The Big "Fuck Off"

I originally published this post in the middle of the night on Wednesday the 25th (that was the 25th, wasn't it?). I came back the next day and deleted it. Perhaps I was being unreasonable. I was certainly in a bad mood. It had been a bad night (though it was gonna get worse, but I didn't know that yet). I closed with this: "I feel like the world just sent me a big FUCK OFF. And this is me sending it right back. I'm motherfucking done."

* * * * * * *

However, I am not, in fact, done. Not with this, anyway.

This post, in its rewritten form, is dedicated especially to the people here who actually, personally know me. If you don't, I don't know that this post will be interesting to you, but you're welcome to read it if you like.

When I got home after writing the deleted post I found a voice mail waiting for me. It was from a good friend who had seen me earlier that night. I thought she was calling to check up on me. I thought, "How sweet; she knows I'm in distress and wants to make sure I'm alright."

That, however, was not at all the point of her message. She had called to yell at me over this blog. She objected to her full name being used. I understand her concern in this area, and have deleted her Character page.

Mostly, though, she yelled about my characterization of another person. I've since deleted that reference, too, even though what it amounted to was that this person (not a friend; a former employer) was a kind and generous person who genuinely wanted everyone to be happy, but who had two character flaws that made him extremely difficult to work for. In other words, that he was more or less like every other business owner, only perhaps more so. And I provided examples, because you don't just want to say something like that without being able to back it up. Also, I said that the manager was high-strung and obsessed over things; however, in the very next sentence I said that I liked her and hoped that, once we weren't working together anymore, we could be friends again (and in fact we hung out together and watched the basketball game Friday night, so apparently we can).

I don't know exactly what my friend objected to on this page (it wasn't a post here; it was a Set page you had to link to), because after a few seconds of her yelling at me when I was already upset, I deleted the message. That's piling on; I didn't feel like being kicked when I was down.

But apparently she's REALLY pissed off. And so, as I understand it, she's been going around telling everyone what's been said about them on this blog and trying to make me a whole bunch of new enemies. I don't really understand this; it doesn't seem to me like the sort of thing friends do to each other. But I've long since given up trying to argue with, or even really understand or explain, this particular friend, especially when she's in a temper.

When I first heard of this, I remembered an incident from back when I was travelling around the country. I had kept up a correspondence with a very beautiful young lady back home named Jennifer. We wrote each other about once a week. One of my best friends, Andrea (Anj, who I'd lived with for a while) was also very close to her, and I had filled in as a sort of temp with a band made up of my friend and former band-mate Kenny and several of Jennifer's friends.

Jennifer sent me a letter telling me, among other things, that Andrea's pet ferrets had died, and that I should move back home and join her friends' band. I replied that I didn't think her friends were going to be a very successful band and I wasn't interested. About the ferrets I said that I had always hated them, because they had a bad habit of biting me, especially early in the morning when I was hung over; and that although I was very sad for Anj, I personally wasn't gonna miss those damn ferrets one bit.

Jennifer, in a fit of pique, showed the relevant portions of this letter to her band friends and to Anj, which got me in a bit of trouble. Anj forgave me once I'd apologized. The band and I had never been close friends (except Kenny, who wasn't mad anyway), but I apologized to them, too. And I told myself that I'd learned a valuable lesson: never put anything in a letter that you wouldn't want the whole world to read, because you can never be sure they won't.

So, when I first heard about all this, I thought, "Well, guess I didn't learn my lesson." But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this isn't the same situation at all. In the first place, this isn't a letter; it's a weblog, for fuck's sake. I not only knew the whole world might read this, I was hoping that they would. So it wasn't as though I had any expectation of privacy anyway.

More important, I didn't think I'd need it. I will admit that I've been mean to some people on this blog: to the woman who chastised me for smoking at Hank's; to the frat boys at the Union after mysogynistic episodes; to people who babble about politics without understanding politics, etc. But to my friends, I think I've been very kind on this blog. I have pointed out various quirks in their makeup; it makes them more interesting characters to people reading this who don't know them (and there are, believe it or not, many people like that). But I do it gently and with great affection. Any serious character flaws I ignore. I love these people very much, and any reasonable person, I think, reading these posts and the Character pages that they link to, could see that I loved them, and could tell exactly why.

I think this is best illustrated by something I noticed when Christy was talking to me about the current mood about my writing at the bar where this friend works: the people who had read the blog thought this was getting blown out of proportion (Bader called it "bullshit"), but the people who haven't are getting angry, which leaves me unwelcome in my two favorite places. Given what I wrote in the last paragraph, I have to think that if this stuff makes them mad, then my friend is misrepresenting the contents of these pages to them. And, since the people involved trust her and are now mad at me, they probably never will read them, which robs me of my only effective defense. Clever girl.

Still, I'm going to try to get everyone to read this for themselves and then decide whether I've been unkind to them or not. This post is especially dedicated to those people. Read all the posts on this blog, 'cause that's where most of the stories are. Also, if I've written a Character page about you , it will be here: http://ogrecharacters.blogspot.com/ (temporarily the links in the posts will be out of order). It usually only shows one post, but I've set it, temporarily, to show all the posts on it; and if I have time later I'll alphabetize the list. Read these things, and tell me if you think I've been unfair to you. You can call me, come see me, or e-mail me (my e-mail adress appears on my profile), and I will be happy to discuss any concerns you might have. If worst comes to worst, I'll delete your Character page altogether, like I did for the person who made that late-night phone call.

One thing I am absolutely not going to do is to stop writing this thing. Like I said in the first-ever post, I created it by accident, but I've tried to do a good job. And you know what? I think I have. I think that some of these posts have been damned entertaining, and that I'm getting better as I go. I haven't written on a regular basis in probably seven or eight years, and I'd forgotten how much I enjoy it. Now that I'm writing again, I am not going to give it up. I hope no one (else) minds.