Love Is Not What You Think It Is: On Internet Friendships

I have a regular date, every Sunday, for the next seven weeks.  It is a very romantic date.
It is with someone I have never met.
See, I’ve known my friend K. for years, having friended her on LiveJournal, and we’re both big Game of Thrones fans.  So when the Game of Thrones TV series began, we watched it together, texting each other snarky comments about the actors, asking whether that happened in the book or it’s an HBO invention, wondering what episode Character X is going to get knocked off.  This started off as a “Hey, we’re both here,” and evolved into a weekly event where, after a late dinner where I missed Game of Thrones but missed K. more, the date has become unstoppable.  Sunday at 9:00 is when I snuggle up in Gini’s lap and give my time to K.
And it’s very, and oddly, romantic.  I’ve seen pictures of K., and she’s a cutie. (And not just the model-quality, posed photos – we have a habit of sending each other “Look at the hair I woke up with!” texts.)  We text each other when we’re down, giving advice on romantic entanglements and career stuff.  I’ve even got pre-approval to smooch K. should we ever meet, which seems unlikely, as she’s a thousand miles away and neither of us can really afford to travel (or at least I can’t afford the vacation time between cons and family get-togethers).
Yet K. and I feel very loving towards each other during Game of Thrones.  We text hugs to each other during the week, but GoT is the one time of week where we’re completely synchronous – most of our interactions involve tossing out a text or email, to be read whenever, but come Sunday we’re both seated in the same space, as close as we can get to being next to each other.
I didn’t realize how strange this all was until last night, when K. missed our date because she was in the ER.  Some kind of infection.  She was too sick to text, nauseous, sad.  And I worried about her the whole night as I would for any close friend, checking my phone at every buzz and waking up to instantly check Facebook for status updates.
She’s all right, thankfully.  But the point is, K. is a closer friend to me than many of my real-life friends.  I’ve certainly shared more emotionally with her than I have with a bunch of people I see on a semi-regular basis.  I was deeply concerned with her well-being.  And if she’d really needed me to, for some bizarre reason, I would have flown out to see her.
That’s not an Internet friendship; it’s a friendship.
And I think of all the people who go, “Well, you can’t really know someone until you meet them,” and maybe that’s just part of the way I communicate with people – but the folks who I’ve corresponded with extensively have inevitably been as I knew them.  Maybe people are strangely fronting on the ‘net, or just drawn to the wrong people, but by the time I’ve emailed with someone back and forth for a year, I have a pretty accurate idea of what they’re like.
And I think of all those folks who think, “Well, they’re just internet friends, they’re not real,” and I feel very sad for them.  What a small world they must live in, to have to touch and sniff someone to feel connected to them.  To be restricted to such a physical, mundane quality before they can clasp hands and trust.
Me?  I feel blessed in that I can use my intellect to find wonderful people and connect to them with this intensity through nothing but words.  I have many, many wondrous friends within a dinner’s reach of me in Cleveland – and that is a delight, as Cleveland is full of so many grand people that I can’t possibly hope to see them all with the amount of time they deserve, and so I spend my days constantly feeling that I should be getting out more. I remember the days when I was stuck in an apartment in Ypsilanti with no real-life friends, and remember how isolated and lonely that made me feel, having only words for friends.
But I also have a lot of friends who are pretty much only available to me through words – and yes, I may meet up with my sweeties periodically, but they live in different towns.  And so what tethers us is flurries of texts and emails and silly pictures.  That’s real.  That’s real enough to cheer me up when I’m down, to rouse my ardor with the right set of beautiful words, to share happinesses in way that have me jumping for joy.  And my life would be so much poorer if I could only get that joy through being within five feet of them physically.
I’m not saying that a texted *hug* is more comforting than a real hug – that’d be foolish – but I am saying that sometimes the advice I’ve gotten through these typed words has helped me in ways that only a real friend could do.
In the meantime, I live a strange life.  Half of me is here, typing on a keyboard.  The other half is in Florida, standing by K.’s bedside, it’s in Michigan, standing in a lawyer’s office as she works, it’s in Wisconsin in a house I’ve never been in but have seen pictures of the new kitchen, it’s in a cheap bar in France, it’s in a new apartment in Oregon, it’s in a hundred different places with wonderful friends who I may have only seen digitally, but dammit they count.
And that’s a privilege and a pleasure.  I feel a deep, deep sorrow for those who don’t get it.  Because I fished a wonderful wife out of nothing but words, which evolved into the deepest and greatest and most satisfying love of my life…. and that love was every bit as real when we were just emailing each other back and forth on Compuserve as it is when she sits next to me in our living room.
This is real.  And this digital life is as painful as so-called real-life friends, and as loving, and as complicated, and as messy, and as happy.  And I thank everyone who contributes to that with an email, or a text, or a comment, because I know more of you than you think, and I think about you more than you know.
Message ends.

