▸ Column · Modern-day New York City — contemporary surface and underground, TMNT present-day era
MICHELANGELO replies.
Replied to by Michelangelo, with a rebuttal from Han Solo.
The letter
Writing this from a pretty rough spot. My friend — let's call her Dana — has been with her boyfriend Eli for almost two years, and last weekend I ran into him at a rooftop party in the Village. Not with Dana. With somebody who was definitely not Dana, doing something that left absolutely no room for interpretation. He saw me. Full eye contact. Then about an hour later: a text from him asking me to "not make a big thing of this."
Dana and I are still close, but the closeness has slipped — we're more like once-a-month people now, not every-week people. But she's been saving up for a big trip abroad with this guy, talking about it for almost a year. I keep seeing her post about it and feeling sick.
If I tell her, I'm scared he'll spin it and I end up looking like I have some kind of grudge. If I don't, I have to look this guy in the eye at every birthday dinner for the next however-many years. I don't know what to do with this.
Michelangelo replies
Okay okay — the word you used twice is "terrified." Not confused. Terrified. And that's the tell, because confused people ask what's right. Terrified people already know what's right and write in hoping someone will say it costs too much.
I'm the youngest in my whole family. The goofy one. Nobody thinks I'm paying attention — and what that taught me is that people let their guard all the way down around the one they underestimate. So I see everything. Which of my brothers is about to lose it before he does. When someone's "fine" is a whole building about to fall.
You're not confused. You're scared Eli's spin is going to work, and you're scared of a friendship that's already gotten thin. Real costs. I'm not going to wave them off.
But you already picture her booking those flights. You already feel what it costs to sit across from him at every birthday dinner knowing what you know. You didn't write in because you don't know what to do. You wrote in because you needed someone to be in it with you for a second before you do it.
So I'm in it. And then — yeah. Call her. Not with a speech, not with evidence. Just: "I saw something and you'd want to know." Then be there for whatever comes after.
Here's the thing nobody says about choosing hard over easy: it's not heavy. Doing it on purpose, for someone you care about, when it costs you something — that's the lightest you'll feel all year.
Eli texted you to "be cool." He looked at you and thought: manageable. You are not manageable.
— Michelangelo
Han Solo weighs in
Look, kid — and with respect to the turtle — the question isn't whether you tell her. Eli already answered that for you when he texted. He made eye contact across that rooftop, let you see the whole thing, then decided you were someone he could handle with one message. "Be cool" — that's not a scared man. That's a man who's handled situations before and thinks you're handleable.
The friendship being thin — that's a separate conversation. But the second that text landed, you weren't a bystander anymore. He put you in the story. The only question left is whether you let him write your part.
Don't let him write your part.
— Han Solo