Recently I posted about an unpleasant bullying incident on New Year’s Eve 2022 in which a guest (who I regarded as an old friend) at another friend’s private house party, arrived at the event later than me and loudly, bombastically shook hands with all other guests in a room I was in, but seemed to boycott me twice. Finally he turned to me as if about to wish me the compliments of the season but then drew his hand back, wrinkled his face and snarled, ‘Ew no, I don’t think so. Not you, yeuch’ and left the room. He knows I am a recovering bowel cancer patient in remission and sensitive that my stoma bag for life might contribute to rejecting me. He literally treated me like a mediaeval leper, trying to ostracise me. Twenty minutes later he came back, leaned in my face and told me he had been joking,that it was just a joke and gain repeated that it was a joke, as if fearful I might report the incident to the hosts of the event, which I had no desire to do as I did not want to spoil their first post-lockdown social gathering.
On July 1st 2023 I was at another party with friends and I knew he was also attending. I was wary of a repeat incident and also decided to confront him on his behaviour. I intercepted him at the only point at which he was on his own all night, as he emerged from a bathroom break. As he had been pleasant to me on other occasions before and after the outburst sneering with such loathing at my stoma. I ask him bluntly if he was the nice Martin (his first name) I had met at a beer festival in Wigan, or the nasty Martin who had come at me at the Mark and Elaine hosted party with the ’Ew not you’ remarks. I fully expected his denial. At first he just grinned smugly at me as if proud of himself but he looked red with worry too. I repeated my accusation at which he switched to telling me he ‘didn’t remember’ the incident and skulked off. I told him he did remember but he repeated that he did not. He flinched when I told him to talk to me about it when he ‘grows a pair’.
He looked red faced but talked to me pleasantly in front of the other guests as if nothing had been said to him at all.
So what was wrong with his defence? Answer – everything. Obviously I know / believe he is lying in his denial, except it isn’t really a denial but a statement of amnesia. If I was accused of saying such things I would not forget whether or not I had said them which suggests being in such a schizoid state of mind as to not know what you said or did. I would distinctly remember NOT having said or done such a thing. I would also be A/. Concerned to know all the details of just what my accuser was accusing me of to help me assertan if it /. Could be a misinterpretation of any actual activity involving me b/. If the accuser was / is likely to say or do more to present his vse be it true or bogus or somewhere in between. c/. Decide if I still wanted the accuser as a friend/ D/. Find out if anyone else backed up the accusations or acted as witnesses. F/. Establish if I needed to get a lawyer or not. G/. G/. Find out what the accuser planned to do regarding dropping or continuing with the accusations.
In his eagerness to escape from me quickly, Martin made it only clear that he had no desire to face my accusations, and already knows what I was talking about because he was there and did do what I accused him of. He has fled to reduce my chances of pursuing my concerns further.
I do desire to take matters further. What Martin did not learn was that I recorded my confrontation with him. I hope it validates the points raised above, and helps you advise me as to whether to keep pursuing closure on all this and bringing Martin to task or if I am wasting my time here.
Arthur Chappell
My First Wordpress Blog 