October 13, 2020:
In her defense, I did, and to this day continue to, find her circle of San Francisco friends pompous, posturing, rude, and false. So that my decision to absent myself from their table was as much a rejection of them as it was a gasping after fresh air, free from pompous, posturing, rude cigarette smokers, in the back beneath an open window.
The whole scene was like a parody. Poets in berets and thigh boots, smoking cloves from long white holders. A woman on stage droning about babies sucking blood from the fingers of corpses, while downstairs my erstwhile true love sat wobbling behind a mountain of empties, shooting daggers as I climbed the stairs. It was hurtful, I was addicted and unwell, I felt crushed beneath the absent weight of fallen empty sky. I had no friends there, just one who'd promptly disappeared, who I'd come with to show my solidarity, so that when I left she must have felt rejected, as her circle of pompous, posturing, rude cigarette smokers surely did.
I should not have come, but I had no idea the scene was what it was. Or that she'd leave me alone there as peremptorily as she did. Or that she'd never speak to me again.
I'm defending her, but it's a weak defense. The reality is I was unwell, and addicted, and my ex was downstairs, and I was in every bit as much pain as she. While her decision to exit my life over this event was as much about inflicting her own pain on some available bystander — that'll be me — as anything to do with the event itself.