Crunching My Facebook Numbers

April 21, 2015
Day 356

It took me a long time to prepare today's blog, because I had to do a lot of counting.

First I counted how many family members I was connected to on Facebook (35), and thought how surprisingly low that number was.  Then I counted the number of people I've met through work, past and present (38), and that number made sense.  Next I counted how many people I was friends with through Billy Elliot (86), which I'd always suspected was a high number, and it really is, especially considering I've got "only" 335 Facebook friends.

After all that, I counted how many people I've known since high school or before, and was only slightly surprised to see the number was so low (12).  The number of people I've known since college or just afterward, basically from the age of 18 to 24, was even lower (7), but that makes more sense, because that was the time I was in the religious life, and many of my friends just after that time either disowned me or we just mutually lost touch.

The number of people I'm connected to on Facebook who I met through Andy is pretty low (9), but the number of people I'm connected to because of the Long Island GLBT community is high (30).

Finally, after crunching all of those numbers, I did two more searches through my friends list... 

Of my 335 Facebook friends, there are only 25 I've not yet met in person.  (That says a lot about how closed I've traditionally kept my Facebook, even though so many of my posts are public now.) 

And of my 335 Facebook friends, 59 of them I met online before I met them in person.  Some were guys I met for dates who later became friends, some were Billy Elliot fan friends I knew online before meeting in person, some were Long Island GLBT community people, and one was Andy.

Whew!  These numbers aren't exact in every case, I'd bet, because I moved fairly quickly through my list each time I made a new count, but they're pretty close.  It's a good list for me to have, and I suspect a very helpful list to look back on years from now too.

My Crush on Candy

June 21, 2014
          Day 52/365

I first met Candy when he was still starting out, playing the field.  Life was really good back then, the kind of good where you can't even imagine anything ever going bad.  But of course...they did.  I learned all too soon that some candy rots more than your teeth.  It rots your very soul. 

How could I have known what evil lurked inside his attractive interface?  How could I have seen the emotional damage to come?  How could I have missed all the tell-tale signs of his wicked ways beneath his orchestrations of visual and audible merriment?

Our affair began, as you might have guessed, with an offer of candy.  "Come over here, beautiful," he told me.  He called me beautiful!  I practically swooned.  "Would you like to taste my candy?" 

I was always told to never accept candy from strangers, but as I looked around me, all I saw were friends and family members doing exactly that.  They'd befriended this guy, trusted him, and they were the ones who introduced me to him in the first place.  "You two should meet," several people told me.  And so we did.

In the first few months of our affair, I was completely smitten by his advances.  Every time I tried to learn more about him, he happily shared, and rewarded me time after time with more and more candy.  Our relationship kept advancing further and further, until most of my friends and family were far behind me.  But I didn't see what he was really doing to me.  I didn't see the obvious cruelty behind his mesmerizing music and psychotic smile.

With each passing week, more and more of my friends began telling me they were done with him, and encouraged me to get away as well.  They're fools, I thought.  How could they not LOVE this guy?!  How did they not see all the joy he was giving us, especially me?

But then I forgot to call him--just once--and I learned.  I didn't check in for a couple of days, and the psycho began stalking me.  Requests and messages came at me like crazy.  Every time I signed on, there was a new message, a new warning to return his calls.  There was no escape!

I don't even remember how it all ended, but I know I was the one to finally do it.  (Although I bet he'd take me back in a heartbeat if I let him.  Freak!)

These days, I occasionally see him with friends, and I pity the time they're still wasting on him.  I think to scream out, to warn them, "Stay away!" ...but I fear the retribution.  I fear his anger.  My friends won't understand, I tell myself.  They need to learn for themselves.  They need to keep eating up his candy until they're sick to their stomachs too. 

My crush on Candy lasted several months, maybe a year.  I can't even remember, that's how smitten I was.  A sugar high, yeah, but something much more sinister too.  His sweetness was my undoing, because I realized way too late that it was all just an act.  He had everyone crushing on him, not just me, and I was a meaningless pawn to attract other customers to his game, nothing more.

Candy still stalks me, and I don't think he's ever gonna stop.  I see him lurking there in the shadows with his colorful clothing and happy smile.  "Come and taste me, baby," he calls out. 

"No thanks, man," I mutter, as I keep walking past.

I enjoyed playing with him, I have to admit, and we did have a lot of fun together.  But once I realized he was just playing me?  I closed out of his game.  I went sugar free, and never looked back.  Sure, I fell for him hard, like we all did, but I'm happy to be over that crush now once and for all!

Although...

Sometimes I look at him again and think, maybe if I just go back for one more hit, one more taste.  One more piece of candy couldn't hurt, could it?  I know I shouldn't, but God, I just miss his candy so bad! 

Oh baby, why do you do this to me?  Crush me, Candy.  Crush me again, just one more time?