Posted by on Apr 15, 2013 in Current Ramblings | 5 comments

Dumbness On A Saturday: The Answer

So yesterday, I told you three truths and a lie, and asked you which was the lie.  I thought my fib was obvious… but from the comments, it’s clear it wasn’t that obvious.  (Gini got it, though.)  So which were the truths?
1)  I once had sex for eight hours straight.  It was not pleasant.
Status: True.  In fact, it’s one of my more infamous entries.  Looking at it almost a decade later, I’m even less proud of this tale, but… there it is.
2)  I saw Star Wars fifty-seven-and-a-half times in the theater when I was a child.
Status: True.  There were a few comments along the lines of, “No child could see a movie in the theaters fifty-seven times!  Especially in the 1970s!  What parent would take him?”
Ah, but the same stubbornness that has gotten me where I am with my writing career was present in Tiny Ferrett as well.  I bugged my parents every time Star Wars was playing.  I bugged my Uncle.  I bugged my friends to go, so they’d take me with them.  I was obsessed with Star Wars, and by God every time it was playing, I saw it at least once a weekend, and sometimes more.
The half?  Here’s how bad I was: my grandparents agreed to take me to see it one more time, even though they could have cared less.  We misread the movie time and arrived an hour early.  I talked them into going into the theater to watch the last hour of Star Wars, sit through the credits, and then watch the next showing.
That reminds me: I need to call my Grammy.
3)  I have never seen a movie in the theater more than fifty-eight times.
Status: False.  This one was a gimme to me for two reasons:
a)  Given that one of my more infamous talents is that I led a Rocky Horror cast and dressed as Frank N. Furter, I think it’s reasonably obvious to anyone with knowledge of that fact that just over a year’s worth of showings would push me over the top.  I helmed for two years, and was a sporadic attendee for years afterwards.  I know I broke a hundred RHPS attendances before I lost track.
b)  If the other items are all true, given that I met my wife in a Star Wars chat room and have not been unenthusiastic about my Star Wars love in the past, what are the odds that I would have seen Star Wars fifty-seven-and-a-half times in the theater as a child… and then not seen it once on any of the subsequent rereleases?   Logically, if #2 is true, #3 has to be false.
But alas, it was obvious to me and a handful of ahead-of-the-curve people.  The rest of you debated
4)  I have seen a ghost, precisely once, when I was a child.
Status: True.  We did not have any furniture when we moved into my childhood home on Clinton Avenue.  So my first night was spent curled up around my mother, on a sleeping bag, in a strange new place, in the living room.  I remember being unable to sleep, wriggling a lot.
Just as I was drifting off, the bathroom door just off of the kitchen slammed once, twice.  I remember the door shutting, because I needed to have the light on.
My mother did not wake up.
I did not technically see the ghost, but seeing what it did counts for me.  Was I dreaming?  I don’t think so.  I have very non-visual dreams, and I can’t recall another instance in which I confused reality with a dream.  But I was a young child.  Nothing like it has ever happened again.
Now, those of you who’ve followed my bios have seen a reference to “the friendly ghost” I live with, and thus concluded this was the lie, since I’ve lived here as a grownup.  I will never blog about the friendly ghost.  If you want to know, ask me in person.  But I have never seen the ghost in our house, nor do I think I ever will.

