“dear diary”

how three little dots changed my life

I was testing out Microsoft’s html editor.  So far it’s a bit nicer than the Netscape one I was using.  But once I tried to look at it online it looked like crap.  I’m pissed off about it.  I’m getting a bit tired of the way my entries look.  Maybe it’s just me.  Since I’m the one who formats them every darn day.  But I’m bored with the way this looks, so if you have any ideas, I’m all about it.  I don’t even want to do the design right now.  It’s pitiful.

Anyway, if you read Ellipses at all, you know that on Friday Ms. E discussed how her B.  (now known as Bill) is a childhood friend of Eric’s.  This is true.  In fact, when I met Ms. E I had no idea what an online journal was.  We spent a weekend at her home in San Francisco and had a great time.  When she was driving us to the airport I was commenting that I hoped we’d keep in touch.  She handed me her business card.

“Here,” she said, “that’s my webpage.  You can keep in touch with me there.”

When I got back to Austin I looked it up.  It was like a diary.  At first I was a little disappointed that I was never mentioned in the diary, which now I think was terribly egotistical of me to assume.  I started reading her back entries, and she linked to another page:  melty.  It wasn’t long before I was hooked.  And you know how melty has a links page? Well, I was reading a couple of journals and I thought to myself, “This really is interesting, how people put their lives online for other people to read.  I wonder who reads all this stuff.”  I was attracted to it because it wasn’t the normal personal home page fodder that I saw back then, with the blinking, “WeLcUm 2 DaVe’Z pAgE!”

So I grabbed myself a little spot on Geocities and started typing.  I thought maybe I should do a bunch of “rants” like I had seen so many others do on their sites.  I felt like I needed a cause.  I needed something to be angry about and something to fight for.  It felt different to be writing about what I felt.  Instead of just writing sketches and plays I was writing about what was bothering me that day, or what I was wishing for.

And then I bumped into Lili Taylor at a coffeehouse, and when I wrote about it, Melty wrote to me to say that she feels the same way about meeting celebrities.  And that’s when I realized I didn’t need to be angry or anything, I just had to write about how I felt.  And that’s what people were interested in.  People were actually interested in what I did that day.

It still amazes me sometimes that so many of you come over here to read about what happened to me or Eric or Chuy or Taylor or whatever once a week, once a month, or every day.  I wonder how many entries you just skim over (perhaps this one) and how many you read word by word.  Which ones do you e-mail to friends?  Which ones do you think to yourself, “Man, pamie is getting weird.”?

My life is different after making this page.  It really is.  So many people have quit doing this lately, and it makes me wonder what point makes you stop?  When does it get to be too much?  When do you push away all of these people that you did or didn’t invite into sharing your life with you?  It’s a huge break-up, quitting a page as personal as this.  I’m pissed off when a page I read quits.  I spent a lot of time getting to know the writer and enjoying what he or she had to say.  I’m involved in their lives.  And usually you don’t get closure.  It’s like reading a series without the last chapter.  You never know what happens to everyone.  And with these pages there can’t be a ten year reunion on CBS where you see everyone all grown up.  So, I’m sad, because it was just a part of someone’s life and you don’t get to know them again, and you are completely at their mercy as to how much you know, when you know and what you know.

blah, blah, blah, enough meta talk.

I have the power to say just the wrong thing at the wrong time.  I mean it.  I don’t know how these things come out of my mouth.  The other day Eric and I were walking from my car to a restaurant, and a door opened in front of us to this bar.  This bar happened to be Oilcan Harry’s, the prominent gay bar in Austin.  One man exited and then held the door open for another man.  That man walked out and then stood in front of me and Eric waiting for his friend.  Well, that guy was still holding the door looking at us.  So all four of us were standing still looking at each other, one holding the bar door.  It was at that point I realized he was holding the door open for us.  I said, “Oh, thank you,”  I pointed ahead, towards the restaurant, “but we’re going straight.”

“We’re going straight?”  I’m such a spaz.

“I didn’t mean the pun,” I whispered to Eric as we walked off.

“That’s okay,” he said, “I almost said, ‘Oh, we’re not going in there,’ which sounded like I hated his bar.”

“So ‘We’re going straight’ was better?”

“I’m not saying better, I’m just saying I didn’t say it.  You did.  Therefore it was better.”

“Thanks.”

The good news is:  there’s triple pamie today.  I’m all over the place.  Check me out at 

boobtoob

and

Underwired

Both are offsets of sins, which you should check out if you haven’t.  Now go play around in link land.

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