1 a : one attached to another by affection or esteem

2 a : one that is not hostile

3 : one that favors or promotes something (as a charity)

4 : a favored companion

5 capitalized : a member of a Christian sect that stresses Inner Light, rejects sacraments and an ordained ministry, and opposes war —called also Quaker

Hmmmmm. Okay. Well, apart from #5 (although, strong arguments could be made...), the people I know via the blog all qualify as friends. Don't worry. I don't expect you to fix my closet door or share jumbo packages or toilet paper. Some would interject here saying, "Because you have real friends for that." 


There are people who use their blogs to meet people. There are blog meet-up groups.

I am not one of those people.

There are myriad reasons why.

I have met a few readers. But generally I refuse. And in doing so I've hurt some feelings. And I feel bad about that.

But. As I gently explain to them, the times I've met blog readers in person I've disappointed them. I don't meet their expectations or, more usually (and more confusingly for me)  they're surprised to learn that I am exactly what/how/who I am on the blog...and that's disappointing to them. I dunno. I don't get it, either, but it's happened enough times for me to make quantifiable conclusions. With notable few exceptions it's best for everyone involved if the forum in which our lives collide and friendships form remains the only forum in which the friendship continues.

"Ahhh, see?" the opposition will say, pointing an accusing Henry Higgins'-esque finger in my face, "They're not friends! These are not friends! There are conditions, and real friendships do not have conditions, real friendships know no bounds."

And that's when I dismiss the whole theoretical conversation by saying, "Labels are treacherous. The best and most complex things in life cannot be defined and categorized and neatly organized. Some things, the best things, just are. Friends are friends, period."

I refuse to think about it. For whatever reason there are people who read my blog. I've given up trying to figure out why. But let me tell you, the variety amongst people who read it is staggering. Age, race, gender, financial status, location, marital status, child status...one thing that remains utterly mysterious and bizarre to me is the extreme diversity in the people who read this blog, and thus the diversity in friends I've made herein.

There are a few demographics that score slightly higher on the reader profile bar charts, but not enough higher to launch a definitive marketing campaign. Which is why it's good I've never tried to market the blog. I wouldn't have a clue where to start because there is no obvious target audience.

I love that. It's like a Googlewhack. I call it Demogwhack®. The product or service that is so diverse it defies all demographic definition.

It's a nice, blissful, label-free, anonymous-but-intimate little world. People reach out to me to congratulate, commiserate and just say hi or suggest a book, a band or a movie. Rockin' on.

Way, way, way, way back when this was primarily a geeks and freaks place on another bloghost, there was this guy who was as awkwardly geeky, socially stupid and as much of a music fan as I am.

I know.

Scary and yet oddly compelling that there would be two of us on one planet at the same time. He was the first person who ever sent me an email via the blog. He was the one who made me aware that my blog was, in fact, public, not private. (Hey, back then the public/private settings area was more than a little vague, there were no dashboards or account settings pages. There were parameters with toggle buttons and several "saves" required to toggle parameters where you wanted them. Just because you selected "private" in one area didn't mean your blog was actually, fully, private. And "public" had a couple definitions. You could be "public" within the confines of a selected group, but private to the rest of the world, or, you could be public to the whole world.)  I thought I was public within the confines of a select group, but, heh heh, I was telling the whole world about level 6 of "Starship Titanic." Live and learn. This guy was kind and helpful. He ascertained that I didn't realize I was publicly posting my love and hatred of the game and how much I hated a certain band.

This guy lived in a land far, far away so meeting in person was never going to happen. There's a certain amount of freedom in that knowledge. You can say anything you want because you are never going to meet this person in person. He already knew I was a SuperGeek and it was obvious he was, too. Why pretend, or even try, to be someone I'm not? He already knew some embarrassing things about me, the "damage" was done, so the whole warts and all aspect was nice.

We emailed now and then. He wasn't much of a reader in general. Other than tech manuals and HTML code he didn't read much of anything, so for him to read the blog was kind of unusual. After a few emails he confided that the only "great" work of literature he'd read cover to cover was Don Quixote, and he only slogged through that so that he could perform well on his debate team. He faked his way though his school lit classes by reading a few paragraphs from each chapter and looking up the themes and characters of the story in encyclopedias. But he knew Don Quixote so well that he could reference to it on enough significant levels that it seemed like he knew a lot about literature in general.

When he confided this to me I was a little surprised that someone who, by his own admission, didn't like to read anything that was not technical was reading my blog. I was more surprised to learn that someone could fake their way through college entrance exams, undergrad and grad school having only ever read one real piece of literature cover-to-cover, and even more staggering, that that one book was Don Quixote. Sure, it's a good book and it explores a lot of significant themes...but...could that really work? The more I thought about it the more I realized the genius of his choice. If you're a guy and you're going to read only one fiction book cover to cover, and you want to get into a decent college, Don Quixote is the best choice. There's enough material to a) explore in essay questions, b) quote during interviews with college deans, and c) impress the ladies and d) do all of that without arrogance.  This guy was brilliant. 

So I wrote back with one question, "So, you're an idiot Cervantes?!"

And thus a beautiful friendship and nickname were born. IC and I shared occasional emails, sometimes containing nothing more than a link, other times containing "real" friendship kinds of correspondence.

We both love music in almost every form and '50s science fiction . You might find it surprising to learn that finding someone who likes Hank Williams, Sr., Screaming Blue Messiahs and Prince is not easy. (I can't believe I'm single, either.) And when that person also owns more than one Severed Heads LP (yes, vinyl)? That's a demogwhack® to the third power. Unless you have something bordering on mental illness to confess I'm fairly certain the only two people on the planet who can point to purchases of all those artists in their physical music collection (or digital for that matter) are me and IC.