Posted by on Apr 14, 2013 in Current Ramblings | 0 comments

Dumbness On A Saturday

I was playing the “Three Facts And A Lie” question with a friend the other day, which is a fun get-to-know-ya game: you give three strange facts about your life, and one that is a lie, and the person has to guess the lie.
I gave what I considered to be a gimme for the first round, but she did not get it.  I’m curious to see how long-term readers would spot the falsehood here.  Lemme know which one you think is fake, and why.  No cheating and reading the comments first, which will doubtlessly have the answer in it long before I get to it.
1)  I once had sex for eight hours straight.  It was not pleasant.
2)  I saw Star Wars fifty-seven-and-a-half times in the theater when I was a child.
3)  I have never seen a movie in the theater more than fifty-eight times.
4)  I have seen a ghost, precisely once, when I was a child.
Hrm.  Typing this out, I think it’s easier than I thought, as there’s two independent methods of arriving at the correct answer… but you go.

Posted by on Apr 13, 2013 in Current Ramblings | 0 comments

Why The Fuck Did You Follow Me On Twitter, Anyway?

I think, before I can blog one word further, I need to discuss the definition of “self-promotion.”
The reason I do this is because Seanan McGuire has been accused in some quarters of “excessive self-promotion,” by which people apparently meant “she mentioned that she had fiction eligible for various nominations.”  Not a whole lot, mind you: twice.
Twice, among a welter of probably seventy lengthy blog posts and literally a thousand silly Twitter statuses.
And then, when I talked with her on Twitter about the irony of seeing her blog post linked everywhere but from her Twitter status, she said, “I know, I just feel …ishy and wrong tweeting everything I say on LJ. I try to do it only on special occasions.”
Which, as someone who followed her on Twitter, struck me as being insane.  I clicked that “Follow Seanan McGuire!” button because I specifically wanted to hear what she had to say. It’s not like Seanan followed me home, broke into my laptop, and signed me up against my will for the Spammin’ McGuire around-the-world newscast – no.  I’d liked reading two of her books, was curious about her as a person, and so I said, “Hello, Seanan, please tell me about yourself.”
Is Seanan telling me what Seanan is doing in the Seanan-specific area of the Internet self-promotion?  I say thee nay.
I call it providing the service people signed up for.
Now, if Seanan was running around forums posting “YOU KNOW WHAT POUNDS THE PISS OUT OF MARTIN’S LATEST DOORSTOP?  MY NEWSFLESH SERIES, AVAILABLE FOR A MERE $3.79 ON KINDLE,” then I’d have a problem.  Or if she was shouting down panels to say, “You know what happens in my book?  Something way better than that Neil Gaiman shit you’re yammerin’ on about!”  But no.  I specifically went to the Seanan McGuire Museum of Fine Filk and paid my entry fee, and by God I expect to see some fucking Seanan McGuire.
Which is how I treat my blog.  I cross-post most of my entries to Twitter because I learned a while back that about 70% of my Twitter and Facebook followers don’t read my journal regularly.  It felt weird, but I came to think, “Well, they followed me on Twitter because they presumably wanted to hear what I was writing about, so… here’s what I’m writing about.”  And people have responded positively.  Traffic’s been up.  I suspect many former blog subscribers actually prefer the Twitter service,  because this way they only get the entries I deem significant.
Is that self-promotion?   I guess, in some sort of saggingly flabby definition of the word.  But my logic is, people asked specifically to tune into the Ferrett Channel.  They did so because they want to hear what I’m doing – which includes my fiction, my blogging, my polyamory, and my personal life.  And maybe after it turns out that they don’t actually like all of that, at which point they can feel free to unsubscribe without one whit of malice from me.  (I’m a depressive.  I hate myself two months out of the year.  Why should you be any different?)
So I’ll say it here: telling the world what you have done is not self-promotion in the world of Twitter.  Or blogs.  It is when you go abroad to other places to tout yourself, or to beg your followers “Please RT” a billion times, or to carve your bibliography into the flesh of willing fans.  But mere informational service?  Fuck that.  People signed up to get a glimpse into your personality.  And maybe if you do Twitter or your blogging wrong, then your personality is nothing but a stream of “HAY GUYS I PUBLISH DIS,” in which case the problem will automatically solve itself as people wander away, in which case you’ll be promoting yourself to an increasingly smaller subset of disappointed people.
But for the rest?  Please, Seanan.  Talk.  It’s why I showed up.

