Sunday, Sept. 29, 2002 - 12:28 p.m.
Friends and Relations

Since moving here just over a year ago I have only made one new close friend, Enrique. I'm so glad he's moved back here again. And I don't know what I'd do without Joey's constant support and affection; he was one of my first gay friends, and ours is one of the longest and most enduring friendships I've had.

And then there are all the other "old friends" who live here, guys I knew (and often dated, fucked, or wanted to date or fuck) years ago in other cities. For the most part, I've discovered that we do not have too much in common in the present. This often happens; people grow apart, and it's no one's fault. It's only icky when just one party hangs on.

I have been sustained above all else these past few years by my best-friendship with Alex back in Toronto. It's been amazing, how we've been able to sustain such regular and intense contact despite my not having lived there in three years. Over the last six months or so, however, a number of circumstances have sharply decreased the frequency of our phone chats; we no longer have that near-daily communication. I am trying—and, for the most part, succeeding in—not stressing about it. I do think, sometimes, that in addition to the temporary circumstances that have waylaid our dailiness, the relationship is going through some sort of transition, perhaps from the immediacy of best friendship—"best friends:" an indefinable category, difficult to discuss without feeling high schoolish, no? —into something even rarer and more true. And even more difficult to define. I don't want to try to articulate any more about that, because I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, really. Suffice it to say that our friendship is changing, and change can be both unnerving and beautiful.

Since moving here, I mostly kept myself isolated, up until recently anyway. Now that I've re-engaged with A.A., I'm starting to meet some great guys. There are many wonderful fellows in the program, and I hope to befriend some of them, develop one-on-one connections outside the actual meetings.

This raises a bit of an issue in terms of the writing I do here on Diaryland, because I don't think it's appropriate to write about the people I meet through AA. And the fact is that, right now, the program forms 100% of my social life. So I am not sure how all that's going to pan out. Maybe if I hadn't once disclosed in these pages where I live, I'd feel less compunction about writing more about A.A. folks and what-not, applying my usual pseudonymizing, disguising and anonymizing approaches. But now that my locale's out, it feels like the ethical imperative is about 300% more.

This entry is going all over the place; because that in turn raises the larger issue: why the fuck am I still doing this online journal anyway? Just asking. It's an important question to keep asking.

Online journal relationships are another interesting topic. You can develop a one-sided, pseudo-relationship with someone from reading her online journal; that can become less lopsided if there's some cybercontact back and forth between journaler and reader. I'm finding I have less and less time and energy to sustain any regular sort of cybercontact with anyone, including the wonderful folks I've "cyber-met" through Diaryland. It got really bad during my extended hermitage for much of the past year, and no doubt the feelings of some of those people whose emails went unanswered were hurt. I'm feeling less reserved these days, but it is true that email is a time-consuming, sometimes draining, but also often wonderful and efferverscent mode of communication. I sure love getting them, and try to answer as many as I can; as I grow older and more weary about cyberity's supposed benefits, though, I increasingly doubt email's ability to sustain or build meaningful connection. I have no idea whether I'll like or enjoy spending time with someone until and unless we meet in person.

I'm totally turned off with online messenger chatting, by the way. Alex and I were trying to keep in better touch this way, logging in and "chatting" while we were both at work. What a stupid idea. It's impossible to talk about anything real when you're both preoccupied with work stuff. So we've abandoned it altogether, and I must say I find this kind of chatting deeply dissatisfying 99% of the time. Give me face-to-face, or hearing someone's voice, or reading/writing a well-thought-out email, anyday!

Ultimately, I guess I'm at a place where all these modes of contact—email, telephone conversation, instant messenging—are becoming less and less important. They can be wonderful augmenters of a face-to-face relationship; I find such contact with those online journalers and readers whom I've actually met in person much more satisfying than with those I have not. But as ends in themselves, I place less and less stock in these supplemental modes.

Now that I've been in the online journal milieu for 2 ½ years, I've come to see that the fact that I'm reading your journal and/or you're reading mine does not mean that we're in relationship, at least not in as meaningful or immediate a way. It's incredibly easy to drift—often for no apparent reason—away from reading someone's journal or sustaining supplemental email contact. It just happens, and I've been on both sides of it a lot. I sure love meeting folks from this milieu in person, though! But without that f2f component, the relationship is mostly pseudo, or perhaps "literary", more akin to the relationship I have with Margaret Atwood, say, because I've read a few of her books and was once at a reading she gave in Toronto.

Which is not to say that the reading and writing and responsiveness of this milieu isn't important; it most certainly is! It's just not, I don't think, about actual relationships the way our so-called real lives are. I think I was probably confused about that for quite a while. (No doubt, I still am.)

I was intending this entry to be about how I'm finding myself gradually coming back to life, feeling ready to recommit to ongoing relationships and foster new ones. And I've kind of gotten side-tracked.

Which brings up another question: how is this like my life?