own kind of beauty

sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty

i was talking with a guy the other day and it seemed he got a burr in his butt because he asked what i thought he should do about this guy he partied with about a year ago. this guy's friend had angered him as they got hammered because a friend stopped by and pulled a knife on him and asked him for his money. the friend he is discussing did nothing to intervene, almost if the whole drama had been expected.

my companion (eric) was getting riled up, just recanting the scene.the bit that followed is that this friend then had sex with eric's ex, who is hiv positive and did not disclose to this guy.eric knew this and stifled any desire to share the std information. eric had just seen him and it lit a fire to disclose his ex's hiv status  in order to injure this person who had injured him. even after over a year, eric is still carrying a grudge toward this friend  about the robbery and about sleeping with his ex and he has convinced himself that this disclosure would be a kindness or "doing the right thing".

there is a strangeness and a familiarity to this scenario that  is both a bit sad and a bit dingy. i guess there are times when honesty comes only when there is a chance for retribution involved. he didn't care about this friend's well being. he wasn't considering this disclosure for the other person's sake.  i guess there are times when giving someone a version of the truth only comes when our knickers are scrunched. and i guess that happens to me more often than i realize. certainly to me, and now i am reminded, to others as well. i am still learning that holding back sometimes is the kindest thing i can do. i believe that evaluating my intentions is the priority.

“Sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty,” a young Spanish stud (Jon Kortajarena) tells George Falconer (Colin Firth), a bereaved professor, in A Single Man. He’s talking about a lurid, smog-inflected California sunset.