The Worst Thing That I've Ever Done

I know exactly what the worst thing that I've ever done is, and to this day it sort of haunts me.

I don't even know if I am going to let this post go through. This is beyond embarrassing, this is me being a bad person, being evil, and no one wants to let other people see how bad of a person they secretly are. This is one of those things that most people will hide to their dying day.

Here it is: I once told someone that they could count on me, and I gave her my phone number. Then, when she finally called me at 3 a.m., in a bad section of Albuquerque where her car had broken down, begging me to come pick her up, I told her that I was tired and I didn't go.

Geez. You don't know how hard that was to write. It looks so simple and innocuous on the screen now, but I kept pausing, hoping that if I did the words would go away, and what I did would go with them. I shouldn't have to write a story about how much I suck.

(Note: Even now, months after writing this, I want to go back and add some mitigating circumstances to it. I want to modify the language so that it doesn't sound as bad. I want to convince myself that the way I want to remember it is true, and not what I said above.)

Letting down a friend is something cartoonishly evil. That's something that a villain in a movie might do, not a real person. I don't know what I was thinking at the time. I can't justify what I did.

So, of course, now that I know what the worst thing that I've done in my life is, I can beat myself up with it when I want to. When I tell people that they can count on me, I get to dredge up this old memory of when someone couldn't count on me, and it tears me up inside.

I know my friend is okay. Or, at least, that she survived that night. She never trusted me again, and I can't blame her at all. Even the next day, I couldn't believe what I'd done to her, and if I was her, I don't think that I would have ever talked to me ever again.

I tell myself that I won't ever do that again, that if someone calls me and tells me that they need me, I'll go find them no matter what time it is or how tired I am, but I can't be sure. I flaked out once, perhaps I'll flake out again someday. I tell myself that I screwed up once, and that I learned from my mistake, and it won't happen again, but down in my stomach, my conscience is screaming up at me "HOW CAN YOU BE SURE? YOU LET SOMEONE DOWN ONCE, AND IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN."

Damn it to hell, I hope not. Please don't let me ever let someone down like that again.

So that is, by far, the worst think that I have ever done in my life.

So, what makes me write that? A porn star, of course. Some tabloid claimed that Marc Jacobs was sleeping with porn star Erik Rhodes, and Rhodes refuted that on his blog. Thus, through the general interconnectivity of the internet I find out that Erik Rhodes has a blog and I get a link to it.

(Link is Not Safe For Work or Family) Erik's blog is here. His real name is James.

After the naked picture of him, the first thing that I want to draw your attention to is the "About Me" section, which say (and I quote) "Erik Rhodes[,] Miserable Porn Star with nothing better to do with his spare time."

In one sentence that sums up his blog. Despite his looks, his popularity, his porn star status, he's miserable. He's desperately alone, he's a sex addict, and he's getting hounded by guys that don't know him but want to have sex with him.

I feel just awful for him, but I can't do anything, I couldn't offer to help without that little voice telling me "Even if he trusted you enough to talk to you, you're just going to let him down."