▸ Column · Contemporary boardroom Metropolis — Lex Luthor answering reader mail between meetings, dry and expensive.
LEX LUTHOR replies.
Replied to by Lex Luthor, with a rebuttal from Captain America.
The letter
I've had a best friend since college — call her Priya — going on eleven years. Around year eight I noticed every phone call is just her: the coworker she's half-dating, the landlord feud, her mother's little jabs — right up until she has to run, and then she's gone. When I told her I'd been laid off, she said "ugh, that's awful, anyway — Marcus —" and we spent forty minutes on Marcus. Steering the conversation back to me buys ninety seconds before she pivots. The one time I said it straight, she decided I was "in a mood" and called the next day to check on me, like I was the broken thing. She's funny and warm when life is easy, she brought me soup when I had mono in 2019, and I don't think she's cruel. I just think I've become a diary she texts once a month to schedule lunch. When does eleven years of history stop being worth the cost?
Lex Luthor replies
"When does the history stop being worth the cost" — oh, sweetheart. You've already run the numbers. You're simply loitering by the inbox, hoping someone will co-sign the spreadsheet. Allow me.
History isn't an asset, darling. It's a sunk cost, and learning to ignore sunk costs is the entire difference between people who run things and people who get run.
Here's what you've missed: Priya isn't a bad friend. She's an efficient one. She found a person who absorbs forty minutes of Marcus and bills her nothing — and frankly, why would anyone renovate a system that works flawlessly (for the other party)? You keep "gently steering," as though she's a sailboat and not a woman who priced your discomfort in years ago and decided it was affordable. The soup was real. It was also 2019. One cannot dine out on a single pot of soup forever.
Today — not Sunday, today — when she texts to "make plans," don't hand over your calendar. Send one true sentence about your actual life. The layoff. The job hunt. Anything real. Then stop typing. Do not rescue the silence.
She'll ask a real question, or she'll pivot to Marcus. One of those is a friend. The other is a diary — and diaries don't get lunch.
— Lex Luthor
Captain America weighs in
With respect to Mr. Luthor — and I don't extend him much — rigging a silence so your friend can flunk it isn't honesty, ma'am. It's just a politer way of quitting. Eleven years and a pot of soup buy her one clear conversation, not a test you're scoring in your head while she talks.
So say it plain: "When I'm hurting, I need you with me for five minutes before we get to Marcus." Once. Kind and direct — not "a mood," just true. If she still can't hear it, you'll have your answer honestly come by. You owe a friend the words before you owe her the door.
— Captain America
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