5/8/04 4:04 AM: I've always found the character Lex Luthor, as portrayed by actor Michael Rosenbaum on Smallville simply magnetic.

When the show came on the air, Rosenbaum's Lex Luthor was among a very small cadre -- including David Anders playing Julian Sark on Alias and Neal McDonough playing David McNorris on Boomtown -- that I considered the most compelling white guys on TV. Now, if you've ever taken some time to look around television in the US, you'll see there's no shortage of white guys. There's not even really a shortage of compelling ones -- from Kiefer Sutherland's always sizzling Jack Bauer on 24 to Anders' co-star Victor Garber as Jack Bristow on Alias (and am I the only person who thinks Jack Bristow is who Jack Bauer turns into in several years? Sorry, mild digression ...).

Somewhere in Alias' second season Anders got a hair cut and lost a lot of his coolness by getting smacked around by the CIA. Boomtown was, of course, cancelled. Which left Mssr. Rosenbaum. Every time he stepped on the screen -- with his careful phrasings, his somber wardrobe, the smiles that hid menace -- I couldn't tear myself away from the screen. Knowing that the role plays -- Lex Luthor -- is "destined" (if you are a fan of comic book canon, you know what his ultimate claim to fame is) to stand in the path of "the world's greatest hero" (from a certain point of view) and be considered one of the world's most dangerous villains ... it gives his tender moments searching for the love of his father or comfort in the company of a friend extra poignancy. I would have probably stopped watching the show if not for him (and, well, if there were no Kristin Kreuk, a saucy young Hawaiian girl who's simply delectable eye candy, given that I have outfits older than she is).

This season, though, Lex has really been getting inside my head. In a third season episode called "Memoria" it basically laid out most of the really bad things that happened in Lex's life (spoiler warning for those who care). First of all, his father Lionel was one of those ultra-driven, ultra-rich white guys who was so intent on the concept of conquest he named his sons after historical conquerors (Alexander and Julian). Problem was, his wife wasn't down with the program, nor wholly stable. Well, one of the problems. Lex lost all his hair in the zany meteor shower that brought Clark Kent to Smallville (I'm going somewhere with all this, but I gotta cover the background), lived a life of constant torture at the hands of more "normal" looking classmates, and was constantly ridden by Lionel for being "soft" and not succeeding more. Then the baby Julian died, and to most observers it seemed like Lex accidentally killed him. What nobody noticed (and what Lex's adolescent memory suppressed) was that the mother actually smothered the kid to save it from growing up under Lionel, and Lex feared that this would send the already zany dad to whack mom, an "expendable" person, whereas Lex would be relatively safe as the sole surviving heir. So Lex took one for the team. Yeah, I know. Sucker.

Still with me? I swear this is all going somewhere.

Anyhoo, the truth finally comes out like Ellen. Lionel is aghast -- for years, he's basically hated his son for driving a wedge in a perfect nuclear capitalist family. "If I'd have known ..." blah blah blah. At that point, Lex Money's in his early twenties, and well on the way to surpassing his father in every possible regard. Way too little, way too late. Both are now set in a pattern of internecine conflict and oneupmanship. Lex has now been crafted into a Machiavellian schemer of the highest order, with a moral flexibility that would make yoga teachers wince at its extremity. In Lex trying to do a good thing and "save" his mother, his father's rage then set about forging the son into something truly horrible, a response with more foundation in fear and sadness than logic.

Like it or not, Lex Luthor is his father's son.

The idea of fathers' influences on their sons is a central tenet of the show, and one that's handled quite well. I'm sitting in my apartment, watching the show on tape (watching live TV is for suckers), and reflecting on how many similarities this flawed, battered, vengeful Lex shares with me (aside from the obvious bald head).

Like Lex, I have spent most of my life alone -- as an only child raised by elderly people, I've had more "free time" than I care to think about (given how much writing I have yet to do). Like Lex, I have been betrayed at every possible level by people I loved, by people who were entrusted with a duty to oversee my well-being and development (more on that in a bit).

Like Lex, I am ultimately become ruthless, willing to do literally anything to achieve my goals. Regardless of who has to be destroyed in the process. Even more fun, like my own biological father, I live a solitary life with little trust or openness to the people who should be closest to me. Like my emotional father, I sit in my recliner and shake my head at the world, bitterly trying to forge my way through with a modicum of comfort and dignity.

In my current state of zen amusement at the world, I'm able to find great comedy in these somewhat tragic similarities. Whenever Lex sought out love -- in the arms of a wife, in the forsaken affection of his father, and ultimately in the company of his best friend, a simple farm boy -- he was lied to, abused, circumvented and made a fool of. He grew up hounded by taunting ("Bald kid!" "Weirdo!" "Freak!") at every turn, without a place of sanctuary save the mad corners of his own brain. The unrequited quest for a father's love, combined with his endless frustrations at reaching out for something better and less horrible in his life ultimately created the world's finest super villain.

