so while everybody else is oohing and aahing

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i'm thinking about the breathtaking, spectacularly choreographed war these fuckers are gonna throw for us one of these days.

it's a sickness

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the other day a co-worker was lamenting over some horrific occurrence she had recently endured, and, rather than commiserate, my first thought was, "lucky bitch--this happened to me, i'd have blog-fodder for weeks."

[and look--i still managed to get a post out of it]

thanks a lot, rss

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ever seen a picture where some guy's sitting there smiling for the camera, completely oblivious to the fact that one of his balls is dangling outta one leg of his shorts for all the world to see? well, now i know how he feels.

yesterday i published a post, came back later and decided it was lame, reworked it, re-published it, decided it was still lame (i mean, nobody really needs a discourse from me on levels of anonymity on the internet, do they?), and took it back to "draft" mode.

it's gone, right?

wrong--it may have disappeared from my actual blog but it's still out there all over the place; hell, i got a comment on it this morning.

and how can this be, you ask? well, unless you're as internet-dumb as i was up until about an hour ago, it's no mystery: it's all due to the magic of rss.

yeah, yeah, yeah, i know i should keep up with developments, but the truth is, i don't. i still read my blogs the old-fashioned way--i click over to each one every day, see if there's something new, and if not i move on to the next one. and while i was vaguely aware of rss and how it enabled folks to subscribe to various sites--and while i knew my blog was rss-subscribable--i hadn't really given much thought to the implications behind this technology.

until today, that is--when judi tried to comment on a post after i thought i had taken it down--and i decided it was time to set up a google reader account, subscribe to my own blog and see it the way many of you do.

and holy shit, was that a shock--seems that when you're rss-enabled and hit "publish," it really thinks you mean it, and you can't take it back.

see, i've always assumed that, unlike commenting, as an actual blogger i had an infinite number of do-overs; hell, i don't even really ever start to edit a piece until i've published it and read it over in finished form--that's when shit starts popping out at me that needs to be fixed. and then, compulsive perfectionist that i am, i'll go back and edit, re-publish, re-read and repeat the process indefinitely until i'm satisfied.

and now i'm thinking this must annoy the living fuck outta my subscribers if every time i re-publish a post it shows up on their rss as an update.

but the bigger problem to me is: i can't tell you how many times i've dashed something off and published it impulsively (i.e., drunkenly), only to read it over when better judgment returns and take it back to "draft" status--usually early in the a.m.--before anybody might possibly ever read it but me.

yeah--or so i thought until today.

what i found out scrolling through the rss-feed of my blog was, there's all kinds of shit out there that i never intended for anybody to see--including, for instance, this post (which i had taken down because it was too long day's journey into night for even this blog). but hell, it's out there, everybody's read it, so it's going back into the blog--along with yesterday's half-ass submission.

i haven't gone back any further yet to see what other atrocities from my past await me (i'm a little afraid to, actually--i'll pour a stiff one and do it tonight).

and please turn away while i tuck my balls back in, willya?

degrees of anonymity

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[i know this post is so 2005, but hey--i was late to the party.]

i got some really great, thought-provoking comments to my last post--which (as such things tend to go around here) leads me to this one.

in an increasingly un-private world, the web is one of the few places left where one can still run, hide and completely reinvent oneself--and this is especially true in the blogosphere. from the get-go, everybody has to make a decision: how out-there do they wanna be?

four basic choices:

1. totally anonymous. this blogger keeps his* real and blog-world completely separate; due to the total freedom from inhibition afforded by such anonymity, such blogs are often very controversial for one reason or another.

2. partially anonymous. while his true identity is kept outta the blogosphere, this blogger lets select friends from his real world (and select people he meets online) in on the secret.

i generally find that the most interesting blogs fall into the following categories:

3. partially out-there. this blogger writes as himself--his face and at least some elements of his identity are known to all--but is selective as to what parts of his life he's willing to share with his readers.

4. totally out-there. this guy is open to an extraordinary degree, and lets the chips fall where they may--such blogs, at their best, combine all the best elements of a controversial type-1 blog with a quality of authenticity that the former can't even approach. i know very few blogs of this type (that are readable, anyway).

and then--as in every continuum--there's all kinds of degrees in between, bloggers evolve and things change all the time.

i of course am a type 2. i considered going the type-1 route in the interests of being even more open, but decided against it for a couple reasons: first, because i thought that sharing the blog with certain friends might deepen and enhance those relationships; and second, because i knew that having a few people from my real life looking over my shoulder would be a surefire way to keep me honest. and so far, both have worked out pretty well.

and while, as noblesavage pointed out in his comment, it's true that many blogs are nothing more than glossy sales brochures for their authors, i've always been an underseller. even in the recent posts about the little house, in which i'm ostensibly blowing my own horn, in retrospect they seem more self-deprecating than anything else--but then, i guess that's being authentic to my nature (ok, my sober nature).

once i'm done with this blog, i'd like to be able to look back at it in my dotage and (a) see a tangible improvement in the quality of the writing and storytelling over the course of its life; and (b) recognize those posts in which i talk about myself as being reasonably accurate, well-rounded explorations of my views, character and feelings as i see them--the good and the bad--rather than just some glorified presentation of how i wish my life had been.

that's not asking too much, is it?

