Shades of Grey

Originally written July 14, 2006

Talk about moral ambiguity. There are things about Jay that I like. You're smart, you're funny, you're spectacular in bed but you're intolerable. You have very serious emotional problems. Deep seated problems for which you should seek professional help.

So we talk about our plans, our delusions of grandeur. The battle of evermore has taken me from a place where most people fear to tread, to the bottom of the world and beyond. It has taken me to the cusp of real power. Power which I chose to retire. My life has been extraordinary, blessed and cursed at once.

I understand the need for revenge. If I'm on your list, make it happen, bring your battle to me. Trust me, you are on mine. When you want to go after someone, take this advice. Target their most glaring deficiency. This isn't a morality contest. This is about getting even, settling the score with irrelevency. I have a few scores to settle. But they have real world repercussions. Sure when I made Matthew and Jordan and both Justins pathetically irrelevant, I could take the big bad status and wear it as a badge, but nothing they could ever do in retaliation would have any meaningful lasting effect. I was the big bad ten years ago waging pointless wars on mamazons Rachel and Nadia. I took down a national campaign without my story ever being told. I drove my London roommate into a pathetic depression by make believing she didn't exist. I told God I was framed, that I never did any of it.

I have saved people, brought them purpose and meaning. I have ruined people, brought them alienation and desperation. I have been saved myself, time and time again.

There was a time I would take on all the battles before the end, before the ninjas of Hong Kong draw me into their ranks. Before its over, before I am done here, there's just one that matters, fifteen years in the making. The balance between my world and what it will take to leave it peacefully has never seemed so grey.