Whenever I sought out love -- in the arms of a wife, in the frosty affection of my great uncle/father figure, when I reached out to get to know my biological father's family, or when I trusted my mother's people to care for me after my great aunt and uncle died -- I was lied to, abused, circumvented and made a fool of. I grew up hounded by taunting ("Nerd!' "Ugly!" "Wimp!") at every turn, without a place of sanctuary save the mad corners of my own brain. My unrequited quest for external acceptance, combined with my continual frustrations at reaching out for something better and less horrible in my life ultimately created a man happy to kick a bad date out on the freeway, a man who gleefully would torture people trying to take care of me, a soul that has "no compassion, no remorse, nor is it clouded by the delusion of equality" (apologies to MeShell NdegeOcello).

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition Number Ninety-Nine: Trust is the biggest liability of all.

They may not all make so much sense, but when they get it right, whoo boy.

Let me tell you a couple of stories.

Last week I recovered a box of old papers and photos. In that box was a letter from a woman named Stephanie something (she didn't sign her last name, and I don't remember it) who was a Delta and attended Washington State University. I met her when my elder brother Heru Khuti sort of foisted her off on me. "She needs a friend," he said. "You two will like one another." Seems she called him a great deal, and was becoming something of a bother. Now, at the time, Heru Khuti was not just my elder brother in the rites of passage organization I'd virtually devoted my life to, but he was also my spiritual counselor and guide, and one of my closest friends. Someone I trusted implicitly.

You can probably tell this won't end well already, huh?

Anyhoo, so I start trading calls and what not with her, and she becomes aggressively flirtatious with me. Now, I'm younger than her and Heru, so I go to him for guidance. His memory of how that went and mine differ wildly, and many people have noted that my memories of those days are considerably more accurate than others because I have spent no energy trying to suppress them.

At the time, I asked Heru if he'd been involved with her at all (note the specific phrasing, another Lex hallmark) romantically or sexually. His response, and I quote, "Brother! No, not at all. Why would you even ask me that?" That was 1992 or so.

In an email dated April 30, 2004, he wrote, "In terms of the sex between us, she wouldn't take her clothes completely off because she didn't want me to stick it in. So we fooled around. I definitely was trying to f**k but she held out."

He then went on to try and brush past the topic as though he hadn't, well, lied to someone who virtually idolized him (one of my new sayings is "heroes are for suckers"). If this were an isolated incident, well, it might be a different thing. But it's not!

There were three older brothers in my rites of passage, and in due time they all made choices to either lie to me, selectively "withhold" information from me for their own profit and to the detriment of our friendship, or in the case of the one I'm not gonna bother going into detail about (because he's effectively divorced himself from all of us), purposely and knowingly sticking me with a bad check for $300 and expecting me to eat the loss.

That wasn't the second story. This is: the final member of this (now) unholy trinity was my eldest brother Inpu. There were a lot of years of bad blood between us over the first bruhaha between us, where he lied to me about a woman he'd had sexual relations with (oral, and oddly enough, while he was involved with his future wife, ha ha ha). He admitted to suppressing the memory and then spending years wondering why I was so twitchy around him. We finally settled that by him admitting his behavior in the circumstance was wholly foul and apologizing. No means of atonement, but he is my brother so I moved towards forgiveness.

So this year a couple of new things have popped up that basically let me know that the resurrected regard I felt for him was not reciprocal. First, he got tickets to see Prince in Vegas, but suspected he would not be able to use them as his job (he works for the Department of Justice, which is so funny on so many levels that I won't even go into it here). He got them so he and a woman he was in love with could go, but they broke up months before the concert. "If I can't find a way to go," said he, "I'll sell them to you at cost." I'm elated -- I have a variety of sources to get lodgings in Vegas, and I missed the LA show. Sounds great.

At first he's hell bent on using the tickets himself. "I'll fly from DC to Vegas if I have to," he said. I grudgingly can't deny that, and ask if I can tag along. He says he's gonna pick up some woman, as Prince tickets are a guarantee for sex. I shrug. That's not an argument I could have any beef with. But in the end, he gives the tickets to his brother Damone, because Damone picks his daughters up and drives them to his mother's house. "I gotta thank him for that somehow."

The CD burner at Inpu's house is there because of me. Inpu's first external hard drive, his first digital camera, all from me. I've scammed free tickets and music for him and his family for years and been basically adopted by them. Before he could get access to a certain resource, I provided him with it. His relationship with Damone, from his own words, has been less fruitful -- due to my somewhat newfound desire for discretion in events I didn't directly participate in, I'll not go into detail there, but suffice it to say Inpu has had a lot of unfavorable words for his blood brother, telling me on several occassions, "I'm closer to you than I am to him!"

