Classic NYC Story

Today in the grad center before I went to my therapy session, I spied my friend from harlem tweeting. Actually, he was not tweeting, but reading a twitter page. On some level this is funny, because he’s old. It was also funny because he had that “busted” look on his face when he noticed me standing behind him and quickly closed the screen. “Oh… I didn’t know you were coming…” Didn’t know I was coming to the place where he asked me to meet him at the time when he asked me to meet him there. Okay. And furthermore, I know what my twitter background looks like. It’s pretty distinctive. He was following me… and trying to be clandestine. Actually, I’ve known for a little while that he follows me. I’ve known since that time I tried to sign into twitter on his computer only to find out that he was already signed in to a username which was only following one person. It made me so angry that I emailed him a vaguely threatening letter just before absconding at 4am.

But why would it make you angry, Classic? Don’t you want to be followed?

Yes, of course I do, and if you’re reading this and not following me, you should. But it did make me angry and for two main reasons. Number one: It was vaguely reminiscent of one time in particular when he blatantly confronted me with information he had read in a private email to me. He didn’t seem to understand what I meant when I asserted that my private emails were meant to be private; he belittled that point and continued, bent on making a dramatic argument out of something that was not only too unimportant to warrant one, but was also absolutely none of his business. Nothing was off limits to him. Not my email account, not my pockets, not my purse, nothing. I was about to type that he can’t do these things anymore now that I live in queens, but it was just some days ago that he took all the things out of my pockets so that he could surprise me with a wet pair of jeans.

Of course, a twitter account is not an invasion of privacy. Twitter accounts are meant to be followed. And of course, I’d rather him follow me on twitter than follow me to work or follow me around downtown manhattan… but there was a time when he did follow me to work, and he did follow me around downtown manhattan like a stalker creep while I was taking a walk with one of my coworkers. He was just too too certain that I was going to “cheat on him” despite the fact we’ve never signed a contract of exclusivity, that he’s only a friend, and in fact it’s only recently that I can really call him “friend” without using the term as a dangerously loose synonym of “that old piece-of-shit [word I won't say because it embarrasses white people] motherfucker.” He would here complain that I keep holding on to all the bad things, but I contend that if you don’t ever think about the bad things, you’ll never learn from them. And what makes it humorous is that I never told him my twitter username or even that I had an account. It looks to me like even though he seems to be a much better human being now that I don’t hang around him every day, his old snooping ways die hard. I guess I didn’t learn. Oh well. I knew it was a snake when I picked it up, right?

But that brings me to my second and more pressing reason: I’m now put in the precarious position of trusting my friend from harlem to guard my anonymity. Now, I’m not saying he can’t do it– I’d say there’s a fifteen or so percent chance that he can– but this is the same gentleman who, at practically the moment when I checked myself into the hospital, looked up the phone number of the one person on the planet who would cause me the most grief and anxiety and called her to tell her where I was. Within less than twenty four hours, I got a phone call from him, sobbing apologetically “you have no idea what I’ve been through these past twenty four hours…” ::sigh:: Now, ladies and gentleman, I’ll ask you: would you ever call up a suicidal mental patient in the emergency room of bellevue hospital with a sob story that you and she both know is complete bull shit? No? I didn’t think you would. I think too much of you to believe otherwise. And while we’re on the topic, would you do like I did and be a jackass and let such a person off the hook immediately? No? I wouldn’t believe that of you either.

And since I think so much of you, ladies and gentlemen, I plead your advice on this decision. On the one hand I want to avoid the situation of having people whom I see on a semi-regular basis making the connection between me and some of the frighteningly candid details I include in my writing. I want to avoid having discussions (or having to dodge discussions) about my private life, my ex husband, my bellevue stay, etc. I want to avoid having people look at me once and already feel like they know me in and out. That’s dangerous in New York. And so perhaps I should delete this blog while I’m still semi-anonymous. On the other hand, without my ex husband and without my creative outlet, I’m running thin on reasons to live. (Boy, am I dramatic!) But seriously… I really don’t want this to be another in a growing string of life-dreams that were knocked down and crushed as soon as one foot hit the road… and by the way, of those, this would be the second time my friend in harlem played an active role in the ruination. But then again, I might be misunderestimating (threw that one in for the republicans) my friend in Harlem’s fifteen percent…

So what should I do? Should I take what logic and my experience tells me is the only sensible action or should I trust him? Thanks for the advice…

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