A Friend’s Dilemma

I spent Saturday night at my friend Mack’s place in central New Jersey. We drove out to New Hope, Pennsylvania, to party at the Cartwheel, a place I’ve written about before.

Mack is 35 years old and gay. He’s an attorney, and he works as an in-house counsel for a big company and makes a lot of money. He lives in an anonymous condo in one of those anonymous housing tracts that litters central New Jersey. He spends lots of time looking for sex, but other than that, he doesn’t really have any hobbies. Also, he’s on medication, something in the Prozac family I think. I guess RJ would call them “crazy pills.”

We were standing on the patio of the Cartwheel, holding our drinks and talking. He’s frustrated. At 35 he’s never been in a long-term relationship, and he can’t seem to find someone who wants to date him. He can find people to have sex with, and he can find people who want to be friends with him. But he can’t find someone who’s interested in him romantically. He’s overweight — he’s got a paunch, and his face is kind of fleshy below the chin. But he has no desire to go to the gym. Oh, and he only wants to date guys who are under 30 and sexually attractive.

Why can’t he find someone? His body might be part of it, but I think there’s more. Frankly, Mack can be hard to take. He has a loud nasal voice, and he likes to talk, and he laughs at his own jokes and looks at you as he does so, but he looks at you a little too long, as if he’s waiting for a response. It’s annoying. He can also be a know-it-all. Not just that, but he repeats himself. He’ll tell me about something he knows, and then he’ll tell it to me again an hour later, having forgotten that he’s already told me.

He’s actually a smart and funny guy, but he’s insecure and he seems to need an audience. And when I’m with him, I have to be that audience. After a few hours with him it gets annoying, and I become passive-aggressively quiet. He doesn’t know when to shut up.

Last summer, he and I went to a Fourth of July party, and someone asked me what my job was. I hesitated, because I wasn’t sure how to explain it, and then Mack stepped in and explained it. In detail.

He’s my friend, but he can be a tad obnoxious. He just comes on too damn strong. He tries too hard.

He asks me why he can’t find someone who wants to date him, and I suspect that this is the reason. But I don’t know if I should tell him. He’s my friend, and I wonder if I owe him the truth. But who the heck wants to be the bearer of bad news? He’s insecure and I don’t want to hurt his feelings. On the other hand, I don’t want to patronize him.

I don’t know what a friend’s supposed to do in these situations.

Five-Minute Blog

I’m about to head off to central New Jersey for another overnight stay with a dear friend of mine. We’ll probably hit New Hope tonight or something.

You know how they say that when you start taking Prozac, the anxiety goes away but your life becomes more boring? I’m not on Prozac, but I’ve been feeling less anxious, and consequently my entries have seemed less angst-ridden and more boring, I’m sure. Sorry about that. I guess I’m sort of feeling like an inadequate blogger lately. The green monster lives under my bed, seems to visit me all the time, and when I read someone who’s really, really good, it makes me feel inadequate. As if there’s only a limited amount of talent or recognition to go around. Of course, by making these feelings public, I’m not doing myself any favors. I may be doing you some favors… but not myself.

I bought new glasses this afternoon. They’re the same brand as my old ones, and pretty similar. Unfortunately, the old ones are no longer being made. When I left LensCrafters, the woman said, “Don’t flush these.” Thanks.

This morning I had brunch with someone who reads my blog regularly. He lives right here in Jersey City, and he’s a lawyer. He’s lived here for many years, and has much more life experience than me. We got together in order to go over my resume and figure out what to change and where to send it to. Unfortunately, we snarky twentysomethings think we own the world, so when someone comes along and tells us we’re doing things wrong, that’s hard to swallow. That’s especially true when you’re a high achiever like me — someone who grew up thinking he was perfect doesn’t really like to hear that he’s naive and is insulating himself and that his writing needs editing and that so-and-so’s blog is better. Oh well. I’m one of those stubborn types. When someone who’s of a different generation than me gives me advice, even if it’s terrific advice, which it was, I always interpret it as… patronizing? I don’t know. It makes me feel like a little kid, like an incapable little kid.

And to be honest, I was acting really shy, and when it got to working on my resume, I was being pretty passive-aggressive and tense and so forth. Doing job-search-related activities is one of the things I hate more than almost anything else.

Well, this inadequate blogger is going off to central New Jersey. Bye.
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The Weblog Review

Oh my gosh. Moira, I’m sorry your site fell victim to the people at The Weblog Review. (Yours too, Adam.) Ugh.

To be honest, Moira, I don’t think their review of your site was at all harsh, or even negative. But still, it’s kind of fun that you turned the tables and reviewed them right back (although I think you were unnecessarily mean to the innocent bystander whose blog they liked).

What I love is what happened next. After posting her counter-review and sending them an e-mail, Moira got responses from both the Weblog Review’s webmaster and the reviewer. The webmaster wrote:

Your insults on minx’s site are rude and inappropriate. Her site is right now, the best site that we have reviewed. And the reason I say that is because her site has gotten the most traffic from us. [Traffic equals quality. Nice.] Her humors posts when I reviewed her site were very detailed and very good which caught me right up in the site. [Huh?]

I don’t know what the webmaster’s like in person. For all I know he could donate money to UNICEF and read books to little blind children. But I have to ask, Mr. Webmaster: can’t you at least make sure all your reviewers can write? And spell, for chris’sakes? These people can write and spell. Why can’t your people? Are you trying to be ironic, or did it just turn out that way?

The webmaster also wrote:

You said you would not recommend my service to anyone. I hate to break it to you, but you posting that big huge rant on your weblog is a recommendation. Any publicity good or bad is publicity.

Hey, we don’t care if we make a good product, as long as we’re famous. Wonderful, wonderful. Because here in America, it’s all about attention. Pub-schmucking-licity. If I get enough publicity, maybe I can get a book deal or start a handbag company like Monica. “Bad publicity is better than no publicity,” eh? Yeah. Tell it to “Seussical.”

If you want to create a website that recommends some good weblogs, go for it. I’d love to find some good reads. But I don’t see the point of disparaging someone’s weblog. “The goal of my site is to get more people to other people’s sites. So what if it is a bad review or not. The guy who has the worst review has gotten more traffic than your average review.” Yeah, I’m sure the guy whose weblog you’ve ripped to shreds really appreciates what you’ve done for him.

How does this sound:

“Hey, everyone. John doesn’t dress too well, and he could be more exciting, and I really don’t like the way he holds his fork when he eats. And his farts smell. You can find him in room 213.”

Who are you, and what gives you the right to point out all of John’s faults? That’s tasteless. By the same token, it’s tasteless to disparage people’s weblogs. Weblogs are an extension of the self. They’re like personal art projects. They’re not out there to make money. This isn’t the theater business or the book industry; these are just ordinary people who have decided to create spaces where they can express their thoughts and feelings and interests.

You’re not doing any good by telling everyone what’s wrong with someone’s personal weblog.

I really don’t see the point of The Weblog Review.

I give it two shrugs.