The time before that was less great, especially in the long run. But yes, for the record, it was your super drunken idea for us to double-team your best friend while her boyfriend wasn’t home. And yes, that had a lot to do with why I cheated on you with her later. Something about the male mind: we really do think the door never closes. You’d have to ask an anthropologist why.
You could say, then, that the first time I fucked your bestie was your idea, and the second time was my idea. Should I not have done that? Yup. I should not have. But here we are, brokenhearted.
Playwright Arthur Miller famously said, “Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.”
I’ve never really been sure if that means that you’re supposed to come to moral conclusions at the end of your life, making your regrets “right,” or if it’s that your regrets are supposed to reflect what you did right in life. As in, “I regret passing on that sweet plastic surgery job in order to volunteer at the free clinic.” Is that the “right regret” the quote means? Either way, if Arthur Miller was right, I’m sunk. I don’t care about having the “right regrets” in the first possible definition, and I don’t have “right regrets” in the second sense when it comes to you.
Not that this exonerates me or anything, but someone should say it: even drunken lesbianism has consequences.
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“Your Idea” is an excerpt from Richard Power’s new memoir, Letters from a Heartbroken Pervert. You can purchase the book from Terror House Press here.
Richard Power is the author of Letters from a Heartbroken Pervert, available from Terror House Press.
