sympathy

about three weeks after the health freak abruptly left us with an empty room and an unpaid $130 gas bill, a new guy moved in. our initial interactions were as interesting as they were varied. i'd walk past him toward the refrigerator while he sat on the couch blasting slayer on his cd player, or i'd walk past him toward the refrigerator while he sat on the couch blasting megadeth on his cd player. i admit to a certain curiosity regarding his ability to reconcile the reality of rent and expenses with his seemingly total inertia, but this curiosity was short-lived.

one day as i walked past him toward the kitchen, i was surprised to find him sitting on the couch, cd player silent in his lap. in what i later recognized as a significant judgmental lapse, i initiated conversation by asking him if his batteries had run out. he scrutinized me for about ten seconds and after arriving at a seemingly momentous decision, said, "hi. i'm gosling." in the period that followed, he related to me his life story. you will be spared the details, but the relevant bits are these: at the age of 34, ours is his first apartment, and due to various medical problems he receives government assistance. he was telling me all this because he wanted me to write a letter of support to his welfare agents.

i felt genuinely bad for gosling, so i agreed to write the letter and spent the next twenty minutes looking up first aid procedures for tonic-clonic seizures. in the coming days and weeks i was to realize that my sympathy was misplaced.