The Anatomy of a Gossip
Gossip is a currency for people in pain.
Well, dearest reader - Nearly four months into 2024, I didn’t forecast continuing the theme of friendship among Black women on my Substack . There’s so many other topical, and more meatier themes to unpack: Puff’s downfall (Diddy to the younger millennials, and Gen Z), Aoki Lee Simmons and her 65-year old lover, and Amanda Seales, and the archaic premium on industry congeniality. But here we are. If you’re bored of essays on my personal mania—I hope you won’t unsubscribe. I hope you’ll rock me with me as I wade through the waters of what’s easily become the single most radical transition of my life. They’ll be joy on the other side—this I know.
They say if a friend shares other people’s business with you, you’d be a fool not to recognize they’re sharing your business with other people.
Why would a friend betray my trust by sharing sensitive information I shared with them—deeply private things I would never openly share with anyone?
Like a 1960s Truman Capote as seen in the brilliant Ryan Murphy FX series Feud: Truman Capote vs. The Swans, this friend built trust with me over time.
This season of Feud was arguably the most delicious and menacing character study on Truman Capote, one of the 20th century’s most celebrated authors. I personally watched, and clinched imaginary pearls at the late night visual feast of colossal betrayal Capote inflicted on his four Swans—New York high society women including former model and Vogue fashion editor Babe Paley and Lee Radziwill, little sister of Jacqueline Onassis, who liberally doused trust over Capote like a hefty serving of Beluga caviar.
The Swans thought Capote was their friend. And so they spoke the unspeakable—the things we all carry in the darkest parts of our bowels but would never, ever cough up. Fear, heartache, and the deepest secrets.
For those of us who watched the third season of Feud, we’ve all asked ourselves why would Capote betray these women so openly and brutally? It’s the same reason why these women unveiled their proprietary tales to Capote. The answer is pain. Pain sniffs out pain like an expertly trained Bloodhound.
Like Capote, I had a friend who played the long game with me. My vulnerability was like flesh to this Bloodhound in pain. They became a confidante to me—my most precious one in recent years—because like Capote was of Babe Paley, they’re deeply struck by what I have.
Oh, but it’s not just materialism—hollow lifestyle and professional trappings, it’s equally my possession of the unseen: power and survival. This friend was utterly enamored and so they slowly seduced me by liberally availing themselves to me. Their generosity in time—near daily calls and check-ins on the heels of my Mother’s unceremonious transition became a rare portal to my trust. This entire time they committed every word, every story I revealed, and every experience I shared to memory—like fungible assets readied for interchange.
Gossips are crafty people because they’ll never package the gossip like gossip.
The irony is: they also earned my trust by sharing sensitive information with me as well—private business other people shared with them. Never their own. I foolishly thought it would never be me.
Today, now that the dust has settled, I’m left with ashes that are not quite beautiful, and I’m grabbling with why. Why can’t this friend seem to keep sensitive information to themselves? Why exactly does this friend get off on gossip?
Because gossip is a currency, and currency is power.
For my friend, their thirst for power is stronger than decency and discretion—and apparently even stronger than our friendship.
So this friend transacted off my personal business and private conversations like shares on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. And they know the valuation of each share is worth it, and the sum is unquantifiable.
Highly classified intelligence gives them a sense of equity and exclusivity. In their mind—subconsciously or consciously—disclosing my personal information makes them more fascinating and needed by other parties.
Gossips are crafty people because they’ll never package the gossip like gossip.
My sensitive information is reconstructed like advice, or a potential meditation—even spiritualism.
Gossip is expertly presented like they’re being the bigger person by divulging what I’m going through but it’s really used as a means to earn the trust of the other person. It’s all an intent for my friend to rope their latest mark into their ecosystem of leverage for personal gain.
This friend has many marks trapped in this ecosystem, and they carefully keep an impenetrable demarcation between us all so we can never face each other and puzzle together how masterfully we’ve all been played.
Gossip is about power, a blinded and unrequited longing for power—often by people who like Capote, feel like outsiders, and because of their identity, circumstances or their own shortcomings have been disenfranchised of material success, public adulation, and fleeting social standing.
And for this friend, gossip is not even personal. Which is why this friend will never see disclosures of your personal business, and breaches of your privacy as an act as a betrayal.
I won’t even bother asking this friend to own what they’ve done because they never will.
For this friend to own the betrayal would mean they’d have to reveal their truest face to me—the face who is ruthlessly in pursuit of power.
Their truest face is the saddest face.
This friend is the proverbial clown. They danced and pranced for my entertainment. We entertained each other. It was seduction and distraction in the most unknowingly forms—and with the flick of a cigarette lighter, their darker self unveils itself to me. I am gutted.
The truest face is the face of pain.
Alas, the question is: what to do with this friend—a friend I’ve become so emotionally dependent on? A friend who became my habit, my addiction, like a fentanyl binge, in the wake of unimaginable loss and a failed attempt to reconcile with my ex-boyfriend who like Bill Paley, couldn’t shake his own sloppy indiscretions. I know this friend is deadly but like Babe, I’m strung out over a possible separation after they attempted to covertly skin me alive. I can’t seem to walk away.
How can I possibly weed myself off this friend? Logic will suggest perhaps I maintain the friendship and stop sharing things I don’t want them to repeat.
No—betrayal warrants finality.
I’ve got to release them cold and swift, and face the withdrawal like a resistant rehab program.
I’ve got to breathe in the withdrawal, and allow it to become my very own personal new power.
I’ve got to learn to depend on myself.
This emotional dependence was a byproduct of my grief all along.
When will I learn no one—and I mean no one—will ever replace my Mother?