Gossip April 13, 1985

 

 

The old saying, “We all make mistakes” feels a bit too self-serving and comes a bit too late to let me weasel out of the current mess – since my mistake caused hurt which I can’t make up for.

I’m not sure Hank will ever speak to be again.

I’d like to think that through mistakes like this, I might have grown as a human being, especially because the error came as a matter of judgement, not malice, and my inability to read the tea leaves and know how much out on the limb I got and how I might have avoided it had I known to recognize who I can trust, and how much I can say before no trust can assure me of safety.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve made such a mistake.

Riding with Garrick on Route 3 from Passaic, I decided to spread some gossip about Hank.

Hank told me he had been hanging out with Jane (Pauly’s former girlfriend) for several months, privately rehearsing a scene for an upcoming play at the Barn Theatre, in which they both had a part and the part required them to kiss each other.

Hank, telling me this in confidence, laughed when he referred to himself as “Pauly’s stand-in,” and how good he felt being up close to her.

It isn’t as if anything really happened, or that he divulged anything I could later consider hard evidence just a nod and a wink, letting my own imagination fill in the pieces, allowing me to put two and two together and naturally, coming up with a wrong conclusion, hints of attraction that Jane herself might not have been aware of, but which Hank wanted me to think of as significant.

I told Garrick, more or less half in jest, that Hank believed he could “have” Jane any time he wanted to, something of an exaggeration, and said on my part as a mockery of Hank since I never believed for one minute this could possibly be true.

But I was concerned about Pauly, and how hurt he might feel if he found out that Hank – one of our closest friends, might even think it possible.

I mistakenly assumed Garrick would keep my confidence. But Garrick, being loyal to Pauly, felt obligated to report the infraction, which resulted in Pauly meeting with me to find out more.

“What exactly did he say?” Pauly demanded to know in his own version of the inquisition.

Then, when Hank arrived, I felt intense pangs of guilt, knowing that I had done something wrong, not just betrayed a trust, but had caused unnecessary friction between two long time friends, all because I had known something others had not, and could not resist telling this secret to somebody.

Hank did not deny it. He could not. He knew there was an element of truth to what I had reported, even if he hadn’t actually said it all out loud, and he left us wounded, yet proud, refusing to give up the scene with Pauly’s ex-girlfriend, refusing – maybe for the first time since our all knowing each other – to be bullied out of something he really ached to do.

Oddly enough, I envy Hank, since I have always felt the same as he does about Jane, but never had the courage to admit it, and wonder if that is the real reason I told Garrick, a kind of sour grapes, needing to deny Hank of an opportunity I wanted for myself, but am not brave enough to seek out the way Hank is.

 

 

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