If you don’t like these hypos, I’m mystified as to why you’re still reading.
So here’s the sitch. One day you inadvertently discover a crime committed by a local drug gang, whose leader decides to ensure your silence by chopping your head off. Luckily, you get rescued by Chris, who is (a) a hot person of the correct gender and sexual orientation for you, and (b) an unparalleled bad ass. Chris can do all that action-movie stuff like beating up four bad guys at once, shooting a gun out of a man’s hand without injuring him, deducing a stranger’s life history with a glance, and so on. In the adventure that follows the initial rescue, Chris not only only shuts down the gang but does so without killing or crippling anybody.
Chris finds you as attractive as you find him or her, and as you’re single in this hypothetical, y’all start dating. For the first few months, thing go swimmingly; Chris is witty, funny, and gentle in addition to being tough, skilled, and sexy. The only thing that gives you pause is that Chris won’t sleep in the same bed with you. Oh, that’s not to say there’s no nights spent together. But when that happens, Chris always stays awake till you fall asleep, then relocates to the nearest sofa or easy chair.
One day, several months into the relationship, something unusual happens. You and Chris are having dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant when you notice one of the waitresses–a African immigrant girl in her late teens–staring at him. The way she trembles at the sight of Chris makes it clear that she’s absolutely terrified–and yet it is Chris, not the waitress, who cannot maintain eye contact. The two of you leave shortly thereafter, and on the ride home you ask Chris what the waitress’s deal was. Chris hesitates a long time, and then says:
*Okay. I’ve got … skills … most people don’t. You know that. But what you don’t know is that I haven’t always been on the side of the angels. After I left the army, I spent a lot of time in parts of the world where there’s no law–places where somebody with my skills can make a lot of money. Please don’t ask me for details, because if I give you details, neither one of us will be sleeping for a long while. For a long time I told myself it was okay because I had these bright lines I never crossed: I only took contracts on people who were genuine bad guys, and I never killed children. But then I took a job to eliminate a wanna-be warlord in Somalia. Things went south. I had to kill out his wife too, and his sons, and–well, everybody but his 10-year-old daughter. The waitress we just saw. She saw the whole thing happen. I knew what she saw was gonna fuck up her head, maybe forever, and that all my talk about bright lines was bullshit. So I quit the mercenary business, and came home, and started over. I swore that I’d never kill anybody again, and I haven’t. But I know I’ll never get clean of all the things I did. I still have nightmares about them. That’s why I won’t sleep in the same bed as you. Sometimes I talk in my sleep, and I didn’t want you to find about about my past that way. I’m so ashamed of that part of my life.
*
Overcome with tears, Chris stops there.
And now to the thread question. Does this revelation about Chris’s past make it impossible for you to maintain the romantic relationship?
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