Tag Archives: The West Wing

To All The Men That Have Graced These Pages,

I’m slowly completing this Trust List Thingie. Basically, it’s a list of prompts created to compel people to be more honest. That has never been my problem though, has it? I’m honest to the point of madness and all that I’ve learned is that honesty kills attraction. And my type of honesty, clear and direct, is –like– a total pheromone sucker.

But this letter isn’t about me. It’s about you and the fourteenth prompt. Write a letter to a hero who has let you down.

Hi, Heroes. You’ve all let me down.

I’ll elaborate.

When I first met all of you, without exception, I was immediately drawn to your words. That’s just how I roll. Sure, most of you have sensitive eyes, grins that make me blush and shyly look away, but it was your words that made me think about you in mundane moments of my mornings. I’d be brushing my teeth and I’d remember something you said, or pointed out, or taught me and I would smile. That’s when I knew that I was screwed.

Your words would catapult you into Hero status. But then, the more I got to know you, the less impact your words had. I would sit quietly, as I do, listening to you talk and where before the voice in my mind would be aw-ing, now that same voice was screaming like a banshee.

WHAT ABOUT ME? WHAT ABOUT MY STORIES? MY EXPERIENCES? MY THOUGHTS? DO YOU EVEN WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ME?

Maybe you did. Maybe you didn’t. I’ll never know and it’s not of much concern to me. You have all moved on, found love and settled down with dogs and babies and happiness. I do wonder sometimes if you ask the girls you are with now about their lives. Do you ask them about the stories that made up the path that led them to you? I imagine you do. I wonder if there is something wrong with me; if the reason you didn’t ask was because I didn’t inspire you to want to know.

But this letter isn’t about me, it’s about you. And that pedestrian moment you let me down.

It was a Sunday evening (in your case), a Tuesday morning (in your case) , the dawn on a Friday (in your case) and you were all talking. You were rambling about something going on in your lives. In your case it was the friend that had offended you, in your case it was another drunk and naked story, in your case it was the boss that had pissed you off. In all your cases, I listened intently, I asked layers of questions, I made funnies and in all cases I tried to have a conversation but inevitably it turned into a monologue.

I have learned that mortal men monologue, but heroes participate.

I grew silent as I began to realize that whether I was there or not wouldn’t make a difference to you. You would all find someone else to talk at. Those words that had charmed me in the beginning, those words that I thought made you funny, sensitive, smart were not peepholes into your soul. They were not symbols of your intentions or your beliefs or your anythings. Your words were barbed wire; if I tried to get over them to get in, I’d just get cut and discover that the inside was an empty lot. A pit of nothing.

I don’t mean to imply that you were all empty vessels. That would be absurd. I only mean to say that you let me down because you had nothing to offer. How could you? When you didn’t let me talk enough to know? Was it selfishness? Was it me? Was it the equation of me and you that was the problem? It’s not important.

The importance is that now I’m holding out for a Danny-type hero. For a man that gets that reference not because he watches The West Wing but because he knows that I do. I’m holding out for a man who will want to hear me talk because he likes the sound of my voice.

xo
Hope