I really don't like thinking about things like this. I'm big on moving ahead and leaving the past in the past, where it belongs. But, okay. In the spirit of completing the list.
There was a guy I knew in graduate school. I can't say we dated, exactly, but we hung out together constantly. When we weren't hanging out, we were talking on the phone. We had one of those relationships that makes you sit around and think "What is this, exactly? What are we doing?" The answer to that question seemed to change on a pretty regular basis, and in retrospect I think that was intentional.
We had a lot of things in common. I really wanted that relationship to work--I liked who I was when I was with him, and I liked the way he saw me (or, at least, the way I thought he did.) But toward the end of that relationship, whatever it was, he played a very cruel joke that left me feeling humiliated. I don't know if he intended for me to feel that way, but I'm not sure how he could have anticipated a different outcome. THen again, maybe that in itself says something about him.
I wrote a story about this guy many years later (of course). It ended up being more non-fiction than fiction, though I did change the ending. Most of the people I know who've read that story seems to understand, without being told, that they're reading about a real person and not some figment of my imagination. Every one of them has said something like "You're lucky you found out who he really was." I suppose they're right, but I didn't feel lucky to know it then and I don't feel lucky now. Just sad, even all these years later.
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