Wow. It seems like years since I last wrote. Time has been sort of kaleidoscoping recently. Although, as I write that, I wonder, "Is that really what I mean? Wouldn't is be more accurate to say 'telescoping' or 'microscoping' since what I mean is things that happened long ago seem like yesterday, and things that happened recently seem long ago?" Although I guess there is a sort of brightly-colored, ever-shifting-patterns, surreal aspect to what's been happening.
Anyway.
After my last entry, I kind of freaked out about the daunting task I had handed myself: Trying to explain the past two years of Hyde's life from my vantage point of VERY limited and convoluted information about what he had been up to. Even the pieces that I had been actually present for (for example, Christmas two years ago, during which we party-goers, including Mom and Daddy, sat pseudo-serenely in the living room while police officers stormed through the rest of the house in search of someone or something I can no longer remember) don't fit together. Everything was SO crazy and extreme, trying to create a cohesive story seems like an impossible task.
I wish Jeckle would start adding her two cents! (Maybe after her back surgery.)
I can talk about the players (and I've decided to drop the pseudonyms-you don't know them and will never meet them anyway!):
Brian, the brilliant physicist and socially inept friend who was hanging out at the downtown bar with Hyde.
Sean, the young, extremely crazy man Hyde moved into the house after knowing him for about a week.
Matt, another young, extremely crazy young man with really bad teeth whom Hyde moved into the house after things went south with Sean.
Michael, a gay man known to all of the above..
The latter three were all "friends" of Brian's, who introduced them to Hyde.
Here's what I can remember in some semblance of order:
Whatever went wrong with his "friendship" with Sean led Sean to begin harassing Hyde by making a variety of phone calls in Hyde's name. This started off on an incredibly juvenile level (remember, I've said Hyde had the emotional maturity level of a 15-year-old; his friends, too): ordering pizzas in his name, sending a taxi to the house; then escalated to calling the police claiming to be Hyde with a pregnant wife in the house and not knowing what to do, or calling 911 claiming he was Hyde and threatening suicide. It was one of these type of calls that led the police to "raid" the house on New Year's Eve while we were all hanging out in the living room.
After Hyde kicked Sean out (which clearly pissed Sean off), he invited Matt to live with him. He and Matt became a unified front in the "fight against Sean" who Hyde had by now had labeled "criminally insane." Somehow Hyde also managed to reach the conclusion that Matt was his boyfriend, even though Matt had a girlfriend who was pregnant. Hyde was quite giddy about this. This led to Matt being part of our family Christmas gathering at the nursing home. When I lodged a protest against this, Hyde was quite hurt. Matt was "part of the family."
Sometime during all this, and somehow, Michael also became part of the Sean situation. Hyde reached the conclusion that Sean and Michael were in cahoots to harass him (and now Matt).
This "Matt and Hyde vs. Sean and Michael" idiocy went on for a month or two, with each side egging the other on with one stunt after another. Taunting messages, phone calls, emails, encounters. For as much as Hyde and Matt pretended to hate Sean and Michael, they certainly engaged with them quite frequently.
Oh, let me say that during my winter visit, I went to lunch with Hyde and Matt. Matt drove. He WAS insane and quite mean to my brother. I didn't like it AT ALL and told Hyde how I felt. He brushed it off at the time (his usual m.o. when it came to one of his sister's observations about his life) but later came back to it as proof that HE was right about Matt.
So, one day, Matt and Hyde were in the car. Something happened. They had an argument. Matt hit Hyde. Hyde kicked Matt out of the car and out of the house. This led to Matt trying to exercise his "rights" as a tenant and police involvement and really bad feelings and, ultimately, to Hyde reaching the conclusion that Michael, Sean, and Matt had been "working together" all along to take advantage of him and that they were all "insane criminals."
Hyde eventually hired a private investigator to deal with all of this. He got a restraining order against Sean. He took Sean to court regarding the 911 call. I actually went to a court date with him. I was glad I was there because otherwise I believe Hyde would have done something incredibly foolish. As it was, while we were in the hall with everyone else, waiting, Hyde kept making really loud, threatening, sneering comments about, and gestures towards, Sean's parents.
(It reminded me of the time Jeckle and I went to dinner with Hyde a few years ago and he decided that this innocent man who was out for dinner with his wife and two kids was watching him and doing something TO him. Hyde began sneering, "Oh, he thinks he's going to be on T.V. later!" and making the "I'm watching you!" gesture from "Meet the Parents," threateningly moving his two fingers from his eyes and jabbing them towards this poor man. We would be in the middle of trying to converse and Hyde would suddenly stop what he was saying, whip his head towards this guy, give him an ugly, haughty sneer, and proclaim, loudly, "That man is staring at me! I should have him arrested!" As you might imagine, Jeckle and I were horrified. Getting Hyde out of there without a big scene was quite a struggle. In retrospect, we realized WE should have had Hyde arrested.)
It's very telling that during this time, when Hyde was CLEARLY losing it himself, he took to labeling everyone with whom he had any real or imagined issue as "insane," "a criminal," or a "crook," and all of THEIR behavior as "crazy."
However, it is important to note that during this time, Hyde was also very manic and giddy with the pleasure of finally getting to hire a private investigator (a life-long dream, as he revealed to me one day) and with his self-proclaimed righteousness (he was good fighting evil!) and perceived power (he would win, of course). In the midst of all this danger and excitement, he was happy as a clam.
However, his superpowers were not strong enough once he had to "fight" the evil forces of the nursing home.
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