The Circle of Trust

For whatever reason, the people in my life feel the intense need to bare their souls to me. This includes people I don't really know that well. I might as well replace the guest chairs in my home and office with one-armed couches. I have no idea why this is: maybe I look non-threatening? Maybe I look like I can keep a secret? Maybe they think I don't have any friends to whom I would potentially tell interesting secrets? Whatever the cause, people feel totally comfortable telling me things about themselves that few other people know. Many of them are things I don't want to know, but that's a separate issue.

It's not that I don't appreciate their trust and confidence. I really do. Being in the Circle of Trust sometimes has excellent practical outcomes: at work, I am so plugged in that I often hear the same juicy news from multiple people weeks or months before it is announced publicly. Each time I hear it, I have to pretend like it's the first time and that I'm totally digging this really juicy info, since I don't want people to get the idea that I have lots of sources.

However, from time to time, this can cause a little awkwardness, because I know some secret and everybody else doesn't. For example, let's say I find out that some guy is going to get promoted soon. Then two days later that guy comes in my office all worried about his career, and I have to sit there and pretend to be sympathetic for 20 minutes because I can't be like "dude, chill out, don't worry about it." When he finally DOES get promoted I have to go congratulate him and pretend that I am as (pleasantly) surprised as he is.

Sometimes the awkwardness is worse, though. In High School, a girl I knew wanted to go to the Junior prom with my best friend, and so rather than just asking him she invited us both over to her house to hang out in some elaborate plan to ask him more privately. She told me that my coming over was just a cover, and that her real purpose was to ask my friend to the dance, but that I was sworn to secrecy about the whole plan. However, she acted just a little weird about the whole thing and my friend got suspicious that we were going over for something more than just hanging out. He, in turn, made me swear that there was nothing going on. This happens to me all the time, and I have no idea what to do. By default, usually the first person that swears me to secrecy or to reveal a secret wins, but I usually end up catching flak from both sides in those situations.

FOCUS: When have you been in the Circle of Trust with someone, and what was the secret you were sworn to uphold? What awkward moments ensued as you had to pretend to not know anything about something that you, in actuality, knew all about?

 

If I'm doing low level cooking work like line cooking or prep cooking, I tend to get thrown into the loop a lot more than I'd like. I'm a solid guy to have in your kitchen lineup because I take even the most menial shit seriously, and because I don't fuck around when I'm on the clock. I'm also a professional chef who even in those situations where I'm not the boss doesn't waltz around like I'm better than everyone else just because I have some schooling under my belt.

Now, for those reasons, or others I'm simply not aware of, any chef or manager I work under has a tendency to confide in me things I shouldn't be knowing, up to and including the wages of those I work alongside, and who's on the chopping block. And while I'm professional enough not to let this shit slip, it fucking pains me to hear these kinds of things. Sometimes I just like being the soldier in a kitchen, doing what I'm told without question and getting the fuckin' job done. No half-step, no hesitation, no bullshit. I do my job and collect a paycheck for services rendered. Sometimes I don't want any responsibility other than what's in my job description, yet somehow I get dragged into a cluster fuck of political bullshit that could be solved by just manning the fuck up and doing what needs to be done, whether it's firing someone who's earned it, or knuckling down on the cook who keeps showing up late. This has happened in every job I've had in the last 5 years. Even at places where I'm just filling in the gaps temporarily as a favor.

I don't mind giving advice or a helping hand to the guy or gal I'm working for. It's kind of a common courtesy and mutual understanding of the hardships our profession carries, and having someone you can confide in is important, but so often I've been told far too much and then it becomes a matter of shifting the burden onto unwilling shoulders, and that's what bothers me.

 

Can we have an Anti-Focus here? Something like: When have you not been in the Circle of Trust with someone or a group, and what was the secret that everyone else knew and you had no idea? What awkward moments ensued while interacting with people as you found out something that only you knew nothing about?

That's me to a tee. I'm ALWAYS excluded from the Circle of Trust. I am ALWAYS the last to know anything. I seem to always be the victim of a public roasting when I had NO idea what was going on until MUCH later. It's strange, since I try not to engage in talking about people behind their backs or divulging secrets.

