Avery had an interesting question / comment on the Collecting Benefits From The Shadow Of The Collective blog where I mentioned I told the soldier’s story without his knowing in advance.

Avery writes:

“I’m always fascinated by the way people take ownership of stories that also belong to another. For example, back in my early twenties, I got plastered on tequila and ended up making out with a female friend in private. Whose story is that? She felt she had the right to publicize it, since she felt it would raise her “cool factor” a few notches. I just wanted it to remain private..”

and

“…without putting you in the “publicize it” camp, this was originally his experience, his story, which he didn’t want to share with others for whatever reason. It became your story because of how it’s affected the two of you, separately and together, over the years, culminating in the life you share now. Now you own the story, too, and it’s yours to tell, albeit without his prior consent.”

Read the whole comment here..

Avery, I do have his prior consent. I have total clearance to write whatever I want, whenever I want from everyone I write about that could possibly be identified. Are you kidding me? I am a very good friend and I would not be taking chances here.

Specific to this story, the soldier did not share it because he thought it was classified until just a few months ago. He also thinks no one is interested in his stories and even if they are interested, he is still not interested in talking.

He is not interested in talking to anyone because my opinion is the only one that means anything to him anyway. Why does he feel this way? Hell if I know. He is not into causes all that much. He just likes telling me his stories, I like hearing them and beyond that he could care less what I do. As far as he is concerned he is talking to his girlfriend who bootles and this includes my writing his stories and our conversations as I please for reasons I don’t even think he ponders.

It would be like me wondering why he wants to study some obscure fighting technique. Who knows and who cares? If this is what he wants to do he can do it and if you tell me he should not do this, I will tell you to go to hell. If you tell him I should not write, you will get the same reaction. Get it? We are a matched set and it’s very simple. What we care about is each other - period.

But anyway, just so you know, I am clear here. And I was aware I allowed the reader to question this when I wrote the piece and said I could not judge his reaction when he found this specific story had been posted. I knew many or even most might imagine I could be in trouble but he is far more complex a character than that… and so am I for that matter.

Anger could be one reaction but there are a million others things he could be thinking or feeling and I am quite sure that whatever he was thinking at the time it was something other than “pissed”. And I could have spelled this out to make sure people did not think this kind of thing about me but I hate to dumb things down around here.

For the people who read her regularly, surely you must realize the soldier does not get mad at P. He does, but I have to scream for at least three days straight, call him every name in the book, threaten to kill myself, kill him, possibly hit him with a brick or a car or an I don’t-even-know-what before he even thinks about getting pissed. It hardly seems worth the bother.

Who knows what he was thinking when we had that conversation but if you want my best guess, it was probably something sexual about me and completely unrelated to this story and it’s telling just like like back when we were kids.

Love, Venus Neptune Style - The soldier and P merge (Neptune) their currency Venus)

I was sitting there diligently explaining where our money was going while he watched my mouth, mesmerized by the way my mouth was moving. Get it?

The man is a man and he only cares about man things. Cave man things if you want to put it that way. I am sure he wouldn’t mind. In fact, he’d probably take it as a compliment.

pictured - Venus and Mars by Sidney Harold Meteyard. Oil on canvas