When it comes to connecting with friends (and strangers) online, I've learned two things. Almost every queer in Nashville has a My Space page, and nearly everyone I went to high school with, just off the rez here in Canada, has a page on Facebook.
What's odd is that I can only find a handful of gays on Facebook and nobody from this area seems to care much for MySpace.
Do you think this might be a gay-straight thing? Of course, there are straight people on My Space. From what I see, though, My Space is filled with creative types, I-have-something-to-say kinda' people (and musicians), while the main "headline" photo at the top of many of my friends' Facebook pages tend to be of ... my friends' kids.
Okay. I'm gonna take my gay hat off for a minute: if I'm looking to reconnect with someone I knew ten or fifteen years ago, how the hell is a picture of some snotty kid gonna get me any closer to that?
Am I lying: if you're single, then you know like I do that a kid is a kid is a kid. They're all the same. But I digress.
What I like most about Facebook is the way you can send a quick message or, as they say, "write on (someone's) wall." In fact, it's the only way I can exchange e-mail with my friend Jodi lately. I also like that you can browse other people's friends-list. That way I get to see how much people have changed--it's most enjoyable for the people I wasn't necessarily friends with back then, and those I likely won't have much in common with now, for that matter.
What I like most about My Space is the blog capability, though, it seems many people don't use theirs. What I like least about My Space is the way almost everyone's page opens with music playing and, ten times out of ten, it's something I either don't like or don't need to hear. But that's just me.
Speaking of blogs, I found one from an old Belmont classmate of mine. If memory serves, the two of us never had a class together but I do remember thinking back then that she was very pretty.
Well she moved away, got married, started publishing a blog about her life and now I'm in love with her.
Does that ever happen to you? It happened once last year, too. I joined that "grapefruit diet" study at Vanderbilt (and when I didn't lose any weight I totally jacked up the results, by the way), and although I met with this one specific nurse only twice, each time I had to stop myself one breath away from, you know, making a move. In my mind, I was thinking, "I could totally try going straight for you." We're absolute strangers, yet there was this unspoken chemistry when we talked. And flirted.
And that's what I remember about this other girl when I read her blog. That is, until she starts talking about God.
I don't know about you but when I went to Belmont I used to get so frustrated by all the religious talk. Let me clarify this. What frustrated me was that I felt like I was at a school filled with students who only recited religious language; there was rarely evidence that anyone actually thought about or meaningfully gained value from their belief.
So guess what I read on girlfriend's blog the other day? "Back then I only said things and acted the way people expected me to. And I feel guilty now."
This reminds me of another blog, this one from a boy we both went to school with. He was cute then and I'll be damned if he ain't cute now.
The more I read the things he wrote, the more I convinced myself, "This man"--single and in his 30s--"is a closeted homosexual."
I damned myself for moving away because, as I sat before my computer the other day, I entirely devised the plan I'd use to stalk him.
Anyway, I read and read and read, and more and more I thought "gay, gay, gay" until I got to one point that he made. He said he was proud of himself because over the previous while he'd "asked out" more girls than ever.
I sat back in my chair, defeated, because then I knew what was going on. I've been here before. He promised to "talk more about it in later posts" but of course he didn't.
The one thing that confused me more than anything at that Baptist university was my seemingly unending search to figure out the difference--the subtle, amazingly subtle difference--between a closeted gay and an inexperienced Christian.
