Dear Lydia:
When you read this letter, I will be gone. My plan is to dispose of my life as efficiently and neatly as possible. The last thing I want is to burden you with my lifeless body the way it burdened you while vital.
I need you to know, though, that it is a matter of brute physiology, this proclivity of mine towards young men. I am writing you this letter because there are some things about me that I want you to understand. Perhaps, in understanding, you will find forgiveness. Not for my sake, but for your own. I see the effect of the anger that you carry toward me on your face. It ages you far more than time. Your small, wiry body takes energy from it, I know. It’s a slow-burning fire that propels you forward through life. Always doing, never being. If you find forgiveness, you can perhaps just be.
My father, as you know, was a military officer. He served in both the First and Second Balkan Wars. His time in the military was challenging. War hardened him. It made him worse than unhappy. It made him mean. He was rarely home, but when he did come home, he would inevitably find some aspect of my two sisters and me that fell short of his expectations. Punishment would be swift and firm. He made us strip down naked and bend over the side of his bed, whereupon he would whip our backsides with a leather belt. My sisters would scream and cry while I would remain silent and resolute. This would make him beat me far longer and harder than my sisters.
Once, after a beating, my oldest sister told me that I should scream and cry also when he beat me. That way, he would show me mercy the way he did them. She assumed that I did not cry because I was too proud. She was mistaken. I did not cry because I enjoyed it. What I kept hidden from all three of them was my arousal. When he was done, I fell to the floor and waited for him to leave the room before I stood up and got dressed. He and my sisters thought I fell to the floor face-first because I was in so much pain, I couldn’t stand. While that might have been true, the real reason I did this was to hide my erection.
My arousal wasn’t based on what you might be thinking. I wasn’t aroused by my father or his violence. What aroused me was my older sisters and their naked bodies. The way they thrashed and heaved beside me, bent over the bed. My very first sexual attraction being toward my own sisters and tied to violence unsurprisingly resulted in shame and dysfunction. Going through puberty, I dreamt of being my father and beating a young boy with a belt. Only in the dreams, I would also be naked, and sex would follow the beatings.
Lydia, I know this must be disturbing for you to read. And maybe I will never even give you this letter. It is selfish, after all, to unburden myself of these shameful secrets only to burden you with them after I am dead.
When I met you, I was attracted to your mind more than anything. I had never met a woman so brilliant. You were smarter than me and most men I’d known. What I still don’t understand is what attracted you to me. I know that after our courtship, it was your parents who pressured you into a marriage with me. But something drew you to me in the first place. What was it? It couldn’t have been my wealth; you had money of your own and the means to support yourself. It couldn’t have been my looks; you were beautiful and could have had a beautiful man. Perhaps it was my mind. The conversations we had when we met were works of art. We explored every topic in depth and introduced new topics seamlessly. They stretched hours that felt like mere minutes. In those conversations—whole worlds—I fell in love with you. But after we married, we stopped talking.
I did not stop loving you. Not even after I started having affairs.
You never seemed to enjoy sleeping with me. And when you stopped sleeping with me, after several rejected advances, you invited me to take my appetites elsewhere. I don’t state this to place blame; my sexual deviations were never your fault. But I do want to remind you of that invitation you made me.
I know that you likewise found an outlet for your own appetites, though I suspect it amounted to more than that. I suspect you fell in love with another man. Every time I came home, I half expected you to be gone, having run away with him. But you stayed. Even though you were never in love with me the way I was with you, and even though you were likely in love with another man, you chose to stay with me. I don’t know whether to be grateful or resentful of that. I think I feel both at the same time.
Lydia, this isn’t the life I wanted for either of us. I never wanted to be anybody’s prison. Just as I’m sure you never wanted to be trapped. Nor did I want to be a man who exploits his position of power for sexual satisfaction from younger men. Nor did I want to be a father whom you judge as unsafe for his children, for his son. And because you will not leave me to make a life for yourself that will permit your happiness, I will remove myself from the world and free you. And free our children. I know you think I have taken my freedom and withheld yours. And perhaps that’s true, at least physiologically: my body has had what it wants.
But real freedom, I think, is a state of mind. Thus, I have always been trapped.
Love forever,
Your T.