My girlfriend is not an Internet person. She posts on Instagram like once a year, usually on her dog’s birthday. Once every three years, she might post a selfie.
I have been a capital i - capital p Internet Person™ since I got the internet at age 13 and discovered AOL chat rooms dedicated to punk music. I met people from all over the world in the AOL chat rooms, or people that said they were from all over the world at least. I would chat with these people until the sun came up. Trading pictures of yourself wasn’t a thing back then, so I just imagined what they looked like and I imagined they were imagining what I looked like, too. On the Internet I was ALWAYS 18 years old and I ALWAYS had giant tits. I’ve only been 18 once and I’ve never had giant tits a day in my life, but that didn’t matter. When I chatted with these people I knew I was supposed to be something specific, something that I wasn’t. 18 years old with giant tits was about the best I could come up with.
In 2002, I stopped lying about who I was online and I started a Livejournal. I’d had years of internet friendships, but very little real friendship. I started meeting the internet people in person and subsequently moved to the place where most of them lived (Oakland, California). Every entry in my early Livejournal reads like a love letter to those friends and I can see that I am both very different now and also exactly the same. My core desire has been to love and be loved and for the entirety of my life I’ve always loved almost nothing more than my friends.
I have been a writer for as long as I can remember and the internet gave me the thing that I think most writers desire: readers. I learned about punk on the internet, veganism on the internet, activism on the internet, radical politics on the internet. I learned that you don’t have to drive a car, you can ride a bike instead. I learned that it’s okay to make music and art an intrinsic part of your being. There weren’t punks where I grew up, not really anyway. The Internet informed my belief that it’s fine to not want the things everyone else seems to want. It’s fine to not want to settle down. It’s fine to want to see the world by foot or by bus or by bike. Actually, the internet taught me those things were cool. I still think they’re cool! The internet allowed me to be the little weirdo I have always been.
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Livejournal. 24th May 2002
12:57pm: last night S and i stayed up until four am and i swear to god i had all these revelations that i can't even remember now that it's morning. we determined that the best way to mend our hearts is to simply spew out careless remarks such as "fuck that girl" whenever we are feeling down. i wrote it on my underwear as a reminder. if i am ever in a moment of weakness as soon as my pants come down i'll remember, and i'll scream it loud.
"FUCK THAT GIRL!"
hell yeah. [on a side note, last night was the first night that i didn't cry since it happened. i am feeling strong.]
Current Mood: loved
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Who is that girl? I will probably never know. I was 18 when I wrote this, and it is wild to think of myself then. I thought I knew a lot, when I actually knew very little. Now, at 40, I actually understand how little I know and I am happy to not have the burden of thinking I know anything at all. The longer I am alive, the less opinions I have. My opinions can now be categorized in a few ways:
Ya never know
Don’t bother
The whole point is to love
Why not give it a shot?
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