In short

It was fucked up, I was fucked up, I fucked up.

Still, I’m aware of the movie on the Brooklyn bridge with Shikskas are for fucking, ___ are for marrying. And I have to say I felt fucked. And if the gender roles were reversed I think most would agree I wasn’t so bad, type of thing. But still, line one.

Past that: no apologies for trying to build an organization for drinking water and trying to get the ball rolling and rally to prevent just what is happening now over there – and letting people know I’m not a dumb hockey player while doing that.

Still. Could have been handled better but I was young and fucked up, in a fucked up situation, and fucked up.

“I love you and might need you one day.” “I might show up underneath your window one day.” “Would you convert (to my religion)?” What if you’re the one…by a lady whose favorite movie is dirty dancing and Baby getting rescued from a corner? By someone who’d persued me romantically knowing I had no idea how “huge a deal” it was to her and her religious community I wasn’t one of them – and the first I love yous id ever shared in the midst? Big hug, tears, I love you in our last moment. Promise me you’ll be ok, she asked. Gave me a notebook to write down “all the awesome things I do.” Photos of us in a small fold for my wallet – the kiss on the cheek in Newport ocean beyond the bluff, north country hair rolling and flowing in the wind, amongst them is the one where I remember us the best.

Then a goodbye because of long distance, long distance friends attempt – and then when we’re gonna see each other for the first time in a few years, and first time since parting… a couple weeks prior to us meeting an email: “I see no reason to see you…Hope you find what you’re looking for.”

She got a tearful, panicked, no don’t go in response – and “an after all this I deserve to be looked in the eye, including looking me right in the eye when you say you see no reason to see me” and an “if I don’t get that, then get bent.”

It was a fucked up response that was me fucked up in a fucked up situation that had the gender roles been reversed and a guy had pulled that on an early twenties year old female? The “I might need you, would you convert, I might show up underneath your window one day” stuff?

And that young lady had gotten majorly fucked up and majorly fucked up?

They wouldn’t have been treated as I was, nor would the guy be viewed in such an innocent light in terms of that situation. The type of situation where the guy would not be viewed kindly by the ladies brothers type of thing.

You get it.

But I fucked up, it was fucked up, and I was fucked up and I sent a young, dumb, fucked up response including a mockery of the idea I was some idiot evil hockey playing goy.

And I’m sorry for not just walking away.

It’s a sad story that began as a very happy one.

Only one stood by my side as a true friend through it all – coast to coast as I got (and am still getting) better.

Because they saw and still see reasons to.

Take a look and listen around this site to learn some of those reasons.

If you think they were and are wrong for doing so you can take it up with them. If you can find them.