Vene, stop confusing someone seeking out your attention with someone giving your theirs.

You’re very good at making people feel seen. Everybody wants that. The ones who want it most are the ones you need to watch out for.

Just remember that.

Samy was right. This attention is a drug. This guy hits me up when he’s jonesing.

The Israeli is an artifact of 2018 me. Current me doesn’t have a role for him to play in my life. But 2018 me had very little to ground her. She was in upside down backwards land trying anything and everything to see what worked.

I turned him into folklore. It wasn’t that hard to do. He lived in a world I didn’t have any familiarity with. My imagination filled in the details. I have a really great imagination. It’s one of the things he loved.

Thank god he came along. He let me see myself in a new way. He let me be bold and take big chances. All of that led to me being here and now. And actually brave and actually bold.

And he does know who I am, to an extent. But it doesn’t mean that familiarity, intimacy and gratitude mean I owe him anything going forward. That me doesn’t exist any more and the me that I am now doesn’t want what he has to offer.

I have all the big, juicy loves in my life now. They make my heart ache at how good and vulnerable and messy and complicated they are. It’s tangible. I don’t disappear to people when I’m not there.

The other night I left Emily in Bushwick after going to a play about the history of American trains and dinner in the west Village. I took a car to King Tai. I walked in that door to a queen’s welcome. My entrance was heralded. The night went swimmingly. I brought the joy to the party.

I’ve written him a hundred obituaries. But the truth is he will succeed or fail. And it will be completely at his own hands. I’m not interested in being a part of his story going forward. I do wish him well. He’s not a scoundrel with a twisty mustache. He’s a messed up kid who never grew up. He just grew older.

In my imagination, I run into him in ten years. He has a couple of kids. They’ve changed him. He’s happy. Settled. His wife is utterly unremarkable in the best way. She dotes on him but she doesn’t let him get away with anything. And he’s eternally grateful to her.