Example (I told this one a long time ago on the TMMB): This one girl in my extended group (we'll call her A) was acting flirtatious with me for the whole night - holding on to me, kissing me, et cetera - all in front of my friends, including J (who I'd known for a long time), who seemed happy for me... the next day I found out she'd been with J and was only acting this way towards me to get back at him for something. Why was I the only person who didn't get this? I apologised to J, since I had NO idea about this - she had apparently told her friends of her plans. I was slowly ostracised from that group. Thanks, bitch. I'm not friendly with any of them anymore as a result.

Maybe I should've smelled a rat earlier, since she had never acted in any other way other than polite towards me, but I'm not very good at picking up social cues.

This is another example of why I don't really socialise anymore. I firmly believe I'm better off, since I only seemed to be the butt of everyone's jokes. Fuck them.

Footnote: On the TiB, I'm not coerced into it and have a choice, and I choose to roast myself for the amusement of others, since I enjoy making others laugh, but at my own hand, not someone else's. If that makes sense.

 

Lawyers are always in the circle of trust. As soon as your friends find out what you do, they practically hand you their innermost secrets in giftwrapping.

 

Not that people tell me their innermost secrets per se, but I do know two women who've had abortions. Or, rather, I know two women who have told me about them, and I probably know a lot more than haven't.

Also, I'm a pharmacy student, which means everyone loves to ask me about drugs. And since pretty much the only drugs people are on at my age are birth control, I get to do lots of explaining about how they work, side effects, missed pills, Plan B, etc. People who would normally never mention the fact (to me, at any rate) they have a menstrual cycle or that they're sexually active casually mention they've had to take Plan B. It's nice because a) it tells me that I don't come across as too creepy to have people tell me this comfortably as a practicing pharmacist, and b) I get to use all that fancy book-learnin' to, y'know, give people some good information and all this.

Ladies, if you're under 25, you should be on Vitamin D and Calcium to build up what bone density you can before your bone mineral density peaks at that age.

 

I probably know all of my friends' deepest secrets. This is because I'm a very trustworthy person, so obviously I'm not going to spill any of them here. It's a weird position to be in. I like the feeling of closeness it brings, but since I deal with it by filing them under the "My Secrets" category in my brain, instead of thinking of them as "Other People's Secrets," I start feeling like I have a shit load of secrets to hide. (When, in reality, I don't really have that many secrets.)

Back in high school, there were two guys in my group of friends whose fathers were just never, ever mentioned. I ended up being the only one who they told what happened. On a lesser note, it was tough to deal with because there were a couple of times I'd be with my friends and they'd start talking about it and wondering, and since they knew I was close with both of them they'd ask me if I knew anything and I'd have to lie right to their faces. This is silly, but it also made me upset that I had to hide that I was closer with them in order to keep the secret. On a heavier note, one of them was more "juicy" than the other (which is a terrible word choice, because it was an awful thing that happened) and it actually affected me really deeply and I got a little depressed over it. (I am empathetic to a fault, I think.) It makes me extra sad because his stepdad is an awful person too, and he's one of the greatest guys I know so he doesn't deserve that shit.

 

I'm that guy. The guy that EVERYONE comes to with everything. I could probably draw detailed, size accurate descriptions of all of my female friends' husbands' units. At the company I work for now (been with them over a year now) I have known about all the skeletons in the closet almost since my first few weeks. Boyfriend/girlfriend beating you? I probably knew ten minutes after it started. Having an affair? You've probably bragged about it to me. I've even gotten complete strangers to tell me shit they wouldn't tell their closest friends. It's a tad ridiculous.

 

I stopped listening once I figured out that women telling me their personal problems with men meant they were never, ever going to have sex with me. Ignorance is opportunity. Or at least the illusion of opportunity.

Really, though, if they know you can keep your mouth shut, people will talk because people want to talk. It's not a superpower. It just means you can keep your mouth shut.

 

On that note, women out there: don't tell us that shit. I don't care about your boyfriend's wang. At all. I once had to close my eyes and do the "la la la la la la" thing while two women eagerly discussed some boyfriend's (apparently sizeable) wang. Jesus.

 

Lots of people are really comfortable talking to me about their most ludicrously out there fetishes and sexual propensities. On fetish boards, or somewhere like here - where I talk about kink stuff a lot - or with my pervert friends - I totally get that. It starts to get weird at work though - where I don't talk about my kinks, don't talk about my sex life and generally try and be reasonably professional.