Then he met a girl he really liked. She was an editor at a magazine. He told me he used the "idiot Cervantes" line on her. "My friend calls me an idiot Cervantes." I won't take all the credit, but, six months later they were married. A bunch of years later they have a house, a dog and two kids.

The emails between us ebbed and flowed. Sometimes sparse and sporadic, other times daily depending on what we each had going on in our lives. There was no need to explain or apologize - we were friends, after all, and we understood we lived full lives in places other than in front of our computers.

I didn't hear from the IC for a while but didn't think too much of it - he has a wife, two kids, an ever-higher-ranking demanding job, a house under seemingly constant renovation, a huge music collection to digitize and an ailing father. And I have my own crises-du-jour to manage.

I was happy when IC's name appeared in my in-box a couple weeks ago. I realized that it had been a while since I heard from him and I felt remiss that I hadn't emailed him, either. No matter, I was excited to see what links and new music he would surely have to share with me, and the paperclip icon next to the subject meant only one thing: photos of his kids. We never share photos of each other, I have zero clue what he looks like, but proud father that he is he sends me photos of the kids. And no, this doesn't fill me with dread, I love seeing photos of his kids.

"Dear Trill,
This isn't IC, it's me, [IC's wife]. I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but IC is very ill. He didn't want you to know but I thought you would worry and be hurt if you never hear from him again without explanation. Yours is a unique relationship. Blogs are binging a new frontier of affection but the social complexities are still murky. How and when do you tell someone you've never met in person that you're dying? They don't cover this in internet etiquette books. I just thought you should know. The doctors feel there's no point in continuing the treatments and..."

I read on through a haze of dizziness and confusion and grief. The wind knocked out of my stomach like a kick in the gut feeling? The weak knees that buckled? The tears? The "nooooooo" that gasped from my mouth? If IC is not a real friend how do you explain all of that?

No. I've never shared a jumbo package of toilet paper from Costco with him or even gone to a concert with him. No. I've never met him in person. We've never taken a road trip or met for drinks after work. We've never even spoken to each other.

But. If we're not friends why did the news of his illness and the termination of treatment for it hurt me so badly? If he's just someone who reads my blog why am I worried about his wife and children? Why do I care? Only real friends have the capacity care with this depth.

I feel helpless because I am helpless. My friend is dying. There's nothing I or anyone else can do. It's "let go with dignity, peace and a steady drip of morphine" time.

He lives on the other side of the planet but even if he lived two miles away I would feel the same helplessness.

But it would certainly pose a new etiquette conundrum. As IC's wife said, we're in a new frontier of affection. What does one do at the death of a friend they've never met in person?

In this case logistics rule out any and all possibility of me racing to his deathbed or even the (gulp) funeral. (It took me four attempts over the span of an hour just to type that word. If he's not a real friend what is he and why am I feeling such grief?)

But if he lived locally, or within a time zone or two, would it make any difference?

Attending the funeral seems kind of insulting - the only time I "met" him in person was after he died? This takes "Too Late for Goodbyes" to a very different, far more complex level. It's too late for hellos.

After all these years (and he was there at the blog birth, so it's been a lot of years), now that he's dying, would I visit him or even speak to him on the phone before he dies?

If he wanted it, requested it, yes, I would. Of course. It wouldn't be easy for me and it would undoubtedly be weird or even awkward for both of us, but if he wanted to see or talk to me, yes, I would do it.

But he didn't even want me to know he was sick, let alone dying. So...I mean, you know, where do you go with that? Respect, dignity, silence = valor...it's been a huge emotional abyss for me. This is a new frontier.

The dynamic of our relationship is such that it's wholly cerebral to the exclusion of the physical. Ours is an entirely communicative relationship. We know each others' vernacular, slang, turns of phrases...yet we've never heard the sound of each others' voices. Wrap your head around that for a moment and then ponder this: Are we friends? And, if so, does the nature of our friendship (wholly cerebral) preclude all sensory contact with each other? 

It was exactly that thought that I stumbled over while making my way from grief to the blog.

True affection isn't sensory. It's cerebral, cognitive. And the internet, for all it's maddening limitations and dangers, is the only conduit by which friendships can form, take root and flourish on a purely cerebral level. All of the physical is stripped away. Sure, we may communicate to evoke the physical, "I love that song!" "I saw the most gorgeous sunset!" "They boiled the flavor out of the carrots." "I've never felt anything so soft as the baby's skin!" "...but those diapers really stink at 2 AM" But ultimately these friendships are purely cerebral. And one could argue that if both parties are honest, sincere, open and willing this is the most pure form friendship. There's no physical detritus. Or judgment.

I was trying to think of a good Don Quixote quote for IC and soon realized how very quixotic I was being. And that produced choking sobs. Not a lot of people would get the joke within an allegory within an allusion the way IC would get it. That understanding, that friendship, is irreplaceable.


So I responded to his wife, thanked her for overriding IC's request to keep me in the dark, and among other things, asked her to tell him, "I tried to think of a good Don Quixote quote but fortunately I realized how quixotic that is and thought better of it. Ultimately all I feel, and all I want to say is thank you for being such a good friend. The music is sometimes questionable, the insights are often obtuse, but the laughs are always out loud."

Last night I received another email "from" IC. His wife said he chastised her for telling me he was ill, but he wanted me to know he laughed when she read my email to him.

She also told me he died peacefully listening to the Clash a few nights ago.

If he's not a real friend why is my heart broken?