I'll Bet You Think This Essay's About You

I’ll Bet You Think This Essay’s About You

When I was growing up, my parents had an extensive record collection. Yes, albums: the big kind (thirty-threes) with long-feather-haired androgynously thin artist’s portraits fronting cardboard covers and cursive writing heralding singers’ names. Stacked up in a corner next to the giant speakers that pretended status in the mid-eighties, seventies music stars stared at us as we ate microwaved TV dinners from the breakfast bar of our 1960s-built split-plan ranch.  As far back as I remember, we never listened to a single one of those albums. Nonetheless, they litter my memories of childhood. One album stands out more than any other, mostly because the over-skinny, long-haired, jowly face of Carly Simon staring back at me from beneath those jumbo-sized speakers looked a lot like my mother.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I actually put together a faceless oldie song that I heard on the radio with that face.

Like that stack of albums, there are nearly as many people on my FaceBook feed that I don’t know as those I do. I use the word “know” pretty loosely. Three categories, I think, comprise my feed:

1.      Besties. Those people that I know and love. We like each other’s stuff and even comment on each others’ pages. We may not see each other in person very often, but when we do, it’s as if we haven’t missed a day. We never miss a beat.

Many of them already know the story about my fascination with Carly Simon. They have similar stories about 70s pop stars like the Carpenters and the Gibbs and Elvis, depending upon whether they were first, middle, last, or only children.

Childhood buddies, favorite teachers, boyfriends (ex and current, every single one), ex-girlfriends, most family members, church friends, and a few randomly spectacular people I’ve been lucky enough to meet along the way comprise this group. I’m friends with their parents and their siblings and their current and past lovers and their children.

I love sharing life with them and being shared with. Their accomplishments buoy my heart. Their despairs break it. I like their kitten pics, absurd philosophical musings, and Trump rants. We argue politics and still love each other despite our differences. I’ve shared their new and broken relationships with them. They know my deepest secrets and keep them, except perhaps among each other when appropriate. They read my poetry and buy my books. I like their DJ pages (good Jesus, how many DJs and drag queens do I know?) and their business pages. They reciprocate by liking my author-fan-page and poetry blog. I’ve watched their children grow up and go off to college. I’ve watched some of their children’s children do the same. I’ve watched some of them die very publicly; they remain on my feed as a reminder every year on their birthdays and in my “you have memories with…” reminiscences.

If my facebook was comprised of these people and nobody else, I could go on living. Their absence would leave a crater in my life.

2.     Hook-ups. As it turns out, even if I “met” a guy or girl only once or (if they were lucky) twice, many have found their way into my FB world. I’m not going to say that this is a huge number (I stopped counting in the early aughts in the triple digits), but others might. Many of these people are pretty interesting in their own rights. I may have passed in and out of their lives pretty quickly (I’ve never been one to last very long), but it’s been fun to watch the trajectory of their lives since I crossed through them. Some famous, some rich, some hard-working, some idealistic, some disappointingly lazy or frustratingly angry. I’ve watched them go back to school, get new jobs, move far away. I’ve watched them fall in and out of love. I’ve watched them get sober and off drugs. I’ve watched sadly as some failed quite publicly. Some, it turns out, unexpectedly crossed over to the “Bestie” category.

I enjoy what they share. I may not always get it or like it; sometimes its just plain stupid or offensive but I like it. I happen to like many of these people. They’ve seen me naked (or at least partly so) after all. And I them. That breaks down a lot of barriers and smooths over a lot of discomfort.

We may not share the same memories about music, or about Carly Simon, but we appreciate current pop together: Taylor Swift and Adele and Nick Jonas: the kind of stuff we stream on iTunes while we are scrolling through Facebook. I keep them around with the hope that they’ll cross over, that one day we may reconnect, fully-clothed, and become friends.

3.     Assholes. I have an unfortunately high number of these “friends.” I wasn’t friends with them in high school, or at the clubs (in the day), or in college, or at the gym, or at that stupid party where we talked for a couple minutes over cheap vodka and cocktail wieners for a reason, but they got drunk one night and recognized my name on some friend’s list and sent me an invite. If we have a mutual friend that is in either of the above categories, I’ll usually accept.

Sometimes I’m the drunk one.

Initiator or victim, I usually regret it. And yet, my FB relationships are sticky. I’m often overly reluctant to let these people go and am disappointed when I find they’ve self-deported. I always hold out hope that they might move up.

 They’re lots of work. They pop in and out of my feed with offensive non-sequiturs, sometimes spouting ignorant anti-gay, anti-Christian, anti-American, or anti-other blathering. ANTI-anything is litter on “my” FaceBook.  Other times, it’s woe-is-me, the world-is-awful-and-it’s-all-somebody-else’s-fault lamentations. They comment on my posts with statements that make no sense or worse yet re-post others’ drivel that makes no sense.

For some reason, whenever they mention music, it’s like THE WORST! Obscure hair bands or terrible fiddle country about the good ol’ days of the Jim Crow South. They listen to the radio or old CDs in the same beat up hoopty they parked under the pier while skipping school in 1991.

While I love FaceBook for the way it’s shrunk the world (like BOSE speakers), it’s also made the navigation of personal relationships different. We can hide behind avatars, putting forth an image of who we’d like to be even if it isn’t actually who we are. For better or worse, it’s a source of idea-sharing and angst, a venue for laughter and tears, a source for news and entertainment. Most of all, it is a mirror—maybe a prism—through which we can see ourselves and others and ourselves in others. It’s like a soundtrack or an LP that we produce and consume. It is banality.

It is vanity: “With one eye in the mirror as we watch ourselves gavotte.”