me the best argument for sin that was ever made. I was proud to be that. To be irresistible to a man such as him was quite an accomplishment for me.

And then one day he vanished, like the shadow of smoke, gone. I tore myself apart running over our last conversation, our last meeting, like the Zapruder film in JFK. Searching for some cause, some indication. Finally I gave up, and ended up dating Duke Nukem and then the Artist Formerly Known as the Idiot.

Three years later, a bit before Christmas, Vampire Hunter called me. Gave me some bullshit story about finding my phone number and thinking it was a sign. I knew it was a lie, but I knew to get the truth I would have to go with it. We exchanged emails, met for drinks a few times, became friends in a way. Finally one night in the beginning of August 2001 (a month before the Artist was to abandon me), we went to Mars Bar and started drinking at seven. Around midnight he was sloshed enough I knew I could get an honest answer. "What really happened? What did I do?" The look on his face, such sadness, "It was never you. It was never anything you did. Oh I felt so guilty I couldn't tell you. I was dating a girl for a year before I met you. We broke up the week before I met you and she wanted to get back together in september. I went back to her. I thought it would be easier for you if I vanished because what was I going to tell you? There's nothing wrong but I'm leaving you anyway? So I ended up moving in with her. She tried to kill me and herself a couple of times. I suppose I should have known then, but I didn't leave. Last Thanksgiving I went home to see my parents and when I came back to our house, all her stuff was gone, half my stuff was gone, and she took my cat."

If I had worked and slaved and planned, I could have never come up with a better revenge than that. My abandonment visited upon him threefold. I marveled at the justice of the universe. It was hard not to be bitter that he preferred a psychotic to me, on the other hand his poor taste was more than effectively punished. And so although I threaten those who wrong me a great deal, I don't act on my threats because I know I don't have because even if I never think about the poor twit again I know he will suffer for what he has done. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. And as I said to Chainsaw that day he broke up with me, "I want you to know one thing. In that moment, when you lose everything and you see the hollow empty husk of your existence, somehow I will know, I will know what has happened to you and I will be laughing." Which is a pretty safe bet since I laugh all the time knowing that at the very least I never broke up with a wonderful and lovely person to date a psychotic who stole my cat.

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