Revenge: a serving suggestion

This is one of those posts that simply has to be pub­lished now — this second, this minute, hot off the meta­phor­ical presses — else it will lan­guish forever in the ‘entries that dare not speak their name’ file.

I never used to under­stand that par­tic­u­lar pro­verb — “revenge is a dish best served cold” — until I dis­covered how people plan their revenge metic­u­lously, down to the last detail. Then it began to make sense. Revenge isn’t a dish best served cold — it just hap­pens to have gone cold because it’s been stand­ing around in the kit­chen too long being fussed over and hav­ing a ridicu­lous array of gar­nish added to it.

But to me, revenge is a crime — although I’m not sure that ‘crime’ is always an appro­pri­ate descrip­tion — of pas­sion. Revenge is the kind of over­whelm­ing primal urge that makes your blood boil, turns your throat dry, drives your hands to form such tight fists that your fin­ger­nails dig into your palms, and sud­denly brings a cold, clammy sweat to your brow. You don’t think about revenge in any logical way, because it’s one of those rare moments where the thoughts, although very often con­fused, are already there in your mind.

“I know exactly what to do. It’s so simple. Why didn’t I see it before?”

Revenge isn’t some­thing we like to talk about, how­ever, because it’s born of such dark, dis­rep­ut­able emo­tions. We don’t like to think of ourselves act­ively tak­ing revenge. Ideally, we want to believe that we’ll for­give and for­get, turn the other cheek, say it’s all water under the bridge, and a host of other such banal clichés. And even if we can’t be quite that saintly and self­less, we like to think that we’d just accept that a wrong has been done to us, and put up with it without too much com­plaint. We don’t like it, no, but we’ll just accept it. These things hap­pen. It’s a fact of life. Please add your own homily here.

I sense you’re becom­ing a little uneasy with this topic, so let me explain if not my reas­ons — no, def­in­itely not my reas­ons — then at least some back­ground as to why I am dwell­ing on it.

Revenge has been part of my life’s land­scape from the moment I was old enough to grasp the concept. I regret to say that this was almost entirely thanks to my par­ents, whose tem­pes­tu­ous mar­ried life seemed to be played out through acts of revenge — mostly petty, but revenge non­ethe­less. Even­tu­ally, once I stopped get­ting so upset by these fre­quent twists and turns in fam­ily life, I became grimly fas­cin­ated by them. I would even be dragged into the plot­ting, mostly by my mother against my father. But I was becom­ing instilled with the need for revenge in my per­sonal life too, out­side the fam­ily home, and I would spend many after­noons in classrooms lost in my day­dreams, plot­ting how to get my own back on the latest friend or acquaint­ance whom I firmly believed had treated me badly or done wrong by me.

Was I a pre­co­cious child? Well, what do you think?

By my late teens, I found myself in the for­tu­nate pos­i­tion where I could shine an aca­demic light on the sub­ject. I stud­ied plays about revenge — Jac­o­bean revenge tra­gedies, in par­tic­u­lar. Revenge is often one of the corner­stones of a good dra­matic plot, after all. Oh, this was more like it — I could have my strange, dark obses­sion val­id­ated by mak­ing it part of my A-level course or my degree. For the lat­ter, I wrote an essay that was not only far, far too long, but per­haps strayed a little too wor­ry­ingly from the core mater­ial I had been given to work with, and into the realms of my ima­gin­a­tion. Or, at least, that’s what I thought on read­ing the fin­ished item, but hand­ing it to my tutor any­way because the dead­line for sub­mis­sion was too close to allow for revi­sions. To say I was sur­prised upon receiv­ing an A grade would be an under­state­ment; the tutor respons­ible com­men­ted on my deep under­stand­ing of the psy­cho­lo­gical motiv­a­tions of the char­ac­ters, and in turn I secretly hoped and sup­posed that his mind was on a sim­ilar wavelength to mine.

So what you want to know is: have I? Have I ever taken revenge?

No, I don’t believe I have. Like many traits I’ve inher­ited from my par­ents, this is one that I keep under closely-guarded lock and key because it fright­ens me. I don’t want to put it into prac­tice. Ever. And besides, I wouldn’t have the nerve: some­times, you see, I am an emo­tional coward.

This doesn’t mean, how­ever, that I don’t still think about revenge. Because I do. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I do. I’m not so dif­fer­ent, in some ways, from that insec­ure, sol­it­ary, thought­ful and pre­co­cious child — lost in my day­dreams, plot­ting how to get my own back on the latest per­son whom I firmly believe has treated me badly or done wrong by me. The only dif­fer­ence now is that the classroom has been replaced by the dark­ness of my bed­room, late at night, as I stare up at the ceil­ing and watch the arcs of light formed by the passing cars outside.

Revenge, then, is most def­in­itely not a dish best served cold. Too many things can go wrong, or you’ll end up talk­ing your­self out of it as you make your long, drawn-out plans. Based on many years of exper­i­ence, my advice is that you deal out your revenge whilst it’s burn­ing in your heart and fever­ishly occupy­ing your mind. Strike while the iron’s hot. Don’t think, just act.

Except: no.

No, don’t seek revenge at all. Keep those thoughts between you and the night, and don’t let them get even so much as a moment­ary glimpse of day­light. Just as viol­ence breeds viol­ence, revenge only breeds more revenge, and even­tu­ally it will eat away at your soul.