Editing Hindsight
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Was it stupidity on my part? Or was it Fate? Was it delayed gratification of repressed biological need or was it something deeper, something meant to last forever? Hindsight could only show me where I’d been, catch every mistake I’d made on my path to the present. It could not show me my future. Santayana had once said that those who failed to learn from history's mistakes were doomed to repeat them. What if the mistakes weren’t mistakes? How could I know? <br><br> | Was it stupidity on my part? Or was it Fate? Was it delayed gratification of repressed biological need or was it something deeper, something meant to last forever? Hindsight could only show me where I’d been, catch every mistake I’d made on my path to the present. It could not show me my future. Santayana had once said that those who failed to learn from history's mistakes were doomed to repeat them. What if the mistakes weren’t mistakes? How could I know? <br><br> | ||
| − | I sipped my coffee and thought of how it all came to pass. Joshua had first been a crewmate and then a confidant as our friendship grew. Attraction sprang up unexpected and I | + | I sipped my coffee and thought of how it all came to pass. Joshua had first been a crewmate and then a confidant as our friendship grew. Attraction sprang up unexpected and I acted on it. Was that where I’d stepped wrong? It hadn’t seemed like it at the time. It had only felt right. I’d intended it as a gift, to help ease a friend out of a rough patch—and to be brutally honest, to ease myself through a rough patch of my own—and then move on. We’d share the moment, gain a new footing in our respective personal issues, and continue as crewmates and friends. It didn’t happen that way. Just as Mike had been my first in all the ways that counted, so was I Joshua’s.<br><br> |
| − | That was where I’d made my mistake, I realized as I leaned against the counter with my coffee. I had been trapped, vulnerable, facing a hostile universe with no one but Mike to turn to when I fell for him. Joshua had been in a similar spot when we became intimate. At the time I’d been blind to the similarities, so of course I had failed to see the similar outcome | + | That was where I’d made my mistake, I realized as I leaned against the counter with my coffee. I had been trapped, vulnerable, facing a hostile universe with no one but Mike to turn to when I fell for him. Joshua had been in a similar spot when we became intimate. At the time I’d been blind to the similarities, so of course I had failed to see the similar outcome. <br><br> |
| − | Joshua’s mind had been worked over by Blue Sun. He literally had to fight to find himself amid the falsehoods Blue Sun had implanted in his brain, had suffered trigger-phrases that erased his selfhood in the blink of an eye. They frightened him more than he could express. The lapses only emphasized how much evil he might have committed at Blue Sun’s command without his knowledge | + | Ten years later, Mike and I had burned our bridges, our long-distance relationship failing as absence and shifting ideologies exacted their price. The fact that Mike had been mind-fucked by the Feds hadn’t done our future together any favors either and again the similarities with Joshua were hammered home. <br><br> |
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| + | Joshua’s mind had been worked over by Blue Sun. He literally had to fight to find himself amid the falsehoods Blue Sun had implanted in his brain, had suffered trigger-phrases that erased his selfhood in the blink of an eye. They frightened him more than he could express. The lapses only emphasized how much evil he might have committed at Blue Sun’s command without his memory or knowledge of doing so. Likewise, Mike had been forced to give up the names and locations of over thirty sleeper agents in Nguyen’s network and the effects of that loss, that betrayal, were felt even now. Mike could not remember how much more he had given up on the Feds’ command, either, and or when the bill for it would come due. The price he’d paid was already too high and we still had no way of knowing how much higher it would go. <br><br> | ||
Was this the outcome I could expect with Joshua, too? We’d had our year, burning gloriously bright, but was it our love or our bridges burning? Would Joshua and I end up on opposite sides of a divide we couldn’t cross? Was last night the beginning of the end? Or was it merely a speed bump, a temporary obstacle, on the road to something greater? <br><br> | Was this the outcome I could expect with Joshua, too? We’d had our year, burning gloriously bright, but was it our love or our bridges burning? Would Joshua and I end up on opposite sides of a divide we couldn’t cross? Was last night the beginning of the end? Or was it merely a speed bump, a temporary obstacle, on the road to something greater? <br><br> | ||