The stand out example was at a company event, at a bowling alley, a coworker told me she used to be a cam whore and was once front page on Stile Project. Stile Project is NSFW in any fashion - and for a camwhore to make front page, at least back in the day when the girl in question made it - required pretty extreme depraved acts. The bitch still won't give me enough information to find the videos though.

 

I posted on my blog that I would help 1L law students with their writing assignments last spring, and ha several people write to me with questions. One girl sent me her entire brief, but failed to properly scrub it of metadata, so I very quickly figured out who it was. Since the class is ungraded, I don't really know what the sanction is for cheating (and getting outside help was a violation of the rules), but I imagine she could have gotten in a whole lot of trouble if I finked.

But, I'm not a mean person, which is why I think I get into people's circles of trust in the first place. Even if I discover something bad, I won't make use of it.

Oh, and as a summer associate I helped hide money in the British Virgin Islands for a client who we couldn't contact. He would only reach us through yahoo e-mail addresses he'd create, keep for a couple days, and then destroy, and he only accessed them while at sea, away from his home country. The idiot partner in charge of this client decided not only to staff a summer associate on the matter, but to use the client's real name in the billing software.

 

I feel like I can tell this story now because he already knows I know. When they were still together, my roommate's ex-boyfriend used to beg her to fuck him up the ass with a strap-on. They were always a fairly adventurous couple (not only S&M and bondage adventurous, but I know for a fact they once had a three-way while I was asleep in my bed across the room.) Eventually, she decided to give it a try. Of course, she had to tell us about it first in case we accidentally walked in on them.

Afterward, she said he came harder than she has ever made him come before.

 

A few years ago a guy started at the same company I also work for. Right away there was talk/questions if he was gay. He wasn't uber flaming gay but he was a little excentric. A couple years ago I asked a lady friend of mine if he was gay and she said that he's just excentric because his family is rich. Well the three of us have become good friends over the course of this last year and a half. 6 months ago this guy comes out of the closet to me. He tells me, I tell him I don't care cause he's still the same person. I talk to the girl the next day and she told me that yeah when I asked her she knew and lied. I guess I am in the circle of gay trust.

 

I've never really been that guy everyone confides in. My close friends will tell me near anything because they know I'll listen and give honest advice, but generally I'm not a magnet for venting. However, one of my best friends was decidedly that person. He happened to be gay, which may have had something to do with it, but I think it was more that everyone knew he was a genuinely nice, smart guy with a few problems of his own. Unlike most nice guys though he was a blabber. He literally told me every piece of gossip sent his way. Most of it I just shrugged off. A lot of it was about people I barely knew, and for the most part wasn't all that shocking. Everyone has insecurities, right?

Yet one girl stood out above all the rest. Whenever I met her she seemed normal. A bit quirky, but had a sweet and calm aura about her. Then I found out what she was doing in her spare time.

- She was anorexic and disgusted with her appearance. It was literally agonizing for her to look in the mirror.
- She scrubbed her body with a toothbrush for over an hour until she passed out as punishment for overeating, which was probably just enough to not die.
- She slashed her knees, but not as in a small suicidal gesture. It was genuine mutilation, and bad enough that plastic surgery probably couldn't fix it.
- She was becoming phobic of food. She believed that if she was around people eating she could inhale the calories, and all the perfection she had been striving for would be undone.

I never knew her very well, and while she seemed thin it wasn't all that noticeable because of the way she dressed. Why would you do it to look perfect and then cover it up? For awkward moments I'll just say every time I saw her after hearing that. She eventually set up an anonymous blog, but I'm going to stop here.

 

Please tell me that I'm not only one who laughed at this. This is either my favorite unintentional joke ever, or one of the wittiest lines in the history of the TIB. Either way suffices.

 

I've been attending AA meetings for the last 21 months. I have heard more shit than I care to think about and have shared quite a bit of my own. Its a good lesson not to share any of it outside the program and to honor other member's trust. When I celebrated a year of sobriety I asked a friend to attend a meeting. He was shocked about what was discussed that nite, to me it was pretty normal stuff to hear at a meeting.