The horrible things I never write about

The men’s dressing room at an upscale retailer serves as a favorite assignation spot for supposedly happily married Atlantans with wandering eyes. Doesn’t sound very romantic but what it lacks in ambience it makes up for in convenience. Guys don’t try on clothes as frequently as ladies do, so the space is often available.

A prominent businessperson once kept guests waiting downstairs while they snorted lines in an upstairs bathroom. Another once sat in the dark for days, promoting the myth that a transformer somewhere had blown rather than admit they couldn’t pay the power bill.

There’s a fluffy lapdog in Atlanta whose diamond collar cost more than most people’s cars.

You’d be surprised at how often people tell me secrets like I’m a priest and not a reporter. I’m in the business of sharing information, not hiding it. Court filings, incident reports and property records are my best friends. So I’m not sure why people tell me stuff — salacious but not exactly bulletins that would serve a compelling public interest — in strictly off-the-record confidence. Maybe it feels like a risky thrill, like skydiving.

There are things I wish I could unknow: The degrading lengths people will go to in futile attempts to keep a dying marriage on life support. The casual but wounding meanness people inflict on each other. The hidden health problems and financial disasters.

On the other hand, not all untold truths are entirely terrible. There’s an understated businessperson in Atlanta who quietly paid for the college educations of a friend’s kids after the family hit hard times. A clutch of women rallied around a sudden widow whose deceptively broke husband left her penniless, so she wouldn’t become homeless.

But even the nice secrets I keep are secrets. It feels professionally hypocritical sometimes, although I couldn’t breach these confidences even if I wanted to. There’s no paperwork I can FOIA that would document the dressing room that has become a destination for hidden romance, and who’s going to talk about it on the record?

What I can share: Be nice, as often as you can. You never know what private pain people dwell in. Too often, I do.