I'm the biggest asshole...

 I'm the biggest asshole...

  “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
― Albert Camus

     Greg liked to play the role of the curmudgeon and in the last decade or so of his life he did so with an asterisk behind the description.  He had had enough of the idiocy of his fellow Americans and cursed loudly at his television during political programs. These howls of contempt increased in direct proportion to the coming of the biggest fool who ever stood on the  public stage.  Yet, Greg used to actually invite fury by watching Sean Hannity who he assailed with every dirty word in his full vocabulary. When you came right down to it though Greg was not a guy who could be cruel to individuals face to face. When his emotions boiled over and he had to speak out forcefully he often called me to describe how "badly" he had behaved. This might be flipping off someone on the street, shouting out his car window at fellow drivers, abrupt hang ups on unsolicited phone callers and the pretty rare public arguments that most men have during their travels in a world where anger and violence are commonplace. Once, in a large hardware store a man challenged Greg insisting he had butted in line and our hero took umbrage. Greg was not a man who expressed his emotions a lot, except maybe with Lissy or the kids but when he expressed his frustration in public he felt guilty. Because of being brainwashed as boys into believing showing emotions was something for that "weaker sex" we were supposed to break stuff or even fistfight before we showed our feelings. So the point of this story is that a function of our friendship was that the other guy would bring the guilty hothead out of his funk for being a human being with rage inside. He would say to me "I guess I'm the biggest asshole in the world" or " I am the biggest prick you know."  My answer was always "not as long as I'm alive" and he would laugh and we would have a reset. He knew and I knew that no matter what bullcrap we pulled the other guy would still support them them and blame the adversary. Not to be sentimental but the only time I straight up told him that I loved him was when he advised me about the cancer diagnosis in the last bitter year. He did not need to hear the words because we had history behind us.