DannyBoyinExile

Years ago, I was on Robertson Unit with a good friend of mine, who I was actually in the County Jail with, many years before. I’m walking laps around the rec yard with him, reminiscing about old times and old people we knew from back then. (I mean REALLY old people, not us!)
Of course, at the time I was involved in all sorts of activities I shouldn’t have been, and was something of a celebrity there. Not that I TRIED to be, it’s just inevitable when you do too much and become too popular. It seems like every ten steps, someone was calling me, or trying to get my attention, because they had some issue, proposition, or problem to be resolved – and they just NEEDED to talk to me.
So I’d put my poor homeboy on hold, talk to the other person, and get back to him. After about the tenth time, my homeboy gets really mad about it. “You know what? I’ll talk to you later. It seems like you’re just too important to talk to me.”
At the time, I didn’t understand why he was so upset, since I’d known him for YEARS – but I didn’t have time to think on it then, since someone else was signaling that they needed me, so I let him go.
Looking back, I can easily see what he was angry about. Quite simply, he felt that I was making a higher priority of talking to them – even though I was already talking to him in the first place. In my defense, we were only chitchatting, and the other guys wanted to talk about serious, specific issues. But as far as he was concerned, I might as well have been saying that what they had to say was more important to me, or that they were more worth my time than he was. That wasn’t true, of course, but people’s perceptions of things tends to matter just as much as the facts do – at least, to them!
Flash forward a few years (ahem… QUITE a few years!), and I found myself in the exact same situation again – except this time it was me being put aside. I’m talking to Coco (the gender bender I work with) as I often do, and when someone else decides to talk to him, he jettisons me to talk to them – as he often does.
So I move around and find someone else to talk to as well (rather than sitting there talking to myself, since he abandoned me!). I found it ironic that he was doing me the same way I did the other guy, so many years ago – but I was used to it, since he did it at least once a day. (One thing about gender benders is that they seem to have no shortage of people to talk to!) (And people they’d rather talk to than me, in fact!)
So I walked off and left them to their discussion (I was better off leaving the vicinity, as there’s no TELLING what they may have been talking about – and I’d rather not overhear a conversation that might very well leave me traumatized!).
I quickly forgot about the episode, but when I see Coco again (fully an hour later!), HE hadn’t forgotten about it – and was ready to argue about it. What’s crazy is that he’s thinking that I’m jealous of the guy he was talking to! I’m like, WTF? I have no relationship with him, other than talking to him on the bench at work. My concern wasn’t WHO he was talking to, but the fact that he was putting me aside to talk to them. I mean, it’s just as easy to put THEM on hold as it is to make ME wait until they’re done.
Coco, on the other hand, is ready to argue about how wrong I am to be jealous about him talking to someone else. Which is crazy to me, but you can expect a little craziness when dealing with people like Coco. I argued with him for a minute, in the course of defending myself, but I was never really “mad” about the situation in the first place. I didn’t “stomp off” (like he said), and if I ignored him the next time I saw him – it was only to show HIM how it felt, for a change, and not because I was jealous. All was well until, determined to argue, he started yelling, cussing, and causing a scene – which was entirely inappropriate to the level of friendship we had. I mean, people were looking at us as if we were having a full-blown domestic dispute, when all I did was talk to the dude. (When he wasn’t talking to someone else, that is!)
I’m a pretty calm, laid-back dude – and I pride myself on being that way. But there are some things you just don’t say to a person (especially in prison), and lines you don’t cross, even if you’re a gender bender. I wasn’t about to FIGHT him about it (though I probably would’ve felt compelled to, had he been a “regular” person), so I reached into my arsenal and grabbed a few rocks of my own to throw at him – which really hurt his feelings, coming from me. I’d much rather hurt his feelings than beat him up – but I never would have went there with him to begin with, if he hadn’t forced me to.
Well, we’re no longer friends, and no longer associate with each other, whatsoever. I WAS a friend to him, but I’m not anymore. It’s not because he’s gay, and DEFINITELY not because I was jealous. He’s got all the time and space he needs now, to talk to whoever he likes – and it’s just fine with me.
Even though it was him who shunned me to begin with, I still learned a valuable lesson, for the future. We all make priorities in our lives, and make decisions about which people and events take precedence over others. Sometimes we do this foolishly – and place more importance on things that AREN’T important (or are even detrimental) to us, while we sideline the people who really matter, who have our best interests in mind. Not only might that hurt someone’s feelings (or just piss them off!), it may also be bringing people, substances, or activities into our lives that are harmful to us, that we really don’t need in the first place. It’s usually pretty easy to see which is which – but only if we THINK before we make those decisions. Sometimes taking control of your life is as simple as taking control of YOURSELF – and that starts with your decisions. Friends may come and go, but a bad decision can last a lifetime. So says DannyBoy.