Kara,

Over the past few months I’ve written a few things to you, all left unsent. They were mostly for me anyway, and looking back I don’t think they would have made a difference in how things have turned out. From your silence I assume you have decided you don’t want anything to do with me anymore, and though I (obviously) can’t say with certainty that I know exactly what the issue is, I think I can make a pretty good guess. I had sex with Alex. I’m still having sex with Alex, and will probably continue to. I take full responsibly for the code I broke when I made that choice, and I am sorry that you were hurt by it. I have zero desire to evade responsibly, or to talk you out of your feelings, or to justify what I did and try to make it okay for you. It’s not okay for you. I slept with the guy you like(d) and who you were still healing from. This (below) is none of those things—evasion, attempted persuasion, justification. It is an explanation as to why for the sake of clarity alone.

Two reasons:

1) I was feeling insecure about our friendship. I had been reaching out and supplicating to you for months, trying to connect or understand or put the pieces together as to why you were suddenly so distant, so impersonal. I felt powerless and I took back the power by sleeping with the guy you had feelings for. I knew what I was doing and why, and I’m hardly falling all over myself with pride that this was the way I chose to cope with my feelings.

2) I liked him. I really, really liked him. It was confusing because of you and the built in “fuck you for fucking over my friend” that he and I had been operating under (and that only after I finally got past my initial impression that he was a total idiot), but when I think back on it, it was there even before San Diego. It was there on the May movie, even as you were still in the midst of dealing with what had happened between the two of you, even as I was still trying to move on from Mark. At the time it didn’t present itself in a real way, in a way that I could articulate let alone acknowledge. I didn’t think about it. I just hired him and kept hiring him. I liked sparring with him. The night of the wrap party I went after him but it wasn’t about you at all and I knew it. I finally realized I might be in trouble when I ended up having to send him to our second site on the commercial job, the one where I wasn’t, and I didn’t like that. But I kept pushing it away, kept making excuses, making it into a game, framing it solely as having to do with you and way I was going to strike back against you for being so passive aggressive, manipulative in your withholding, just plain cold (this, of course, meant grossly overplaying my own pettiness, which was much more comfortable than admitting what was actually happening). But the truth was and is that I had feelings for him and it was scaring me to death. It still does.

Our relationship (his and mine) is a strange one. We spend most of our time battling for supremacy. I keep him at arm’s length. The fact that I hire him for work complicates what for me is already complicated (and that for reasons that will be familiar to you—what he wants and what I want are probably not the same, and I am all too aware that I am more than likely setting myself up for something that could go really, really badly for me).

With all that said, the point is simply this: I am sorry you were hurt by my actions. I truly am. It would be easy to say I regretted what I did, that if I could go back and do things differently I would, but I don’t and I wouldn’t. I have learned from it—an obvious lesson about friendships and love and the choices we make—and I do wish there was a way to repair what was broken and start anew. But I wouldn’t take it back, and for that I am sorry too. I won’t forget anything (like dancing to Harlem on the street corner, driving to Bumfuck, Nowhere blasting Motorcycle Drive By, or looking up at you on the second story of those terrible stages while Shane played music into the walkie and you kept watch from above). And for all the birthdays and milestones and moments that have passed and will continue to pass in silence, you will never receive anything but my highest hopes, my most sincere wishes, my best.

C