After more two years, I can’t even pretend to know what goes
on inside her head.
I can make guesses (educated or otherwise), but what she
actually thinks is impossible to get at except where she explicitly states a
fact such as “I don’t hate men, it’s only some men I hate.”
Even her poetry is a dangerous minefield when it comes to
presuming it actually reflects her thinking. Yet it is possibly the most viable
tool in determining current conditions (individual poems) and a pattern of
behavior that comes from looking at her poems over a long period.
From her behavior at the school being named for the
congressman, I can assume that she still hates me, even if I’m not on the
priority list of her concerns.
She apparently feels that I derailed a promising career path,
and in this, she may be partly right.
My jealousy early on, put an unnecessary wedge between her
and our former Temporary boss – regardless of whether or not he was simply the
next rung in her trickling up.
While I had no part in pushing for her resignation from our
office, she may see it otherwise, and I certainly played a role in uncovering
the plot to sabotage the third ticket in the Hometown election, which may have
provided her with an opportunity for advancement.
One of the ironic acts in all this came from James was poised
to take a part in the anti-administration campaign in the town I cover.
After witnessing his actions in the Hometown election, I
altered the alternative candidate to be cautious, resulting in James’ team not
being hired (he blamed me but the alternative candidate had already gotten word
from insiders in Hometown). So, instead of James and his crew, the alternative
candidate hired Joey D – one of our poet’s possible lovers – who promptly tried
to get her a job with the new mayor.
I don’t know why the new mayor didn’t hire her, but it is
possible she blames me for that slight as well, even though I left that beat
because the incumbent mayor and his crew were coming after me, accusing me of
taking sides with the alternative candidate – which I had not.
At one point, I thought I saw her near City Hall down there,
and her pictures from the pipeline site (that our owner was so impressed with)
prove she was no stranger to my town.
Yet, she was not in town for the swearing in of the new
mayor last week, even though Joey D became the business administrator, a role
similar to the one he played in the Virgin Mayor’s town up north.
For the most part, she has faded from the political scene,
posting only a few poems and essays about her eating disorder struggle (and one
essay about the FBI). At this point, she has no job, yet I strongly suspect she
may soon be able to broker her role in PR for the Virgin Mayor into some
respectable and non-political job somewhere and will go on with her life as if
these years we have just gone through never happened.
Was it all a scam from start to finish? Or were there moments
of legitimate feeling?
In some ways, she is a lot like Superstorm Sandy, blowing
through our lives, leaving a landscape full of devastation, without any of us
really understanding the motives.
One pattern that has emerged concerns the men and women with
whom she engaged, people who fell in love with her (or the shell she adopted)
and cling to her heels hoping to retain some of those feelings, which she may
or may not share with them.
Those who love her truly come to love her indeed, and I include
myself in that batch of derelicts, whose lives she changed even
unintentionally.
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