Jameson Hanby

Jameson Hanby had a gimpy leg. It forced him to hobble a bit when he walked, and was a birth defect that had nothing to do with multiple sclerosis or muscular distrophy or any other syndrome involving muscle deterioration. In fact, his slight lisp was merely something he'd developed as an outcast child, nervous and alone in corners and behind trees at his elementary school's playground. He was fair haired and freckled. He wore white tennis shoes and long sleeved shirts. He owned two cats, and the house he shared with his brother reeked of them.

Some kids warm to the idea of being outcast. They flourish in subcultures involving video games and/or black clothing. Jameson, on the other hand, had mastered the subculture of being an asshole. He had developed a mean streak. There were lots of situations in which he would inevitably look silly, and if Jameson was an asshole, people wrote him off as such. They didn't pay as much attention to the fact that his ego might bleed when they treated him differently, or looked at him like a wounded bird.

I first met him through the lens of a camera. He was finishing a Bachelors degree in Mass Communication with an emphasis on Television Production. He spent all the money he ever saved on audio/video equipment, and came up with killer packages for the evening student-run news where I worked. The fact that Jameson didn't have to talk might have had something to do with it. Though when he did talk, he was known to be unpleasantly blunt and snippy.

"I'm not going to tell you again. Move three inches to the left, and stay there."
"Geez. Sorry."

We met filming a package about tornado relief just to the north of Nashville. A whole subdivision had nearly been leveled, and I wanted Jameson to get shots of the Cabbage Patch doll hanging 50 feet above ground from a cedar tree. Jameson wanted to film me walking along side a house with its left side completely cut out. It looked like a doll house.

"You know, I didn't really get to say anything to that Commissioner back there. He didn't let me get a word in edgewise."
"Thats because you wouldn't have had anything important to say anyway." Jameson scoffed. "You ask the questions. The answers are what we want on tape."
"I guess." I had always secretly fantasized about becoming Barbara Walters. Though I was three fourths of the way through with my teaching degree, I sometimes wondered what I could have done with a Mass Comm degree.
"Oh, yeah. That's great." Jameson was crouching, panning around the middle of this cul de sac where one side looked completely untouched.
"Isn't that amazing?" I marvelled.
"Sure." The wind was ruffling his sandy colored hair, and his long, pale fingers steadied the camera as he turned it on its base. He had pale blue eyes. They got smaller and more intense when he was concentrating.
"What are you doing when you get back?"
"Excuse me?" I didn't expect that.
"What are you doing? When we get back to town?"
"Uh. Nothing."
"Do you want to have a drink?"
Jameson? Drinking?
"Sure, I guess."

I didn't intend for him to fall in love with me or anything. Things like that just happen to me. I don't know what it is about me that means anyone should fall in love with me, and I guess I'm being presumptuous to even imply that Jameson was in love with me. Still, after we hung out a few times and flirted after news tapings for around three weeks, Jameson became extremely aggitated to find out that I was interested in someone else.

"Am I not hard enough for you?" We sat on the loading ramp to the tv studio hours after the live broadcast was finished.
"Jameson. Come on."
"God, you girls are all the same! You just flirt around when its convenient for you, and then you leave like nothing ever happened."
"Who said I was leaving? Leaving what? I thought we were friends."
"Don't give me that bullshit. You know as well as I do that's not what this was about."
"Jameson. It could never be about that. We're too different. We're... I mean you're... a virgin, you know, and--"
"Damn it!" He swore and stood up. "Take it! I don't want to say that anymore. I'm sorry I even mentioned it. I--"
"That's not what its about."
"Tha'ts ALL its about! That's all the world is about! Its the only motivation for any important action ever made!"
I smiled a little bit. He could be so dramatic.
"Look," he said, "Next chance I get, we're going to get drunk and we're going to fix this little problem of ours."
"--Oh my god! Jameson, chill out. Its not that big of a deal."
"Yes it is." He sat back down. "You just said it is. You want somebody else who'll GIVE it to you."
"You're such an asshole, you know that?"
"Apparently I'm not enough of one. If I were enough of an asshole, you'd think I didn't care. And then YOU'D care."
His reverse psychology actually made logical sense to me. Sadly.
"Jameson, I'm not sure we can be friends anymore if you're going to be like this."
"God. Screw you, you know. Just screw you."
And he got up, with this awful twisted scowl on his face, and walked off toward his car.

I didn't know what to do with that. And I didn't even end up dating the guy Jameson was so mad about. I kept doing the news and Jameson ignored me like nothing had ever happened between us. It was only then that I began hearing what people said about him. They made jokes about how he was such a douche, and how he was so conceited, and they laughed hysterically from inside the sound booth when he asked out my cutesy blonde co-anchor, probably just to spite me. She had a boyfriend. It made Jameson look like an idiot. He didn't flinch though, he just kept his conversation rolling right along. I admired that. Even when the tech kids were imitating him behind me like he was mentally challenged. I knew it was all an act. I felt like I knew him better than he would have admited to anyone else there. I knew why he had to hide behind all that anger and meanness. Deep down, just like everybody else, Jameson was insecure as hell.

Why is it that virtually every problem known to mankind originates in insecurity. Whole wars have been started because of insecure leaders with agendas of greatness. Is it possible that the entire world is made solely of insecure people constantly digging at each other so that they can feel a little better about the wounds they got from OTHER insecure people? Thats some vicious cycle!

"Don't talk to me again," Jameson replied, after I messaged him online about how it felt to be a video journalist.
I never actually did talk to him again. In fact, within minutes, I had forgotten about him entirely.