Sorry

That’s it? You want me to apologize? Is that really the only thing left in your pathetic excuse for a life? Fine. Fine. Very well. I’m so-

- very much in awe of both your insolence and your arrogance. I mean, to demand something so insipid as that at this time? For what would you even have me apologize, considering that I’m facing the firing squad?

Five right bastards all looking at me with those cold, emotionless eyes as they ‘carry out decisions beyond their ability to’ blah blah blah. You know the drill.

And before I go out to face the end of my time in this place, you come to me and don’t even have the dignity to demand what you want. No. No, that is most certainly not what you’ve done. Rather, you’ve gone and asked me for it. Given me the opportunity to be the bigger person, for what end? Additional torture?

Never had you marked as a sadist. If anything I would have expected massochism to better suit your disposition. Not meant as an insult, of course. I’m over here wrestling with this ludicrous idea, and you might take an insult at my insinuation that you like - well, enough about that. Point is that I won’t be apologizing for that opinion.

Minor things, perhaps. I could understand you wanting to give me the chance to cleanse my conscience on their score. One too many and a rude word spoken? Lack of consideration in the voluability of my evening entertainments? Or even, heaven forbid, the unthinking consumption of some dainty for which you intended to return at a later time?

Before I get on to expressing my regret for actions taken, allow me to say that my crimes are not unique. Nor are they unlike those which are normal in our situation. And may I express a certain incredulity at your taking them so much to heart.

To business, then. I am deeply remorseful of my actions listed above. Each was wrong of me, and had I known that you were not previously aware my contriteness, I would quickly have sought to make such known to you.

However, I know if my heart that such is not the at the heart of this question of yours. Indeed, those petty follies and insignificant vices are not what drove you to take this step. It is not in your nature.

Why it is that I have been left so long to ruminate on my actions, I may never know. To endlessly regurgitate and reexamine all actions both embarrassing and offensive that may have put me in this position, may never be clear. Any more than will your intention in providing me this chance to unburden myself.

If I had the honour of seeing you stand before me, I might have done something about this pitious circumstance. Out in the multiverse, there might be a version of me, and beside him one of you, with a clearer understanding of both the harm and the reconciliation.

My input on your work, might be a cause for complaint between us. Laggardly and uninspired, I admit. And what few faults I did find were such that they could not be repaired in time for inspection. And for that I feel no small amount of guilt, allow me to say. Though I did expect such things to be obvious to you, and demands on my time were many while opportunities to fulfill my promise were few.

Disappointments and a degradation of our trust aside, for I know that in your heart I am already forgiven on such a charge, I confess myself still perplexed. Wherefore art thou so poisoned against me? What Iago whispers in your ear, laying traps in which I am to be ensnared? How might I earn back your good grace, if I do not know the reason behind its departure?

Beleaguring the point further strikes me as a useless endeavour. I have done you wrong, and you would have all the world told of it. And I do not believe that such a scheme is yours alone. You must have co-conspirators in this, if only I can come to understand the plans within plans within plans resulting in me occupying the space I do now.

So I rebuke the claims made against me, for as they are not strong enough to lay before me. I am expected, utilizing nothing but my own cogitation, to both understand what I have done and the proper means of conveying such a lament as I have in my heart to give?

Unless.

Of course.

But no.

Only the most vile and wicked coward to ever walk the face of the earth would bring me up on such charges. Verily, I remember the occassion where wrong might have been done. And truly, clear as a cloudless midsummer view of the stars, do I recall all events of the evening in question.

You would have me apologize for something done not out of dislike, nor an intent to harm. An act lacking both the mens and actus requirements to convert one from innocent to not. I am declared guilty, without the fairness of a trial in your mind - and for that, you demand that I demean myself?

I have, at times, taken you for a great many things. A fool, capering about in mockery of social graces. A savant, lacking the general precursor to such a title in common parlayance. A drunkard in your moments of idle hedonism. A virtuoso in those aspects of a passion to which you dedicated yourself.

Never, I am loathe to admit, did I ever expect that you would take so tremendosly uncouth an action as to damn me for acts left uncommitted. Is this to be my punishment, or my atonement? When I meet the icy gazes of those set to perform my excommunication, my execution if social inclusion is how one measures one’s life, will I hold aloft this letter and say, “look! I have done it!” Inso-doing all that is needed to earn my redemption?

Esteemed cohabitator, learned friend, confined as I am to this dismal place of reflection, I cannot know if that evening and what transpired is the impetus for such treatment. Although, upon reflection, I do admit to the possibility.

Above I said that I have at times taken you for a fool, yet is it not always so that those high in our estimations might consider us such? Have you not yourself thrown similar and harsher slanders at my feet when deserved? Of course, you have. It is nothing between friends. Languishing now in my own misery, though, I realize that you have not always had my gladness as a core tennant of our friendship.

Something is indeed rotten in the state of many situations which you and I concurrently occupy. Beyond the walls, discussing and determining my fate, stand you and the others - though you shall, I know, be honourable enough to recuse yourself when time is come for my doom. Again and again I return to the events of that night, the only event in living memory where my conduct might be called into aciton. Events which, I strain to remind you, did not take place.

To speak with one so fair as her, indeed to make an honest attempt to endeer myself, is not so horrid a crime as befits the punishments to which I am subjected. Nor even the threat of punishments which hang over my head. This opportunity, presented to me, to admit to my culpability is a genuinely paltry device that now strikes me as an inglorious attempt to thresh from the stalks of my mind a confession to seduction most foul.

Beneath me a pit, awaiting a failure in my mind. One flase step and I shall confess to a harm undone, the very floors already greased with suspicion by your own slanderous words. And above? Growing closer with each wasted word and beat of my heart, swinging in the winds of caprice? Above me waits a knife whose swing is in time with the seconds, and from which there is but small chance of escape that does not include the pit.

What shall I admit? Must I prostrate myself upoon your good feeling to determine my right to remain in a place as much mine as yours?

As distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December. We were stood in idle chatter, when without there came a clatter - do you not remember that you uttered sound of shock and dropped your rocks. Thence to the shuttered windows, one of us duly fluttered calling that it was a car and nothing more? Then there oh so gently came a tapping, and so softly came a rapping, and so timidly a tapping at the chamber door.

A door I then opened, as had oft been done before. Opened it and nothing more. Beyond the portal I saw a woman, a rare and radiant maiden, politely nameless here forevermore.

Before that evening, my good friend. I had never before seen this woman, and from that night I've had neither sight nor sound. And I swear to you that your accusations are groundless; as nothing between us passed but a few moments of idle talk. She was plain and clear in her rebuttle of my advances. Advances that I would in no way have made if only you your own good self had made certain things more clear

Just two words it would have taken. Just two words had you to let fly from your lips, and neither you nor more importantly I would be in such constraints as we now enjoy. A relation could easily have been related, this cursed crossroads was not fated. But no, the information came belated, and from another friend who hated, to see me thus gated and my honour to be rated by one such as you who abdicated responsibility for a siuation you created.

But fine.

You want an appology?

Fine.

I'm sorry I hit on your sister man.

I didn't know.

Now please don't vote to kick me out.