Promises Promises

I am very much aware that it has been nearly two months since I promised to betray you all. Very much aware that it's a promise on which I have not made good.

(Or if I have, I'm not letting on just yet.)

Rest assured, that promise hasn't been forgotten. I am, if nothing else, a man of my word.

Like the fictions that preceded and followed it, my recent soul-baring honesty is just a pose -- not that it isn't honest; not that my soul isn't bare -- but none of it is accidental or unconscious. Artifice is everywhere here. Even at my most exposed, I am deliberate.

The more I tell you about myself, the less sure you should be. Not because I want to backtrack from any of it -- I'm not afraid to have you know me, not afraid to be seen as a crybaby or sissy, as a selfish, weak, thoughtless, incompetent leech, those tears I shed were the genuine article, those stories were, as best I could manage, true -- but because I know how little it adds up to in the long run. The truth is just a crueller kind of lie.

I don't want your respect or trust (bullshit, of course I do). I don't deserve it (but I love to pretend). I'm not a tortured artist, just another internet parasite. (No, this isn't some outpouring of latent self-hatred, it's yet another pose.)

So anyway: rest assured. A man of my word. Your time will come.
Posted by matt at November 8, 2003 12:39 AM