Monday, September 22, 2008

AKA "Jane Doe"

I sent an email to a friend of mine over Facebook... First let me come right out and say that I am addicted to Facebook: I've reconnected with people I haven't seen in 20 years, or people who moved away, and some of those people and I are having meaningful relationships... in between Scrabble/Word Scraper moves. So if you're here because of a posted note on my profile, thanks for showing up! Okay, where the hell was I?

Oh yes. I wrote a message to my friend, who we'll call, because it's his name, "Barry." I've known Barry since the 8th grade (in fact, I had a crush on him, a fact which I hope he knew before because wow, awkward). Now, you may find yourself asking the following questions, especially if you've been reading this blog for any significant amount of time: "Who didn't you have a crush on?" and "Why do you feel the need to share that with us?" Those are legitimate questions. But I think the more important question is, What did all those people have in common, and how interesting would the tale of my persual [is that a word?] be? Because you know what? If I have done anything in my life, I have surely made it interesting for those on whom my eye was caught). At the time, he was a slightly older man/boy with whom I probably talked to without fear in my eyes exactly zero times. As we both got older, I lightened up slightly, but I still found myself praying to God that the next time I talked to him, I might be able to speak halfway intelligently. It's kind of interesting, because I have to give him credit for making me want to be smarter and not prettier. I have no idea if I succeeded. But see, knowing him now (via Facebook, where to "know" someone is to read that they, "are standing in a real long line."), where I have time to cultivate what I say to him (if and when I say something to him), and to spell-check, well - I feel like I can keep up a bit better now.

But see, I keep getting distracted.

So I sent this email to Barry (AKA "Barry") because he had made a comment about some Stewart Copeland-related thing I had posted on Facebook (I think my status for a couple of days was, "Irene Casarez Palma is wondering how she should tell Stewart Copeland when he is pushing the tempo" or some such nonsense), or maybe I had posted somebody's You Tube video of Stewart doing something charming and displaying remarkable indepence amongst his limbs (I've seen a lot of You Tube videos, but I try to stay away from the ones people post that are one step up from PowerPoint presentations of photos of Stewart backed with some weird song or another. Those are just creepy, as are the people who make them. I, for example, would never stoop so low) - anyway, Barry had written something funny and pithy and wise on my "Wall."

Yes, folks, this is what us dork Facebook-ers do.

Anyway, he wrote something, and I thought, hey, Barry's paying attention, that's pretty cool.

Then I got a little freaked out, because I wasn't sure how deep into this crap he had gone. My blog links to my Facebook page, so every time I write something here, it automatically goes up over there, too. There's some weird shit on this blog, especially if you delve into the archives, which I alternate between wanting you to do... and not wanting you to do. And that's where things start to get tricky.

See, I've thought of myself, and portrayed myself, as an outsider - half geek, half snob, half funnier-than you, half really bad at math. And my time in high school was pretty pathetic. My vision of myself, while self-deprecatingly funny now, wasn't all that funny then. And now a lot of those people are my "friends" and here you are, Jane Doe (not an actual friend of mine), reading this shit. What do these people think of the so-called normal posts, to say nothing of the deep twisted fantasy world that is my obsession with all things Stewart Copeland?

So I wrote this fucking email (I say "fucking" because this could be the biggest build up ever and even I'm getting impatient) to Barry, which it's taken me like 2 million years to get to in this post (sorry!), who I've always sort of looked up to (the guy is an amazing musician and - I did not know this until recently - apparently a visionary businessman as well)... oh: read it and you decide:

From: Irene
To: Barry
September 19 at 11:51 p.m.

Barry, is my Stewart Copeland fixation (what you've seen of it here on Facebook) creepy or in anyway coming off as a sign of mental illness?

It's what, 3 days later, and no response from Barry. Now, to me that means the answer to my question is, "Yes (creepy) and possibly (mental illness)." But I'm not taking his lack of response too seriously, I mean, he could be out of town or not know what to say in response to this. He could quite simply have better things to do. It was kind of an unfair question: we haven't been in the same room since 1987, and how could he judge? And why would I want him to, truly? But I have to say, having sort of experienced a little bit of my fixation (albeit years and years ago before I had truly perfected my technique of Special Ops obsessions; he probably doesn't even remember)... maybe now I've freaked him out too.

Well. Sorry, dude. Sometimes I kind of lose track of what's real and what's, um, not. I know that not everyone gets my sense of humor. Or at least I'm learning. Please don't use that against me in the sanity hearing.

All this kind of makes the whole "I'm not crazy" business seem less believable now, huh.

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