Page 71 of Badd Love
"She sucked my dick for coke," he told me. "All the time."
I laughed. "I'm not surprised. Is that supposed to upset me or something? Ihatedmy mother. I've always hated her. I'm not sad she's dead, and the fact that she blew you for coke when she knew damn well what you were doing to me is absolutely unsurprising. If anyone in that house was a whore, it was her."
He shrugged. "Well, yeah. Literally. She whored herself out for drugs all the time. Rent money, too."
I shrugged back at him. "I don't give a fuck. Good riddance to bad rubbish.” I sighed. "I needed to look at you and see how it felt, now that I'm not taken by surprise."
"And?" He seemed genuinely curious, so I thought about the answer for a while.
"The longer I sit here looking at your ugly fucking face and listening to your horrible fucking voice, the more I realize I've been held hostage by a pathetic piece of shit. You violated me. You ruined my life, which was already spectacularly shitty. But you know what, Daniel? Isurvivedyou." The hate was still there, but as I spoke, I realized I was telling the truth—to both him and myself. "Isurvivedwhat you did to me. I survived how you made me feel about myself."
He just stared at me, in pain as the opiates wore off, visibly uncomfortable at my presence.
I thought of something a professor said in a philosophy and ethics class I took in college: "Hate is the heaviest of emotions," she'd said. "Hate is the most destructive force on earth. Hate is entropy. Hate has mass and substance. Hate blinds. Hate kills. Hate is a poison, but it poisons only you and harms the subject of your hate not a whit.”
I remember hearing my professor say that and knowing it applied to me. I had gotten up and left, deeply uncomfortable because I was consumed by hatred for the man in the bed opposite me. I have harbored that hatred for years. Nurtured it inside myself. And behold, my professor was right. It had poisoned me and had eaten away at me. It had caused me to push away a good, kind, honest man who cared for me.
While this festering puddle of diarrhea lived his life, blissfully unaware of my hate.
I hated and hated and hated, and only harmed myself.
I stared at him in silence for a long, long time, sorting through the swirling shitstorm of emotions inside me.
"What's the opposite of hate, Daniel?" I asked.
"Love?" He shook his head. "I don't fuckin' know. Why the fuck are you asking me that?" he demanded. "Can't you just fuck off, now? You've seen me. You got your revenge. You said your piece. Please, just leave me alone."
"No, I don't think the opposite of hate is love,” I said. “They're totally different. I know a soulless monster like you can't fathom what love is, but it's totally unrelated to hate. No, I think the opposite of hate is forgiveness."
His eyes flickered. "Cool. Fuck off."
I stood up. Glared down at him. “What I’m about to say, I say for me, Daniel, not you. You can get fucked." I cleared my throat. "I forgive you."
He blinked a few times, surprised. "I—"
"Shutthe fuckup, you ugly, stupid, dickless, shit-stained hemorrhoid. Fuck you until the end of time. I really do hope you live the rest of your life in agony. I willnotforget, but Iwillmove on, and I will live my life, and Iwill notbe held hostage by hating you anymore. When I say that I forgive you, all I mean is that I am going to try and let go and move on. Put you in my past. Put what you did to me in my past. I do not mean it's okay, don't worry about it. It's not okay. Do not worry about it. Worry about what I'll do to you if I ever,eversee your ugly fucking face ever again."
"I didn't know you'd be there. I've been on oil rigs for most of the past few years."
"Shut the fuck up. I don't care. If you see anyone that evenlookslike me, you better fucking run the other direction."
At that moment, I heard the squawk of a radio in the hallway, and then two uniformed LAPD officers entered the room.
"Daniel Hezekiah Cohen?"
"Fuck," Danny muttered quietly enough that I almost doubted my ears; then, louder: "Nope. Not me."
The officer wasn't amused. "Daniel Cohen, you're under arrest for the violation of the terms of your parole and for the violation of a restraining order against one Elizabeth Gabardine."
I stood aside and watched, not bothering to hide my gleeful grin.
A second pair of men entered the room, these dressed in business suits that screamed FBI.
One of them, a Patrick Warburton lookalike, stepped toward Daniel. “Daniel Hezekiah Cohen, you're under arrest for—" he glanced at the LAPD officers. “Wait, you guys too?"
"Parole violation and violating a restraining order. What do you have him on?"
“Transporting Schedule One substances across state lines, possession of a Schedule One substance, possession of a firearm without a license, and tampering with a federal witness."
