Facebook Follies

Is it just me? Seriously, do these things ever happen to other people or am I unique? I joined Facebook about 2 years ago thinking that it might be a good resource for my genealogy work, and it has. Talbooms come out of the woodwork at my behest on FB and I have scored over 6,000 Talboom relatives names from contacts in Belgium, The Netherlands and Spring Hill, Florida for my genealogy pages. I have a unique last name, so I figured anyone with the same was related to me in some way. That was my main reason for joining FB.

But all has not been rosy in Facebookland. Almost immediately upon signing up for FB, I was inundated with requests by school and college classmates, old co-workers, casual acquaintances, friend of friends of friends and people I never even heard of. I even was friended by a woman from Our Lady of Sorrows (appropriately named) Parochial School, who sat in front of me in third grade and loved to turn around and say “Marky, I want my Maypo”. If you are of a certain age, you will know what this means.

Everybody wanted to be my Facebook friend. Needless to say, I was flattered. My good and understanding friend and best gal, Vicki commented how fast my friend list was growing; 200, 300 and expanding almost as fast as my middle-aged waistline. It became an exercise in ego building. I was accepting everyone who wanted to “friend” me. I was taking on people who treated me like crap in high school. Women who wouldn’t give me the time of day back when I thought I was straight. High jocks athletes with a sadistic streak and the brains-of-the-class types who thought I was a dumbass. All aboard!! My Facebook page was a leavin’ the station and fully booked. Woo-Woo!! The friend list was growing rapidly, but then, so does shower mold or a bad rash if you let it. I was up to 300 something and it was taking me an hour just to read everything that everyone was posting after I signed on—and to respond in kind. It was like reading an ongoing soap opera with an ever-changing cast of characters,, none of whom I really knew. But the bubble had to burst eventually and the whole mess ultimately collapsed in upon itself. I finally reached a point where I had to ask myself, “Hey, do I really want to invest my time on the minutiae of the lives of these people? People I haven’t seen in 40 or more years? It took a small health crisis and not being on FB for a couple of weeks to re-order my priorities. I did not suffer from withdrawal symptoms; nothing like that. It is just that I found that I was not really missed a whole lot while I was not online. Life on Facebook went on without me or my input. That is when I decided to cull the list.

I started with people from my life in Wyoming who knew or suspected I was gay, but I felt may be uncomfortable with my unabashed “outness” and boldness in talking about gay issues like marriage equality and AIDS. Although he did not say so, I know these were not comfortable subjects for the born-again Christian who was once my best pal in Jr. High school and who I always suspected of being “family” because of his fabulous singing voice and less-than-butch mannerisms. I know he remained my FB friend, but blocked all extraneous transmissions coming from me as an offense to his sensibilities, or maybe just denial that his old buddy was really gay. I think he bowed to memories rather than reality. If that works for his comfort zone, it works well for me also. I figured if I wanted contact with him I would just message him and I have since done so. I like the guy. He is one the most real people I know and also true to his faith. Ditto with several others-they are there if I need to say hi, without them actually being on my friend list. I unfriended a guy that I used to toss pizzas with at Bimbo’s Pizza Parlor near the University of Wyoming. He called me on it and I re-friended him and am grateful that I did. He is a teacher, and a good man to know. I also am FB friends with gays and lesbians I have known for years and am pleased to share stories of their loves and lives and am interested in how the decades have treated them.

I decided to go back to my original premise and contact as many Talboom family relatives as I could find. I re-discovered my cousin Glenn’s two beautiful twin daughters in California and shared in the wedding excitement for one of them. And my lesbian cousin Lorraine and her girlfriend Joanie are always a joy to chat with when I see them online. I stay in intermittent contact with my 22 year old party-animal-snowboarding-nephew who lives in Colorado. I don’t think I would communicate with him at all otherwise. The same goes for my cousin Scott in Arizona. I have Talbooms living in Belgium and The Netherlands that I would never have known if it weren’t for Facebook. They are almost all younger and all speak English quite well and I am sure they are always surprised when I wish them a Happy Birthday and call them “cousin”. I just know they go “WTF? Who is this guy?" But they always respond and they did friend me upon request.

