Burning bridges

Paul and I went to an Adam Lambert concert. I feel the need to make this point, I was an unwilling participant, there against my will, forced into attending because no-one else would. After the concert, we headed to an Oxford Street gay club, and that is where Paul met Seth.

Seth was the destruction of all things good. The nosey fucker that could interrupt any conversation from five miles away. The person that liked to talk himself up but put others down. We have all met one of those dickheads whose greatest joy in life is making others feel small, who sees themselves as superior and makes sure everyone knows it. At first, he seemed nice and we were all supportive because we wanted Paul to be happy. Paul had been single for several months after the disastrous end to his previous relationship, and was now ready to move on. Having a new boyfriend, someone new to focus on and love, felt like a good thing for my friend. It didn’t take long for Seth to reveal what a cunt he was. There was always something slightly off about Seth but it was something you just couldn't put your fingers on.

We initially moved to Dee Why because Paul had had two lovely friends nearby called Lane and Taylor. Lane and I never really understood Seth no matter how hard we tried. Everything was a competition with Seth. If you tried to tell a story about seeing a goldfish, he had a story about surviving a shark attack. If you said you wanted a coffee, you had to listen to a story about the time he harvested cat shit in some godforsaken jungle to make the most expensive coffee in the world. It was pathological. For a while it was funny making shit up just to see him try to outdo it. But it’s the kind of funny that’s actually really sad, you laugh because the only other option is to cry. You could have claimed to have a tiny dick and he would have had to tell you about his micro-penis, you could have claimed to have a learning disability and he would have claimed to be functionally retarded. It didn’t make sense, a grown man needing to compete on everything, needing to win every imaginary competition that began and ended in his own head. The relationship between the two of them jumped all over the place in the first 3 months. Paul called them “love spats” but they were the volatile explosions of a self-important man who had a meltdown every time things didn’t go his way. Paul, my gentle friend, was an enabler, making excuses for Seth, always apologising despite never being the one in the wrong. After we expressed our concerns, Paul started to withdraw from us and hide when he saw Seth from us.

A few weeks passed and we decided to try to put our differences behind us and turn up to Seth’s birthday in support of Paul. We had a few drinks, danced a little and tried to get along. Then like the destructive prick he was, Seth did his best to fuck things up. He whispered in my ear, a private fact about me that I had revealed to Paul in confidence. Paul should never have told Seth, and Seth had no right to bring it up in the middle of a party. He knew it would upset me, he knew it would drive a wedge between Paul and I, so as a birthday gift to himself, he destroyed my friendship with Paul.

I left the party furious and feeling devastated and betrayed. Paul had thrown away the friendship we had built, by betraying my trust to a man who messed with other people’s heads and lives. The next day I confronted Paul who agreed that Seth should not have brought up the issue when and where he did. Paul agreed that the best decision was to break up with Seth. Seth had betrayed not only my trust but Paul’s too. Like all great dysfunctional stories of abusive relationships, this was just the third of many break-ups they would have over the course of their relationship. There were so many I learned to tune it out. The only one I remember with any detail was the breakup where Paul collapsed dramatically on the kitchen floor wailing and hyperventilating, clutching a spatula to his chest, until the fire brigade arrived in response to the fire alarm set off by the risotto that burned while he was thrashing about hysterically on the floor.

After this particular break-up Paul and Seth continued to meet in secret. Paul disappeared for days, going on adventures with no warning or explanation. The atmosphere at home became awkward, Paul made the decision to move in with Seth. Obviously, I didn’t support this patently ridiculous turn of events, but gentler methods were obviously not working, so Paul had to be allowed to make his mistake and feel the consequences. Before Paul moved out the happy couple decided to have a low-key night on the town. Nothing major, just your standard drugs, alcohol, high speed drink driving, destruction of property, and finding your beloved in a toilet cubicle with their cock down some stranger’s throat, kind of night.

After finding Seth face fucking a random in a piss-soaked bathroom, Paul responded with the cool, calm collectedness he had become famous for. He trashed Seth’s apartment more thoroughly that any natural disaster could manage, got in his work car and drove to the Blue Mountains. Along the way he obtained 2 high range speeding fines, had a single car accident that resulted in the car rolling onto its roof, abandoning the car in the middle of a major road, failed to report the accident and then hitchhiked to a friend’s house to wallow in self-pity for a couple of days. What he did was fucking dangerous, he risked god knows how many people’s lives having a massive hysterical temper tantrum because he caught his cunt of a boyfriend being exactly the kind of cunt he had always been. I understand hurt, God I understand it more than I care to think about, but it takes a special kind of fucking self-absorption to think you have any right to put others in danger while you spit your dummy.

Paul lost his job, his license, his partner and his self-respect in a single massive temper tantrum. He had hit, rock bottom. I was deeply worried about him and staged an intervention. Paul decided he was no longer going to move out, but as far as I was concerned his staying was no longer an option. Paul was deeply unstable, irretrievably enmeshed in a dangerously dysfunctional relationship with Seth, and had completely destroyed all of our trust. Even after finding Seth deep throating some slob in a urinal (it really is a romantic tale for the ages) and going on a bender that cost him everything, Paul still believed that Seth was simply misunderstood and that Paul could save him. He moved in with Seth and soon discovered the full extent of Seth’s lying, cheating and drug taking.