Leery of government spying, Conspiracy didn't trust the Internet. He didn't have an email address and didn't spend a lot of time online. But every so often, when he wanted to get in touch with me, he'd ask someone to email me on his behalf. One day, I got an email from a complete stranger saying that "Brother Conspiracy" wanted to get in touch and needed my mailing address.
Conspiracy's letter arrived on a particularly stressful day. I was deeply depressed. About the state of my completely stalled acting career. About my love life. About my finances. And I was operating on no sleep. I had just put in a seven-day workweek on a freelance writing project, even pulling an all-nighter to meet an impossible deadline.
I carried the letter into my home office and opened it standing up. I expected the usual gossip about various New Haveners who were on Conspiracy's bad side that day. I expected a sentence or two on the whereabouts and well-being of Conspiracy's children. I expected an update on his health and happiness, or lack thereof.
What I didn't expect was an opening sentence about "the hurt you have caused me and continue to cause me." He accused me of being a spying whore sent by the federal government. He asked – in all seriousness, not jest – if that was me he had recently seen in a porno movie. And he demanded that I keep my promise to visit him if I ever wanted to get my nude pictures back.
As I stood, holding a letter that dripped with corrosive abuse, I felt a surge of electricity shoot up through my spine, as if someone were holding a cattle prod to my tailbone.
Wait ... what ... what?!?
The hurt I caused him and continued to cause him? It was 12 years since our breakup. What magic voodoo hurt was I inflicting upon him from more than 2,000 miles away? Especially after the work I had done to communicate with him openly and honestly about our relationship? I had even apologized for attempting to use him financially and for leaving the way I did, telling him all about my secret relationship with Dollar the psychic.
Spying whore? He had pursued me.
Porn star? I had put the casting couch behind me eight years ago. And if he was watching porn, who was he to judge?
And last but not least, blackmail? Was he really that manipulative? Did he really think he could threaten me with the pictures he had promised to safeguard?
The electricity surging through my spine was the jarring shock of realization. It was the realization that Conspiracy – this man who had always claimed to be my friend – hated me.
I was shaken to my core.
But I took the high road.
I immediately shredded his letter and threw the scraps away.
The next day, I sat down and wrote Conspiracy a short, polite letter. I didn't address any of his accusations. I apologized for not keeping my promise to visit him – and I told him that I would not be doing so. I told him that we wouldn't be in touch anymore. And if he wanted to return my photos, he could do so in the self-addressed, stamped, delivery-tracked envelope that I had thoughtfully enclosed along with my note.
That was five years ago. He never returned my pictures, and we haven't talked since.
But when he sees former Yale classmates of mine, he still asks them about me.
