Lisa Hoffman and Charles Atkins

Published September 8, 2005

"Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Matthew 5:39

"Revenge is a dish that tastes better cold."

Proverb

Today, I’m stewing in my own juices. Last week, in this very column, Lisa accused me of being a devious sociopath attempting to Gaslight her. For what motive I couldn’t imagine, still she was plotting to do me in with a can of rug cleaner.

Okay, so I enjoy murdering people in the fiction I write, what’s the harm? As long as it stays on the printed page I don’t see a problem. But this week, I’ve got strangers approaching me in the grocery store and Chinese restaurant asking me if I’m trying to drive Lisa insane. One woman wondered if I’d want to continue the column with her after I’d gotten Lisa out of the way. I was appropriately offended, but did ask to see her résumé just in case.

All of which brings us to an interesting topic, revenge. It’s a natural urge to want retaliation against those who’ve done us wrong… like slandering us in the press. But I guess the big question is does it work? If you hurt me, and then I hurt you, is it over? Are we even? Or are we just getting started?

To ponder this, I give Lisa a call . . . at 7 a.m.

"Hello?" she answers sounding not her perky best.

"Were you sleeping?" I ask, using my best surprised voice.

"Of course, it’s 7 a.m," she says grumpily.

"I thought you got up early."

"You’re crazy," she replies, "and this just proves what a mean person you are. You know perfectly well I never go to sleep until the wee hours of the morning."

I ignore the insensitivity of her remarks, and forge ahead. "I’ve got our topic."

"What is it?" she grumbles.

"Revenge. . . so be ready. I’ll be there around eleven."

"Well…" she says before I hang up, "how would you like it if I called you when I know you’re asleep?"

As she already does this . . . repeatedly, I choose to say nothing, and get on with the rest of my morning’s write.

Come eleven we’re ready to go; she’s all in black with a few hearts scattered here and there. Perhaps appropriate for the topic . . . a black heart. "Did you think about the subject?" I ask.

"Revenge is mine sayeth the Lord," she begins. "So it can’t be anything bad."

"What do you mean?"

"If he says revenge is mine . . . or does that only apply to him and not to humans?"

"I think it’s the latter. As I was driving here I realized that revenge has a lot to do with aggression and violence, things our species has in abundance. We’re quite good at killing one another."

"One should turn the other cheek," she remarks, "but then I have a great sense of justice. If somebody does something which I don’t approve of, or which hurts me I need to get it out of my system. They need to know what they’ve done and that it’s not okay."

"That’s a big point" I say. "Turning the cheek and meeting aggression with more positive responses such as love, compassion and forgiveness. Does ‘love your enemy’ work?"

"I would feel like a phony," she says. "It sounds well and holier than thou when people say ‘forget about it’ or ‘they didn’t mean it’. Why do I have to love somebody that does bad things? I’m not a Saint. There’s never been a Saint Lisa and I’m not campaigning for beatification."

"On the flip side," I comment "There’s truth that violence leads to violence. Especially with revenge, just look at the Middle East and inner-city gang warfare where every action is met with a greater response. You hurt me, I’ll hurt you worse. Or the great American catch phrase, ‘Don’t get mad, get even’."

"I once did a story about a man who had a one engine plane in New York," Lisa comments. "And he’d go up with peoples’ ashes and scatter them. He told me that once a scorned mistress of a married man hired him to go up over the couple’s estate and scatter his love letters over the grounds. She got her revenge."

"Do you know how the story turned out?"

"I don’t, but I imagine it led to either the end of the marriage or the affair." And then she chuckles.

"What are you thinking about?" I ask.

"Oh, nothing," she says, unable to hide a potentially juicy tale.

"Out with it."

"Well," she gazes out the window, "I once had a boyfriend . . .Karl; he was dreamy. We’d just begun going out; I was quite taken with him, but could only see him once a week as he was always racing to meetings. This was back when I was a member of the Foreign Press Association and could get any ticket in town. Now Karl loved the German baritone Hermann Prey and wanted tickets for his sold-out Carnegie Hall performance, he said that his mother was coming to town, and if possible could he please get three as it was her 80^th birthday. All of this sounded promising, as though Karl was serious about our relationship and wanted me to meet his mother. How exciting! Days later I surprised him with the tickets and he surprised me by not inviting me. My immediate thought, who’s the third one for? I smelled a rat, and I intended to get to the bottom of it.

"Come the night of the concert I’d arranged a fourth ticket adjacent to the three I’d given him. I got dressed to the nines, went to the hairdresser, got a manicure and showed up just as the lights were being lowered. As the orchestra began its warm up, I made my entrance. Sure enough there was Karl, his mother, and another woman. I climbed over the three of them—they all had to stand to let me pass--noting the other woman’s wedding ring. I’d been had. One look at Karl’s panic-stricken face confirmed my suspicion. I could have killed him. All through the concert he tried to elbow me and I sat there looking perfectly straight ahead listening to Herman Prey singing ‘Yours is my Heart Alone’--for Karl, apparently not.

"He didn’t say a word, but I couldn’t help but notice the sweat on his forehead. To add insult to injury when I snuck a second glance at his wife, I was shocked to see her wearing earrings identical to the ones he’d just given me. The man was buying in bulk."

"The following day he tried to call and make excuses. I won’t bore you with the oft-told tale of the married man who says he’s single. Suffice it to say, that was the end of Karl."

"He got off easy," I comment, "just a bit of squirming through a concert. And maybe that’s the more adult way of handling hurts. Sometimes we cut people out of our lives, sometimes we forgive—like you trying to attack me with rug cleaner--but I suppose forgetting is not a great idea. After all, if somebody behaves badly once, you know they’re capable of doing it again."

"Burned child fears the fire," she replies. "Once burned twice shy. I did have a fantasy about how I could get back at Karl. For the brief time we dated, he wrote a number of love letters, which sentimental I kept tied together with a pink ribbon. I still have them."

"Of course you do," I say.

"Anyway," she says ignoring my smirk. "In my fantasy I took all his letters, highlighted the steamier bits in red and had them made into wallpaper. Then, when he and his wife were away I would masquerade as an interior designer to get past their maid and wallpaper their bedroom with his love letters."

"A lot of people fantasize about revenge," I comment.

"Did you ever?" she asks

"Of course, but just like writing stories about murderers and getting inside their heads, I don’t act out my fantasies, like wanting to do awful things to a critic after a bad review. I think most acts of revenge backfire, and if anything they make things worse."

"But that’s different than getting things taken care of," Lisa adds. "And this is what I deal with all day long. Every bureaucratic screw up with Medicare or injustice I read about in the paper, I can’t rest until I’ve tried to get it straightened out. I think this is why my blood pressure is such an issue. Somebody has got to speak up, I can’t deal with the attitude of ‘oh, there’s nothing we can do about it.’ Or even worse, ‘I don’t want to get involved’. That’s why there’s so much injustice, people are apathetic and unwilling to fight city hall. That’s why six million Jews died in the holocaust, and why man-made atrocities continue to happen around the globe."

"So that’s the take-home point. Revenge is unimportant, it’s self serving and can easily make things worse, whereas addressing wrongs and sticking up for what is right, while difficult and at times scary, advances the common good.."

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