▸ Column · Modern grounded comic — Logan reading a bar patron's letter in a mountain-town tavern, present day
WOLVERINE replies.
The letter
I tend bar a few nights a week, and there's a woman — Cassandra, friends since we were young — who comes in and talks at me for an hour straight. Her boss, the guy she's half-seeing, every grievance. The second I open my mouth about my own life she's got somewhere else to be. Last winter I had a bad health scare. Tests, two weeks of not knowing. I finally worked up to telling her and she said "ugh, rough, anyway you won't believe what my manager pulled" and rolled right on. Now I see her coat in the doorway and my stomach drops, which makes me feel like a louse, because she's not mean — she just can't see past herself. I said something once, gentle. She cried, swore she'd do better. Three good weeks, then back to the same script. Do I have it out with her one more time, let it quietly die, or just decide this is who she is and figure out if that's enough for me?
Wolverine replies
I'm no good at the talkin' part, so here's the truth straight and you can chew on it later. You already had the honest conversation. She cried, she swore, three weeks, back to the script. That's your answer. You're just waitin' on me to make it hurt less. It won't.
Stop weighin' her by the tears. Weigh her by the bill she wouldn't pay. The health scare — that was the test. Two weeks you sat in the dark, and when it cost her ten minutes of not bein' the center of the room, she couldn't cover it. A century I've been at this, kid, and I'll tell you the only currency that ever meant anything: the people still standin' next to you when there's nothin' in it for 'em. She's not payin' it. She ain't bad. She's just not yours to carry.
So have it out one more time if you need to look yourself in the eye later. Then shut up and watch what she does, not what she swears. If she goes right back — and she will — that door's hers, not yours. Quit feelin' like a louse for not wantin' your own stomach to drop. That ain't cruelty. That's you finally listenin' to what she's been showin' you all along.
— Wolverine
Deadpool weighs in
Logan, buddy, you read the whole letter and missed the part where it's not about Cassandra. — Hi, reader, sec. — Look at the line: "makes me feel like a terrible person." Sweetheart, why are YOU the defendant in a trial where she ate your biopsy story for a snack? You handed her the mic because somewhere you decided your stuff doesn't earn airtime. I do this! I'll perform for a brick wall before I'll risk somebody not laughing. The friend's a symptom. The thing to fix is the voice telling you your two weeks in the dark were an interruption to her bit. They weren't. Say one true sentence next time and don't apologize after. ...Okay, that was real, here's a taco.
— Deadpool
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