Everyone Needs a Real Friend, Chuck
Recently I was introduced to the idea of “real friends” versus “deal friends,” and I couldn’t but help think of you, Chuck, and feel a certain sadness.
Right around the time cannabis came to town, you joined the Select Board. And you know what I think happened?
I think former hedge-fund manager/millionaire Jason Sidman looked at you and thought, “There’s someone I can use.”
I’m sorry to say that, especially if you hold the belief that you and Jason are “real friends” but Jason is not/was never/will never be your friend, Chuck. The best you can hope for with that guy is to keep him satisfied by your strident fealty so that he doesn’t turn on you—because you know (and I know) what you’ve done over the years to serve him.
As it pertains to the other “King,” even though you’re both Littletonians, I’m not sure your friendship with David Giannetta—which I didn’t learn of until four months ago—is anything more than a “deal” friendship either.
Can straight, white guys with power, influence, and money (SWGs w/PIM) even have “real” friendships, “real” marriages, “real” relationships of any kind?
These “deal” friendships you have with Jason and David (I think) are the late-stage-capitalism equivalent of what pretty much everyone thought of this odd couple three decades ago:
Everyone thought she was after his money, i.e., that she looked at him and said, “There’s someone I can use.” When this petroleum billionaire died fourteen months later (at 90) and despite her straight-faced claim of “real” love (not “deal” love), she got none of his M. I suspect this outcome stemmed from the fact that no reasonable person could comfortably swallow the notion that those two were ever shared “real” love. And so, in the end and after years of courtroom battling, she got nothing but heartbreak and ridicule, which many thought was exactly what she deserved.
Heartbreak and ridicule are not what I want for anyone if a viable alternative exists— if there’s a way to admit wrongdoing and cobble together a way out.
The viable alternative I see for you is this:
Tell the truth, Chuck.
Tell me how Jason first approached you and how he offered to be “friends.”
Tell me how you paused that very first time Jason asked you to do something you knew was not in Littleton’s interests but went ahead and did it anyhow.
Tell me about hard it was (and still is) to turn away from the money—from the guarantee that your life (and by extension, the lives of your five children) will be lived with ease on the promise of financial freedom so long as you keep doing as you are told.
Tell me your very human story of how your desire for wealth eclipsed your ethics, thereby allowing Jason and David to exploit your ego and feed your greed for their own far greater financial benefit.
If you can tell me those brave things, Chuck, I will tell you this:
I would be your friend.
For real,
Jkb