Posted by on Apr 13, 2013 in Current Ramblings | 1 comment

Open-Source Book Pitching, Or: Any Feedback On This Preliminary Table Of Contents?

So in my spare *cough* time, I’ve been compiling my best polyamory essays to see if I can pitch them as a book.  As it turned out, there have been a lot of critical poly topics I haven’t written upon, and some considerable editing needed to knit them together into a coherent whole.
But since a lot of the best essays have been inspired by feedback from all of you, I figured I’d throw a tentative table of contents out to you guys, to see if there were any obvious topics on polyamory that I’ve missed…. or if there’s something you think I should go into more depth on.  So here it is, with the understanding that:
a)  I’m looking to improve the book, particularly for people who don’t know much about polyamory in general, so please feel free to discuss topics you’d like me to see:
b)  I’m not going to discuss polyamory and child-raising, if only because I don’t think I have the necessary skillset to discuss that in-depth, and that could be a whole other book;
c)  That each of the essays will probably be edited a bit, to make it feel like less of isolated essays and more like a, you know, book.   (Though the end goal is that each section is quite readable on its own.)
The Basic Concepts of Poly

How To Find A Poly Partner (Or Open Up A Relationship Into Polyamory)

  • “So, Uh… Do You Wanna Fuck Other People?”
  • You Don’t Necessarily Have To Be Polyamorous: Other Types Of Ethical Non-Monogamy
  • Thanksgiving Dinner vs. Scarfing That McDonald’s Burger, or: Sex !== Love
  • What Kind of Polyamory Makes You Comfortable?
  • Today’s Rules Are Not Forever’s Rules
  • Love, But Verify –
  • Dating Ghosts (on dating who’s actually there, and not some illusion you’re chasing)
  • The Necessary Exercise, Or: Building Social Networks
  • The Internet: The Introvert’s Paradise
  • A Rant On The Understandability of Women –
  • I’ve Had Sex With Over 100 Women, Because I Didn’t Care
  • STD Safety, Or the Bare Minimums
  • I Do Not Have Herpes.  It Should Not Matter If I Do.
  • “Please Don’t” (On Coming Out To Your Family) –

How To Have A Functional Poly Relationship: Owning Your Shit With Your Partners

How To Have A Functional Poly Relationship: Adding New People

  • It’s Better To Beg For Forgiveness Than To OH SHUT UP YOU SELFISH, STUPID FUCKER
  • The Giniweasel Rules of Poly –
  • Coke vs. Pepsi, Or: Why New Partners Will Add Pressure (And That’s Good)
  • Polyamory Shapes, Or: Why I Fucking Hate the Term “Secondary”
  • Why Would He Date Someone Like You When He Has You?, or: Your Partner’s Other Partners Will Be Strange And Confusing
  • NRE: More Dangerous Than Heroin (Or, why people stop trying when the NRE hits)
  • Why Every Quick Fuck Might Blossom Into NRE, And What That Means
  • Harnessing NRE, or: Useful Methods Of Comparing Partners
  • Poly Paperwork, and the Frustrations Therein
  • How To Veto Your Lover’s Partner
  • How To Grit Your Teeth And Endure A Partner You Can’t Stand
  • How To Be A Secondary Partner When It Gets Lonely
  • The Butterfingers Discussion –
  • First, Do No Harm? –

Bad Poly Smells: A Rogue’s Gallery Of Potentially Regrettable Relationships

Advanced Poly Techniques For The Long-Term

 

Posted by on Apr 12, 2013 in Current Ramblings | 10 comments