A few months back I noticed a status update pop up on my Facebook Mini-Feed. I went to high school with the Boy responsible for the update. We were never more than passing acquaintances, a nod and smile sort of relationship, but I was bored and faintly nostalgic so I began to peruse his profile.
The Boy had always been Hollywood handsome—blond hair, chiseled features—but he had matured into something even more beautiful. He’d grown his hair out, looked more rugged, wiser, even—like he’d learned something important.
Looking through his pictures, I began to get a sense that some of his male friends were gay—maybe it was the eyebrows or the hair, but something was certainly getting my attention. And then I noticed that his female friends seemed a little too comfortable around him in the photos. I won’t go into details, but needless to say, I began to get the impression that everyone in the pictures was interested in the same thing. After a bit more studying, I discovered that he was in several pro-gay Facebook groups and pages.
It seemed I had stumbled upon a personal fantasy. Yes, this Boy I had barely talked to in high school was now located in a city more than 2,000 miles away, and yes, to be quite honest, he was a bit out of my league, but somehow all of this didn’t matter.
Excited, I messaged my two Andover girl friends with the news, asking them whether they had heard anything over the years that might confirm my suspicions. After sending the message, I realized they might not even remember who the Boy was, or not have access to his profile, so I looked through his photos once more for the perfect picture that would capture everything I imagined him to be. I found one of him standing next to a friend that I thought would do the job. Pasting the photo into a new message, I wrote only “Left” as he was situated on the left side of the picture. I addressed it to my two friends… or so I thought. I had correctly sent it to one girl, but had included him in the message as well.
Completely embarrassed, degraded and good-as-dead, I tried to backtrack. I called everyone and anyone I had ever met, looking for some advice on how I could possibly spin this—the Boy was going to get a message from me (someone he hadn’t talked to in years) that included his own photo. Consistently, the advice I got was lie, lie, LIE. But lies work better in person, as I found out.
The Boy responded, obviously not buying it, but handling the situation with a lot of grace, asking me how I was. We exchanged a few polite back and forths, but I was still scarred with humiliation.
Around the same time, I read about two married Cornell University employees, John and Lisa, who were carrying on an affair that included a lot of heavy breathing and dirty exchanges via e-mail—it’s important to note that John and Lisa were both married to DIFFERENT people. John, a tech consultant at Cornell—and obviously well-suited for his job—accidentally cc’ed the entire business school on a long thread of e-mails between him and his mistress, Lisa. Such quotable lines included, “…a bright blue thong. if you want more specifics you;ll have to just see it for yourself.it could be your lunch” [sic] and “…so let’s see you like bats, the dark and the idea of tying me up, kidnapping me and then mercilessly tickle torturing me!”
Obviously Cornell had two undiscovered poets in their midst.
So what does this all mean? In an age where it’s easier to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime it seems that the recent expansion in “freedom” is only pushing us further into ourselves. Maybe these technological accidents are more like Freudian slips—our unconscious trying to say and do what we’ve lost the nerve to say and do. Maybe I wanted to tell the Boy that I thought he was cute, and John and Lisa wanted to be exposed and honest about what they were doing behind closed doors.
It’s easier now than ever to hide—behind computer screens, beyond your cell, and we’ve forgotten what it means to take risks. We’re afraid of getting what we want. With a few keystrokes we create a world for ourselves that is safe and comfortable, where the “what ifs” become reality and where we are the hero and the dragon of risk and possibility has been slayed.
But mistakes are bound to happen, and that fantasy world will always come crashing down sooner or later. So just remember that the hero doesn’t exist. It’s only ever you and the dragon.
Thomas Gebremedhin is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Thursday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.