Is everyone ready for the premiere of Faye, the Faye Dunaway documentary, on HBO tomorrow? It will also be available on the Max streaming service, which is how I’ll see it if our (temporary) subscription’s still valid. I’m quite excited about it, and I was reminded of Dunaway earlier after an awkward run-in with Tom made me want to bellow “Tina, bring me the axe!”
She had proposed a gathering for a special occasion and asked about our availability. I questioned if it would be family-only and didn’t expect that to be controversial since we steered clear of her new girlfriend (who she insists isn’t a girlfriend) in the past, long before they embarked on their sorry affair. Tom was always aware of the reason: Crankenstein avoids socializing with people who starve or purge.
Tom replied, “You’re such a dumbass for that,” and as I started to jokingly reply “Someone’s a dumbass,” several more messages appeared.
“I’m not bringing anyone. But thanks for being a stupid dick for no reason,” she said, followed by “I’m glad you have such strong feelings about my life. Does [Crankenstein] know about the fucked up letter you wrote me? Does she co-sign? Fuck off.”
That isn’t Tom’s natural tone, but it had Friend’s influence all over it, something several of us have noticed with most of what Tom says lately, particularly as it concerns her favorite new topics: the endless ‘processing’ of emotions and the frequent humorless, combative assertion of her personal boundaries, which we’re given to understand are more important than anyone else’s.*
My letter to Tom was not ‘fucked up,’ and I presented my thoughts on her self-deception and mistreatment of her ex carefully, because she’d requested brutally honest feedback. Dragging my wife into it, as if she’s my mother and Tom thought she could get me in trouble with her, was an odd choice as well, particularly given the setting: it was a text that Crankenstein, Youngest Sister and our mom could all see — the sort of grand, dramatic gesture that Friend would find edgy and the rest of us petulant and juvenile.
I replied honestly: “[Crankenstein] thought I was relatively restrained. You’re going to have to live with people having opinions, just as we’ve lived with yours lo these many years.”
That’s when Tom declared she had “nothing more to say to me,” though she continued talking about what a piece of crap I am and how I should “take a hard look in the mirror” at my life and choices before passing judgment on her. She offered no explanation of what I’ve done, personally or professionally, that’s so heinous. My best guess, which could be wrong, is that Twitter has taught her any relationship with an age gap of more than five months is inherently abusive, and it was a jibe at my previous relationship.
“Grow up, Tom,” I told her. “You’re too blind to see you’re hopping from one codependent situation to another and I’m not going to rah-rah cheerlead it. Additionally, I have a wife with an eating disorder history who doesn’t like being around people who could trigger it. Not everything is about you.”
She called that “completely tone-deaf” and reiterated that she has no interest in hearing anything I have to say. I hit the thumbs-up in response, genuinely pleased at the thought of a reprieve from her bullshit. The immaturity of her fling, and her fear of our parents’ judgment — the childishness of expecting nothing but constant affirmation, and of thinking she could get me in trouble with my wife for having opinions she (meaning Tom) didn’t personally authorize — is too much.
When Crankenstein got home she asked, of that last point, “What the hell was that about? Am I the boss of you?” It’s about this: Tom’s a thin-skinned bully and a manipulative control freak. Throughout this stupid saga she’s juggled more lies than she can keep track of, and every time she’s run up against something she can’t control she’s acted like a vengeful little shit, whether isolating her ex from friends and family or, in this case, bizarrely challenging my spouse to denounce me and defend Tom’s nonexistent honor.
It’s the second time in recent weeks she’s tried to throw me under the bus. She doesn’t know I’m aware of the first, which occurred when she tried to blame her distraction at work on hurt feelings over the email I sent her. (In reality, she was arguing nonstop with her ex via text.) With that lie she hoped to make herself more sympathetic, showing our parents a heavily edited letter that removed all references to her affair, which constituted the bulk of the missive. She did it so they’d see two sentences that referenced their mismanagement of the family business; she wanted them to be hurt and to get mad at me.
Youngest Sister learned of that stunt before I did and intervened by showing our mother the unedited letter, which Tom had sent to her.** After she read it, Youngest Sister challenged her to disagree with it. Our mom replied that she couldn’t. Writing all of this out really drives home how completely idiotic it is, something anyone still reading this has probably shouted for the past three minutes. I apologize for wasting your time and please feel free to mock me as I mock Tom, and to slap me with a glove and say “Good day, sir. I said good day!”, or whatever it is you think she’ll do next.
* My favorite ‘processing’ so far was the ‘processing’ she and Erica were going to do together after Tom came home from cheating. That went about as well as anyone but Tom could’ve guessed.
** By then our mom knew the real circumstances of the breakup, but didn’t let on to Tom. I had nothing to do with her finding out; unlike Tom, I’m not a rat.