[500] I AM SORRY.

      Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hornby.

       I am writing from this weekend's Wellness Workshop, part of a program I am both the founder and Toronto's area reference person for. We meet to discuss global political issues, race and gender identity, veganism and how to battle oppression. We assemble eight-person support groups for weekly meet-ups and individuals pair up for continued support. Individuals take turns clearing their spirit by discharging bad energy through laughter, shaking and tears. This email is actually homework for my personal progress (Part 4: Apologies and Making good.)

      I know we haven't spoken since your daughter (I'll use your word) and I ended our relationship, but you two were always very supportive and I would definitely consider you People I Really Respect, (or PIRRPs).

      What I would like to apologize for is the violence in my relationship with Deirdre. There was no grabbing or hitting or pulling, but there was an incident—the one I know you're aware of—the night she (to use her preferred gender pronoun) held my computer's external hard drive under the bathroom faucet, destroying three terabytes of my work. I must confess that I reacted by shouldering her. That is: brushing by with aggression to save my projects that my continued employment depended on.

      Actually, this is a little misleading. For my personal development and full disclosure, I have to be honest: I could have gotten the drive out of her hand without brushing her aside. I can't defend that I used the physical advantage of my man-body in a hostile way.

      Now, I want to make it very clear that I'm not accusing your Deirdre of milking or dramatizing the situation (that would be in violation of CR theory and counterproductive to my spiritual growth), but she did fall into the bathtub with both arms outstretched high above her head, twisting her body in an unusually complicated—and slow, very slow and awkward—way, which I could not have possibly anticipated when I touched her body with my body (admittedly without consent). Again, this isn't a defense, but to explain why I so stubbornly resisted taking full and complete responsibility for the violence at the time. She spun and spun in slow-motion, and toppled (eventually) over the lip of the tub with the most peculiar acceleration of force, or a seemingly deliberate hop, that I did not accept a physically possible—at the time—occurring as a result of my physical contact. That is, not possible outside of the intentionality you might find in performance art, for example, which I would never imply this was.

      On reflection of the act itself, I believe I was so frustrated, seeing my property damaged—triggering something deep and old, perhaps a broken toy in my childhood—that my face went hot and red with masculine juices. I feel as though all of my body's testosterone swam right into my head, filling it up and getting trapped there by my tense neck muscles. In a violent and aggressive manner I went for the hard drive, lightly brushing past your daughter and allowing slight physical contact before she spun—seemingly counter to the direction of the contact—and flailed and toppled. I confess that in my estimation it looked quite unreal, but having grown from this incident, my mind is free to realize I am not a physicist. To me, even the twin towers look strange! So, what do I know? Right? I mean, I youtube'd control demolition—to my eyes, that shit looks just the same! For all I know, slight grazing of skin can—and clearly did—cause an inverted spinning, flailing and toppling motion. And a concussion.

      About this last bit. I regret further that I was not at all surprised Deirdre immediately claimed to have suffered a concussion, slapping her arms around as if the tub were full of water—in a drowning-woman motion—looking around as if she'd gone blind and asking questions like, "Who am I? What? Hello?" I am truly ashamed for dismissing this as a performance, and for claiming to regret dating a theatre student in the first place. But while it hurts to know about these details—the eye-rolling on my part—the silver-lining here is that she remembered them at all, that she was able to draw at very least, the incriminating details from the scary blackout fog she claimed had taken days from her memory. I take comfort that my violence, making her hop and tumble into the tub, didn't cause more damage.

      I want to be clear that even though I don't share your binary-gender mindset, I still find my behavior reprehensible. I can only imagine what you might think of me: a privileged white male assaulting a woman of color (black). I gagged in my mouth just typing that! If my race and gender identity matched my physical body's skin pigment and sex, I would have walked myself right into jail, right that moment. Simple. Unfortunately, I'm more complicated than that. We all are. I don't identify as simply white. And I would urge you to respect that your 'daughter' doesn't fit that mold either, whether or not she wants to (if I were to define her in that moment, with my hard drive in the sink, I might have sooner thought: feisty Hispanic man? Not sure.)

      I sometimes picture myself, standing there, shaking my head, and it rips me up inside. I want to will myself into action, into calling an ambulance or running as fast as I could to get ice. I had watched her fall on her bottom in the bath, but failed to witness her head actually hitting the wall or anything at all. This is why witness testimony is so suspect, my brain truly rejects that she hit her head, even despite having heard about the lump! Thankfully, it flattened out completely before I got home from my long frustrated walk. So I am truly grateful that it healed up so well, so quickly, with no evidence it had ever even been there! (Apart from her word, of course, which is all I would ever need.)

      I only wish I could have apologized to you folks sooner, but I'd convinced myself there was some relevance to the discontinuity between her symptoms—which I've listed in the attachment—and the internet's description of classic concussions.

      Note that the second list, the five symptoms that did match medical explanations, were amendments made to her story only after looking up concussions herself.

      To sum up my apology and complete this small part of my wellness program: I am formerly regretful and very sorry for the violent way I brushed by your daughter in that narrow washroom, and take full responsibility for the unprecedentedly complicated chain of events that followed (Deirdre's spinning and flailing, her pin-balling with clumsy steps between the wall and door, and finally backing towards the tub and toppling onto her butt, legs curled over the edge, and head somehow concussing.

      Again, thank you for your time. Sincerely,

      Jonathan.