TWO SIDES.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I wanted to speak to you tonight as my own kind of State of The Union address. People in the streets have been divided in their opinion of me as of late. Some understand why I have made the choices that I have, but for some it is harder to see the wider picture. Closed-minded, squinted eyes, they stumble through their tunnel vision life, never asking the right questions.

They call me a liar, they call me a disgrace. They call me two-faced.

They think I have sold my soul to the devil for the sake of money. And that’s funny to me, the parallels they don’t even know they’re drawing. They consider me two-faced for the sake of money, and yet I’ve always compared this situation to that of a coin. There are always two sides to every story, including this one, just like there are always two sides to every coin.

The problem is, if you’re really studying the coin, taking it at face value, you can only ever see one side at a time. Heads. Tails. It doesn’t matter. Turn and turn the currency as they may, those with tunnel vision cannot see both sides of the coin. But me? I don’t look at the coin at face value. I look at the coin and think of all the different things that coin could do, and then heads and tails don’t matter. I can see both sides because the side of the coin doesn’t affect how it’s spent.

Heads I’m a good guy, tails I’m a bad guy. Who cares how I look if the world is a better place at the end of it all? So I have made my peace with sometimes flipping tails. I’ve made peace that not everyone will think I’m the good guy. But there is one man who has not made his peace with his own coin.

Edward Newton.

His coin is different than most. His coin always seems to land heads up. He gets what he wants each step of the way with a flash of a smirk and flick of the wrist sending the coin tumbling. I thought for the longest time that his coin had come from the riddler’s special box of tricks, that maybe it was a double headed coin. I wondered if that was the trick I was missing. But I have come to realise I was wrong.

His coin is just like anyone elses, but vandalised. Wash away the clutter and the tails is still there, he’s just gotten so good at hiding it over the years. Heads is just the Newton he wants people to see. The Edward Newton that charms his way out of a mental institution. The Edward Newton that found his way back into society as if nothing had happened.

But it’s the tails he’s less sure of. The side he hides. The darkness within him. I’ve come to terms with my own darkness, Newton, but when you flip your coin this week, what will it be? Heads or tails? Truth or fiction?