Until Death Do Us Part

I'm Not A Monster

Throughout High School, I had one steady girlfriend. Emily Mathias. God, she was out of my league, like way out. Light years. Emily was pretty, funny, with a quick whit. In all ways, she was better than me, straight A student, captain of the volleyball team. But still, she chose me. And we had fun, and I did love her. By God, I wish I would've ended up with Emily rather than how I did. How might my life have been different? I probably wouldn't be writing this God-Forsaken letter that's for sure. We broke up a week after graduation, she was going to UCLA and I well, I was going to Rutgers in New Jersey. It wasn't ideal, but I'd give it a whirl. My major was Journalism. Since that day in Mrs. Spinter's Writing for Publications class, I knew that was what I wanted to do. I had started writing a biography of the legendary baseball star Jackie Robinson when I was sixteen and finished it just before the end of my freshman year. I had my professor read it. She recommended that I go to an agent and I followed her advice and did. The book went crazy. Before I graduated from college I had over ten million copies sold worldwide. It was optioned for a movie, which made me even more money. By the end of college, I was rolling in dough. I was hired as a sports journalist for the New York Times n September of 2002 and I made 150,000 dollars a year, right out of college. I was rich, successful, and single. I slept around the city a lot, another night a different person. I drank, did drugs. It was an exciting, but overall lonely existent. I really had no friends. There were people who pretended to be my friend, people who wanted something from me mostly. Money, clothes, connections. But no one who genuinely cared.
I met my first friend, who I thank god I met, in January 2003. Three months before my life changed forever. His name, as you've probably read in the papers, is Trevor Pocourney. We met at a bar, I had just been shot down and he offered to buy me a beer. We laughed, it was genuine. He had no fucking idea who I was and I wanted it to stay that way. We were fast friends, and it didn't take long. Trevor and I had a lot in common. He loved literature, especially writing and was an aspiring playwright who had had little success. He had been born in Kentucky, went to Purdue and majored in Creative Writing.

"Worst fucking mistake of my entire goddamn life!" He'd told me later "It's as if I didn't even fork over the fucking 120 grand just to be a fucking waiter!" He'd said through a beer. God, I missed those days. During the winter of '03, we did pretty much everything together. Trevor was gay, but not the flamboyant stereotypical one. The only stereotypical thing about Trevor was the playwright thing. He loved sports and was the captain of both the football and soccer teams while he was at High School in Kentucky. He talked low and fast, accentless despite his southern heritage. Trevor could beat anyone up he wanted, and would. In those first three months of friendship, I'd seen him break up three fights with guys three times his size. I later learned that when we first met he was trying to score. Soon, I became his wingman and he mine. It was a perfect balance.

In March 2003, a mere two weeks before my life changed forever, he came at my doorstep.He'd been evicted, couldn't pay the rent. So he moved into my spare bedroom.

Then, then I met her. Rose. Now I wish I never had. Wish I'd never laid eyes on her. Wish that this could all go away. Then maybe, just maybe she'd be back.

2

Rosaline Clarice Walton. To this day her name still brings me chills. Back in the day, she was my everything. My world. The daughter of a world-renowned surgeon and his physical therapist wife, she grew up Christian-Reform in a rich suburb of New York City. No siblings, just Rose, and her parents. She wanted nothing, went to the best schools, was trained in modern dance and could sing a full octave. Rose was smart, cunning, and could outsmart some of the most clever men. Everything she did, she did with a grade unknown to mankind, flawlessly, seemingly effortlessly. She seemed a vessel of what perfection in a human should be. No man was ever good enough for her, she passed through them like they were water. Known were good enough for her.