Dear Ian,
For all I know, you might actually be dead. This wouldn’t be too surprising, really.
The last time we spoke, you’d shown up on the steps of my former workplace to apologize.
What were you apologizing for, exactly? You weren’t overly specific, though I could probably take a guess from having dated you. A brief and tumultuous affair with a crazy man trying to play sane, popping a cocktail of pills for whatever was ailing your brain space. Those pills made your man bits go limp.
If I recall correctly, you had borderline personality disorder and had been battling a number of addictions, all of which you were quite vague about. So there you were, at my work telling me you’re sorry. Making amends (or attempting to) was part of the drug treatment program you’d recently entered, you explained to me.
Really though, only one apology was necessary - and that is for Leonard Cohen.
Everything else, from your awful poetry to your wildly unpredictable nature that became clock-work predictable, was forgivable. After all, what could a girl expect from a guy who kept a Narcotics Anonymous book at his bedside?
But Leonard Cohen, that’s another story. That’s where I draw the line.
Even now, the haunting baritone voice of Leonard Cohen transports me back to your candle-lit bedroom and your dark, steely eyes staring coldly straight ahead. There was nothing behind those eyes. Even as Suzanne played out from your stereo time and time again, nothing in you moved, nothing in you lived.
No one has ever destroyed a great artist quite like you did. It was reckless, this association, and it may just be unforgivable. After all, there is no magic pill, cure or apology big enough to change it, now is there?
