My friend Omega did it to me again. I don't know that she did it on purpose, but I'll never know for sure that she didn't. She's very, very good, good the way only someone who feels as much as they think can be good at the art of saying exactly the right thing at the right time to open the appropriate door, the unmarked unremarkable door there half way to the end of a dark hallway of identical doors. What did she say? She said "you didn't have a clue babe, you had no clue at all." Most generally that phrase is used as a put down, more than a bit condescending leaning towards intimidating. It stung in my ears because she was right, I didn't have a clue. And I'm having trouble forgiving myself a functional ignorance that very likely put me guilty of mishandling the events of my life to the detriment of everyone including myself, that in point of fact put sins on my soul that otherwise would not be there.
There are risks to introspection, to retrospective self judgment, and I'm standing square in the middle of one of the largest of those risks: the tendency to judge one's actions of the then by the expanded knowledge of the now. As memory presents it appears both my mother and my wife were deeply contaminated by entanglement with the bdsm mentality... a defining attitude towards life and love kept absolutely secret from me, an act my heart still feels as a totally malicious lie of omission. I'd heard of such things of course, in a grocery store marketing sort of way, seen their porn (and went sheeeeit... those are some totally sick puppies, someone should bust a cap and put 'em out of everyone's misery), but as to the hints of the underlying pathology such people present in their day to day lives? No. No clue. Probably the most damning fact of my life.
The questions before me now are my own actions in those days, how to judge the ethical status of my deeds. How much should a man ask and expect of himself when dealing with those secretly motivated by a perverted form of thought? How much responsibility for the consequences of their responses should a man accept onto himself? At what point should ignorance be disallowed as a justified defense? Perhaps the better question is it even possible to make such a judgment call working from forensic evidence?
It is a troublesome thing for me, now that I'm maneuvering to re-insert myself back into the circles called society. One thing the last six months has brought crystal clear is my degree of ignorance concerning the inner make up of the residents of some of the more heavily spiced orbits I might wander into. If my heart has one more go in it there's only one more, and I damn sure don't want to lose my last chance for love untainted. How to acquire true boots on the ground tactical intel is gaining importance as an overriding priority, because if there is one thing I absolutely don't want it is to be deceived again.
Which puts an even more interesting conundrum on the stage, the Saruman factor it might be called: is it possible to know enough to avoid being deceived without that knowing becoming a contamination of equal perversion?
