So, we are at the end of the tale, for now. After receiving a second email from Shifty, I felt compelled to reply. As I wrote, every last drop of anger, disbelief and frustration spilled out but the truth is, the world is full of Shiftys and even though their behaviour is destructive and reprehensible, there's not much any of us can do except try to avoid them. They are the people who believe that the universe owes them something. Their sense of entitlement is well developed and their relationship with the truth is slippery. They take no responsibility for the way that their life looks and thus, they feel perpetually victimized. If left to operate unchecked, they are capable of creating serious damage. The good news is that eventually, their bad deeds seem to catch up to them but personally, I wouldn't want to be nearby when that lightning bolt finally hits.
_______________________________________________________________________
After receiving the email from Shifty, I eventually chose to ignore it figuring that my silence would be answer enough. Two weeks later, Leisa forwarded me a text message from Shifty which nattered on about something stupid and then out of nowhere, he said,
"And by the way, Beth is missing out on an opportunity to make some serious money. It's no skin off my nose as I already have a contact in the US and in India."
I text her back,
"What a f**ing wanker. Besides the fact that he knows absolutely nothing about import/export, freight or retail, every business he's ever touched has turned to shit. I'll pass. Easily."
Leisa asked if she could forward my text back to him and frankly, even though it reveals a serious personality flaw, I have to tell you that I was quite willing to engage with him. For a year, I had been writing a post about the train wreck of the last twelve months because blogging is my therapy. Watching helplessly, as people I love had their lives turned upside down by a single, narcissistic sociopath, was incredibly painful. I didn't publish the post though, because doing so might have exposed my family to some unwanted attention. The internet is a powerful tool and even though my readership is small, I thought we had better play it safe. If nothing else, Shifty is a resourceful guy and I didn't want to unwittingly give him ammunition that he might use against Leisa.
But everything changed recently when we were notified that Shifty was being prosecuted for theft. Over the course of the past year, the Department of Internal Affairs has been investigating him and recently, he was in court facing six charges stemming from the theft of over $100,000. We had been anticipating something like this for months so news of the formal proceedings against didn't really come as a surprise. As his life rapidly began to unravel, I no longer felt that Shifty was much of a threat.
A few days after Leisa presumably forwarded my text, I received this email from him:
Hey Beth,
Leisa forwarded on your text message, thanks for your kind words.
Its easy to see how you two get on so well;
You speak the same language, have charitable dispositions and positive personalities.
Good luck to you both.
Cheers!
Below is my reply culled from my year-long blog post. You might want to get a bite to eat and something to drink because it is a long one.
From: Beth
To: S____
Sent: Thursday, 3 September, 2009 7:53:34 AM
Subject: Re: Text
S____,
What did you expect? Did you honestly think that I would spend a second contemplating a business arrangement with you? Are you really that out of focus with reality?
Have you conveniently forgotten about the last year?
The financial distress that you caused Bruce and Anne as they watched their ENTIRE LIFE'S WORK circle the drain and how you basically shrugged it off is mind boggling. Oh, I know you'll say that you spent hours trying to figure out what to do and how it was tragic, terrible and NOT YOUR FAULT.
Whatever.
My mother in law, the woman, who until recently loved you unconditionally, spent months in the type of emotional distress that lands people in the hospital. My father in law, who treated you like a son, scrambled to figure out where the hell he was going to move his workshop so that when his house was sold to pay the debt YOU created, he would still be able to generate an income to feed his family.
When the bars went into receivership, a responsible person would have immediately secured a job. A person equipped with a conscience would have taken the necessary steps to rectify his mistakes. Your response to watching your in-laws drown under the financial burden of your insatiable need for MORE was to fuck off to Australia. Nice one.
You were full of irrational chatter about how you were going to secure a big, fat paycheque from the mines in spite of the fact that you had none of the skills necessary to obtain a job like that. And then, when it became clear that your "connections" couldn't overcome the obvious gaps in your resume, you further compounded the folly by not securing a job, ANY JOB that might have earned a wage. Instead, you set your sights on yet another bar and you chose to emotionally harass, threaten and cajole Leisa in an effort to get her to pack up and leave New Zealand and her entire support system to follow you down that fucking rabbit hole so YOUR needs could be met.
I especially loved how you dragged your innocent children into that particular argument with her. Nothing says "dedicated father" like using your children and their fragile minds as weapons to force your wife to acquiesce. But Leisa turned out to be stronger and smarter than you had anticipated. Over the years, she had watched each pub deal you crafted turn to custard and she knew better than to put all of her eggs into the S___ "great pub opportunity in Australia" basket because the track record for success wasn't exactly lined with diamonds, was it? And your response to her perfectly reasonable, level-headed resistance to the move was to emotionally batter her and accuse her of disloyalty, which was painfully ironic, since it was you who chose to shag another woman barely a year earlier.
The truth is S___, you just don't like to work all that hard. You've got your head full of excel spreadsheets with pie-in-the-sky numbers and you talk about your "talent" but at the end of the day, you are not prepared to get your hands dirty. Even worse, you don't appear to seek the counsel of people who have expertise in those areas where you are deficient. Your ego gets in the way of your common sense. While you should have been minding your business and getting your arms around the basics of cash flow, debt and sensible budgeting, you chose instead to fancy yourself as some sort of high rolling deal maker. In your pursuit of status and a spot on the porch with the big dogs, you left behind your conscience, your soul and ultimately, your family.
And, I know about the all of the debts and the Crown charges stemming from the funds missing from the pubs. I know about your physical altercation with Leisa. I know about your ongoing refusal to accept responsibility for your behaviour in any aspect of your life. I know about the near fight with another parent on the soccer field in front of children, including your own. I know about you taking Dallas's money and how months later, Anne had to sign for that so he could get his funds back. I know about the threats to seek custody of the children. I know that you claim to have lived off of a woman's credit card for several months this year. I know that twelve months after the pubs went belly up, you still don't have a job that pays you on the books. And I know that your need to punish Leisa is still greater than the love you have for your children because you continue to place them in the middle of your argument with her.
So, no, I'm not interested in doing business with you. I generally don't enter into deals with people that I can't respect, trust and who abuse those that I love. I find it very hard to digest that _____ and _____ would turn over an export enterprise to someone who has absolutely no experience whatsoever, regardless of their affiliation with your girlfriend. It's not especially sound business practice.
If you can make this latest, greatest, thing work, then all the more power to you S___. Perhaps, as a gainfully employed person, you might actually do the right thing by your children and support them in the manner that they deserve because frankly, that $64 a month you're shelling out really isn't cutting it.
Please don't misunderstand this email as an invitation to a prolonged discussion. I'm really not interested. I sincerely hope that you "get back on your feet again" as you put it, because your children need for you to be whole. They are what matters. But understand that the first step in that direction is to get real with the guy in the mirror.
Beth
After I clicked "SEND", I immediately felt lighter. My only regret is that I didn't have the opportunity to share my thoughts with him in person.
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