I bristled at the decision, but I let it go. Then, fun of fun, I find out something else. There is an allegation that another friend of mine had a marital infidelity with a white girl who Inpu knows. I found this out independant of him. I mention it to him, and he said, "yeah, I knew months ago." Seems he didn't tell me largely because he wanted to save it in case he could get at my friend's very attractive wife. "I knew you knew him, so I didn't wanna tell you," he said. Again, not even his profit, but the possibility of his profit superceded maintenance of our friendship.

Right.

So I'm a lot more of a jackass now than I've been in -- literally -- years. Yes, the shadow of my failed marriage plays a part in that, but looking at things, that's merely a strand in a grander tapestry of tragic circumstance. But like Lex, I have to take responsibility for one key fact:

I let these things happen to me.

Had I never had any expectations of trust or loyalty for Inpu or Heru Khuti or Kef or my ex-wife or anybody, I couldn't have been disappointed. Had I been the lone wolf I was through most of my youth, using people instead of allying myself with them, I could have avoided a great deal of dissapointment. Had I not started thinking about "the glory of the team" and looking to do good things for people I care about, I would feel no sting at turns of fate. The most zealous adherent was the easiest to deceive. There's a fun question and answer section in Matt Groening's ingenious book Love is Hell which says, "Q: Is it possible that my lover could ever betray me? A: Who else would?" Substitute "lover" with "the name of anybody you trust" and it works just as well.

The Ferengi Rule of Acquisition I quote most often is number two hundred eighty five: "no good deed ever goes unpunished."

This is already starting to play itself out in my personal relationships. I've become a "good time Charlie" -- tons of fun in small doses, but considerably more toxic upon prolonged exposure. There's a character on the soon-to-be-finished TV series The Practice named Alan Shore, and I picked up a good quote from him recently. He was speaking to a young, idealistic woman who was interested in him, and said, "I have this way of making women feel wonderful ... but less than, in the end ..." I think I've got a little of that on me. I can see how it would be easy to fall in love with me, say, one day a week. I suppose I could keep the venom coursing in my veins at bay for that long. But, as my ex-wife once told me, after a while my loathing for carbon based life starts to bleed through the edges of my smiles, and most people get the idea that they are loathed amongst that carbon based life (most cases they're not -- if somebody is worth a regular dose of my time, I consider them above the masses of humanity that I have come to disrespect for their endless poor pattern recognition). I've often been told it's hard to be friends with me, more because of the fairly common streams of vitriol coming out of my head than my somewhat vexing emotional unavailability.

The depth and volume of my hatred has already overwhelmed some of the kindest spirits I've ever known, so it's not really much of a struggle for it to -- without my active involvement, honestly -- batter a normal person to pieces. Which is why most people don't see a lot of me.

There's been times I've missed being around my friends from rites of passage -- Daniel, Denzil, even Inpu. Part of me knows that the person I am is toxic in the kind of happy kid-raising lives they have. Part of me knows my largely nocturnal schedule is hard for people living "normal" lives to fit into. Another part of me wonders if the season for those relationships has simply passed. All relationships, after all, are temporary.

In the third season episode "Talisman," Lex confronts Clark at the end of the show about a Native American prophecy that shows a man falling from the stars (called "naman") to be a great power, and a person who was once his best friend will become his grandest enemy ("zegit"). Lex said, "his Naman guy is supposed to come from the stars, have the power of ten men, and shoot fire from his eyes, right? If one person could do all that, he'd be a formidable enemy. He could conquer the world. He could become a tyrant if no one kept him in check. So I've been thinking ... anybody who'd be willing to fight him would have to be pretty brave. Clark, did it ever occur to you that the hero of the story...is Zegit?"

In a way, I can still see a good thing through all of this -- I have rediscovered the ability to believe. I am fully able to believe in the experience and research I've gathered. It holds up under scrutiny. The Gospel of Lex Luthor, of standing firm even in the face of the "heroic" ideals of crazy talk like "trust" and "hope" and "faith" is well worth my time, and well suited to my temperment. In the same way I came to appreciate the order of the Empire over the goofy idealism of Luke Skywalker, perhaps it is the gruesome work of time, grinding me into the grumpy old man shouting for kids to get off his lawn. I am old enough to be comfortable in my own skin, to not feel any desire to apologize for or justify the way I am. The choices I made have forged me into a keen and sometimes harsh sword, but an honest one, one that cannot deny a greater sense of day-to-day contentment than I've ever had in my whole life.

Even better, I don't have some wholesome bulletproof extraterrestrial farm boy to stand in my way.