MORE SPITE AND BILE

I wrote recently about my own peculiar place in the great scheme of things, in that it seemed that I was the “go to” guy when life turned into a crock of cruddiness, but I suspect that I have also found a new role to play in the not-so-merry dance of life.

One of my recent replies to a friend’s distressing news seemed to lift his spirits a modicum, as he kindly remarked that he found one or two of my choices of phraseology to be suitably life enhancing as I described (with the intention of showing some empathy) my own experiences in some of the darker corridors of the confusing maze of failed relationships.

Half-jokingly, he asked me if I could think of any suitably derogatory terminology to refer to one of the parties in his own predicament and I half-seriously made an attempt to, with my usual caveats as to time being a great healer and other such nonsense that tends to fail to help much when your life’s in the toilet.

After  composing some examples of handy and shamefully crude nomenclature and passing them on, however, I started to have second thoughts. This was not my battle, and I was merely feeding the flames which might not help with the process of possible reconciliation.

After all, this was not my fight to fight, and I am no mercenary. Nor was it fair of me to label someone I’d never even met just because it helped to oil the wheels of friendship. Once the labels have been chosen, the spiteful barbs fired and the whole madness has turned into the kind of verbal sparring and a whole world of bitter recriminations has been opened up, it’s far more difficult to put these things back in the drawer and try to make things up.

On the whole I decided the temptation should be for cool heads to prevail, for the time-being at least, and if the damage proves irreparable, as it sometimes turns out to be, then suitable inspiration will strike the parties involved quite naturally in the fullness of time without any help from third parties.

Which it will.

Because it’s really only with the passage of time that we can learn to deal with these things in a more “flippant” way, I suppose. You’re going through a difficult time and it’s all to easy to become bitter and twisted (I know – I did!) when someone else’s selfish need to follow their own desires impacts so devastatingly upon your own lifestyle, but all you can keep on reminding yourself is that this too will pass and, eventually, some kind of serenity might be possible, even if it currently seems an impossible prospect.

Still, it was with some alarm that I realised that I was now also the “go to” guy when it comes to matters of spite and bile (or bite and spile as I’ve been known to term it). Woo-hoo! What a legacy to leave! If you want to find a cynical barb or a brutal put down, the world can think of no better champion.

“See that fetid bucket of misery sitting over there behind that keyboard? He’s your guy. He’s the one who’ll fill your mind and your mouth with the most brutal and dismissive ways of verbally combating your tormentor. He is a grand-master of the ancient martial art of verbal badinage. Look at his scars! Look at his bruises! Are they not his badges of office? His medals of dishonour, hard won in the wars between brain and brawn where fisticuffs may very well have the upper hand, but it is the noble bon mot that will leave them quivering in your wake just before they smash your face in…”

“But”, he will argue as he spits out his latest set of teeth, “Who is really the winner here? You with your fists, standing there being congratulated by all your mates, who are now supporting you and telling you what an utter “prick” I am, for that is the best epithet you are capable of summoning, or me, lying here, gloriously victorious upon the beer and blood soaked carpet?”

“Oh yes, my friend! You might very well think that you’ve pulled one over on me, that your physical force and brutality has won the day. Your cowardly ‘mates’ might very well bow to your prowess and handiness with your fists, but only because they fear and despise you. We know who the winner is my friend. We know that the power of language and the art of knowledge will prove me to be the master in the end…”

“If I live that long…”