My name in print!

Christmas, 2011, Good Will Towards Men!

An old aquantainance just self published the story of his life. To my surprise, quite a bit of it is devoted to me. More specifically, to telling the world about how crazy and dangerous I am, how much worse I am than he is, and how much he suffered from our aquaintance. Under the guise of "telling the truth" and being fair, he did give me credit for certain talents, and wrote about at least one action I took to save him in a crisis.

I found most of what he had to say about me slanderous and unfair. I was his friend for about a year or so when he was at the height of his alcoholism. I had been his sober friend, and as such I often paid a heavy emotional  price for his drinking. He was physically and emotionally abusive, as well as becoming quite insane when he drank. Anytime we left his house I would  literally wind up carrying him home. I was the one he called to rescue him when he shattered his leg.

What really amazes me is that, although we spent so little time together, (he was in his 50s when I knew him), so much of the truly vitriolic in his autobiography was devoted to me. Page after page of gossipy libel. I obviously made a greater impression on him than his ex-wife and blood relatives, not to mention the myriad girlfriends who were hardly mentioned. Of course he failed to mention as well most of the truly idiotic things he did while drunk, those involving public nudity, inappropriate sexual behavior, really really bad lapses of judgement; all the alcoholic behaviors he has chosen to forget.

Thee book itself is terrible, a really narcissistic first try by someone who has no experience as a writer.
He paid to have it published by one of the vanity presses and has it posted all over the internet. I don't have to worry about anyone reading the slanderous things he had to say about me; it's extremely unlikely-to-impossible that his writing will ever become mainstream.
Still, it stings.
He cheerfully encouraged me to read his book, then actually had the gall to say he expected forgiveness and peace to come from my reading what he wrote about me,
He denied having any anger or ill feelings towards me.
A very good example of the type of dishonesty I wrote about in my first blog post.