Then there are the weirdoes and the outright hostile; one of which inspired me to write this posting. For some reason, they persist in demanding that you friend them. And if you don’t, you are an asshole or worse. I am loathe to understand this thinking. They absolutely have to be your friend, but because you won’t let them in life, you are the world’s biggest jerk. Case in point: I knew this girl in high school everyone called “Bush” because of her excessive use of white lipstick and platinum blond hair dye and the ability to pile her locks 8 to 10 inches higher than the top of her head. This rat’s nest was all held in place by a can of cheap White Rain hairspray and seldom washed. About a month ago I got a request from someone wanting to be my friend. Said her name was Lynn Madison. Her Facebook page had a Betty Boop pic and no information that I was familiar with, so I ignored it. Then last week, I got this nasty little note saying that since I had not responded, she was rescinding her request. I wrote back saying I had no idea who she was. I soon got a biography including all her ex-husbands names and the fact that she was my ex-wife’s maid of honor and that she had worked as my receptionist at one point in my chiropractic practice, etc. ad nauseum. I had memories alrighty and they weren’t good ones. She did her best to heop put the knife in a marriage that was doomed and then wanted to “console” me when my wife and I finally parted ways. Years later, I hired her as a receptionist and she came to work so stoned all the time she couldn’t even put stickers on the file folders. The end came when I told her to take off the rest of the day and to come to work with a clear head. She left me a nasty little note calling me a faggot and the office keys. This is the person who wanted to be my Facebook friend. Apparently she had forgotten every nasty thing she said or had done to me and my then wife. But, I hadn’t. I politely told her that I only friended family members and people that I had maintained contact with over the years, or with whom I had common political interests. She wrote me a hateful diatribe and I thought that was it. Then, today, I opened my Facebook page. This person was beyond miffed. Here is her last note to me:

Between You and Lynn Madison
March 14 at 8:31am Report
“I always knew you were a faggot!!!! And a rude faggot at that. I think you should get off Facebook cause nobody cares what the hell you look like. Just had to laugh at your solicitous behavior. I guess I was the wrong sex for you. I never did anything bad to you to have you be so rude to me. You are not the Mark I used to like anymore!!! Your chubby pictures are not any better. Said I'd not text you anymore but You really hurt me. Now I got to say what I wanted and I am done with you...and your so called Facebook page.”

To which I respond, “Oh Meowch, I’m so wounded!". What the hell is this all about? I wasn't rude in my rejection. Why is it a bad thing to tell someone that you haven’t heard from in years that you aren’t interested in ongoing contact with them? I guess her comments were meant to demean me, but if this person really knew anything about me, she would have already known that I was gay and that I have been out of the closet for about 35 years. I suppose throwing around the word “faggot” was meant to hurt, but I was somewhere between amused and appalled at her ignorance. I guess this is just another example of the “us and them” mentality so pervasive in our society today. Maybe she thought she was threatening me with exposure. But, I haven't been real closeted for many years and anyone who really knows me understands that I don't care who knows I am gay. And the chubby remark, well that was just plain rude . I’m 62 years old for goddess sake. I am entitled to be a little thick around the middle.

It is called “social networking”. So, why is it that some people use it as a weapon to pry and hurt and ridicule? I guess some use it for gossip, but I am not 13 or 14 years old and susceptible to bullying or blackmail. Those days are long over. It is no longer PC to call someone a faggot, either to their face or behind their back. Or queer for that matter—look up at the subtitle of my blog—I embrace those names which were once used to marginalize us. Gays and lesbians, and indeed all of us, need to try to live our lives out of the closet and upfront no matter who we are, because, by golly, the whole world is watching. Now, more than ever, we are revealed by our words and our actions. And, apparently by our Facebook pages. There is no longer any place to hide. Has this woman lived so little that she doesn’t know this? Or, does she just emulate that which she hears from her friends in her own small existence. Is it just her way of making herself feel superior because she is not one of us—faggots and queers? I have no answers and I never will, because hopefully I will never hear directly from or about her again. I think I did the right thing for myself by rejecting her “request” that I be her Facebook friend. What would she have brought to my life if I had said yes? Or vice-versa? She doesn’t know me and I am sure she would not be interested in anything I have to say since I am just a “faggot” in her eyes. This entire escapade will somehow come back to bite me in the ass; it usually does somehow. But, I control the vertical and the horizontal in my life. I take responsibility for what I say and do in my life and try to be proud of those things. Is she and everyone one else out there in Facebookland willing to do the same?