Playing with Fire
I was catching up with a friend. He sent a post full of people dying or becoming ill, things his kids and grandkids did, and buried in the note was:
...one of my cousins announced she's no longer Bonnie but Clyde [names changed] and wears men's clothes and wants surgical readjustment, ...
I commented back that at least there's good news mixed in with the bad, and blah blah. At the end I wrote:
As for Bonnie, I guess there's one in every family.
I figured, let's see what he says and then I'll figure out what I'm going to say. This is postal chess ~ no need for a quick off-the-cuff reply.
A week later, and he ignored the note completely. Then he wrote back, addressed a couple of items and ignored the "Bonnie" part.
Ah well. It's all for the best, right?
On a Similar Topic
I still haven't decided if I should connect with my old school friend on Facebook. I looked him up, on a lark, on LinkedIn (as I mentioned here) and thought, since he has zero connection with anyone I know (except through LinkedIn) I would connect to him on Facebook as Meg.
Your reactions and advice were mixed, leaning towards the "are you insane?" side of the ledger.
I don't do risky things, as a rule. No skydiving, bungee jumping, swimming with sharks, walking through the "bad" neighborhoods after dark. No unsafe sex, visits to seedy bars, illegal drugs, rock climbing, dealings with loan sharks. I don't even run with scissors.
But Meg seems to want to come out in the worst way, and I'm afraid I'll figure out the worst way.
So, still undecided, but purely as an intellectual exercise (honest!), I looked up my friend on Facebook.
He's not there.
There may be someone else from my past who has no connection to anyone else I know but I can't think of who that might be.
So if I am insane to try this, at least I'm safe right now.
Update: Also Stupid
My New York friend who met Meg (as a costume) at the rally last October asked about blogging options. He wants to set up a blog. I suggested blogger and said "I use it, and I use wordpress for my political blogs."
Let's see if he asks. I can not tell him about this blog, but I want to see if he asks.
I have mentioned before that I don't believe I will ever, ever have the guts to come out to anyone... and yet there might be room for a few exceptions.
ReplyDeleteIf there was somebody who I knew was open towards the idea of crossdressing and who stood absolutely zero chance of coming into contact with the people that can never know, I might consider it. In fact I have just such a friend, and I'm warming up to the idea of telling him. He is (as far as I know) straight in every way himself, but he's supportive of LGBT issues in general. He's also seen me (in the safe context of a costume party) in a dress; I suspect my news wouldn't surprise him much.
Two things stop me. One, I don't want to burden him with the task of keeping a secret all his life, and second I'm waiting for an appropriate time to bring it up. If I was having a conversation with a friend and out of the blue he dropped something like that on me ("By the way, for the past 40 years I have been married to a turnip") my first reaction would probably be "Why are you telling me this now?"
So I figure I'll wait until the subject comes up on its own and throw in a "Yeah, I have that same problem" and see how he reacts.