[update: for the record, this post has been reworked since its publication yesterday (yeah, i do reserve that right). trust me, i spared you from lameness.]

_________________
* sorry if i offended any womyn--you know i mean you too.

story of marcus

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truth be told, i haven't thought about marcus in awhile--there's pain wrapped up in that particular recollection--but recent events in the gay blogosphere (plus a few cocktails) have brought it all back, and prompted me to tell his story tonight.

see, marcus was a young friend of mine who died a few years ago.

we met in one of the various "men 4 older men" aol chatrooms in maybe 2003. back then, i was fairly new to the whole online thing and would lurk in one chatroom or another while i did other things and wait for people to come to me. and while i never participated in the chat in any of these rooms (most of the time it was boring as hell), i'd keep an eye out for flurries of interest.

and increasingly, i came to notice the presence of this pale, cute, overly-skinny 16-year-old english kid (as per his profile and picture--for the life of me i can no longer remember his screen name) who started to dominate the chatrooms through his sheer audacity and quick wit. he'd come in, guys would hit on him, he'd dispatch 'em left and right with quick, cruel indifference--it was fun to watch.

and then one night he IM'd me--something like: "i've seen you around forever--why haven't you ever hit me up?"

i thought a second, fired back, and the game was on.

i love power-IM'ing as much as i love anything in life--that quick back-and-forth is perfectly suited to my skills and sensibilities, and i'm good at it; in fact, you'll seldom find me happier than when i'm shitfaced and have three or four simultaneous shotgun-chats going, each of 'em thinking they've got my full attention (what can i say, it's my idea of the perfect video game).

and marcus--even though he was young, he was up to the challenge like no one i've ever met, regardless of age; his mind was so facile and quick (my god, we had some great chats--i only wish i'd saved 'em). and thus, we became fast friends.

and after awhile, it became more personal--he gradually dropped the clever, hard-shell persona and let me in on what was really happening in his life--the pace slowed, and the IM's became emails.

and that's when i started to care.

over time, in torturous bits and pieces, he told me about his life--he lived in an upscale neighborhood in kent, outside of london. his father was indifferent, his mother was preoccupied with his two younger siblings, and he himself was sick--really sick. marcus wasn't sure if he was gay or not, but apparently the decision had been made for him--a teacher at his school had started molesting him when he was 12, and now he was not only HIV+ but had full-blown AIDS.

and it wasn't like his was of the drug-resistant variety--it was more like, he wouldn't take his fucking meds when he was supposed to. and he did other stupid, impulsive, self-destructive things he'd describe to me in detail--because, like any kid, he thought he'd live forever. which, of course, enraged me--i would rail and lecture him and demand that he stay home and not go to raves and quit fucking around.

and this went on for awhile, and of course he didn't listen--and he got sicker and sicker.

and i got more and more worried--hell, i even entertained idle fantasies of flying over there and slapping sense into him. but it never came to that.

because, in late august 2005, marcus died.  and his death affected me in a way i'd never been affected before.

see, here's the deal with me: i have what are in the pop-psych vernacular referred to as "intimacy issues." for whatever reason, it's somehow easier for me to get close to someone who's safely half a world away than focus on the real flesh-and-blood relationships in my life--and i guess i'd gotten closer to marcus than i'd realized. and when he ceased to exist, it wasn't simple grief i felt; it was more of a new (for me, anyway) hybrid emotion composed of loss and anger--and lots of it.

because marcus didn't die the way you think--unless, of course, you're way ahead of me already.

no, he died when one of his friends emailed me with the bombshell that "marcus" was in actuality a 20-year-old transgendered female who resided not in london, but in seattle--and i, among several others, had been very effectively played for over two years.

later when i calmed down, i emailed "marcus" and asked him/her why he/she had felt the need to carry out and maintain such an elaborate charade for so long. and i never got a satisfactory answer; what i did get was an apology and a light-hearted request to let bygones be bygones, and to allow our friendship to continue.

and even though i sensed the pain and the need behind her breezy tone--by then i knew her well, even though i didn't--i had to decline; i couldn't get past the betrayal of trust (or, truth be told, my bruised ego).

the irony, of course, was that had she been upfront in the beginning, we could have been such great friends then and now--regardless of external gender, she was still the sharp, sweet, quick-witted soul i had been so taken by and had come to care so much about.

and even three years later, i sometimes think back on those chats (and the dark, intimate pain of those emails)--and i wonder how he/she is faring in this world.

* * * * *

so what brought this post on, you ask?

because apparently this wasn't an isolated incident--you want a fascinating study in human pathology, go read joe's, father tony's and will's (7/27/08) recent accounts and recollections of nicky cooper, the young, handsome forest ranger/firefighter/adoptive father who sucked in untold multitudes via "his" sensitively-written, ethereally beautiful blog. seriously--it's more than a little mind-blowing.

and it makes me wonder just how many more nickys and marcuses there are out there.

[and in closing: even though i know that at times mkf may seem too good to be true to you mere mortals, trust me--all this is real (like, if even a monkey with a typewriter was making this shit up he couldn't come up with something better).]