I Cyberlove You, Man

I just ditched two drafts that were going nowhere in favor of this. Well, they were going somewhere, all right. Like down the Tangent Trail deep into Digression Forest. Another day.

You guys know I teach English online. Finding a topic that's interesting, not too controversial, and that actually sparks authentic conversation can be tricky. The content writers don't always get it right. The Spa, for example. Fail. Every time. And for some reason, I always end up with a class full of guys for that topic. Deer in the headlights, poor bastards. Look, that one's trying to chew his leg out of the trap. Dude, it's either this or Jewels and Gems. Save the leg. Tea Time is another one. Really? Sure, in Japan or chatting up those posh Brits, but our market is Latin America. Coffee. Trying to get my students worked up about tea is like convincing a cat to fetch. Meh. So I just turn Tea Time into Tea, Coffee, Mate, Cocoa, or Whatever-the-Hell-Else-You-Like-to-Drink Time. Open it up for some enthusiasm.

Technology topics always go over well, particularly discussions on how technology has changed communication and relationships. Students love the tech topics almost as much as Dating or Happy Hour. And those are some entertaining classes, trust. Well, in the advanced classes, anyway. In my absolute beginner classes, I spend most of the time resolving tech issues, configuring mics, waving my pointer around, and repeating things sloooowly in my Happy Voice. It's a process.

One question that always sparks spirited debate is whether or not its possible to have real friendships online without meeting in the flesh, as it were. I tend toward the cynical; the Pollyanna outlook just isn't my thing. Life has made me a realist. Time was, I'd have said anyone wanting to be your "online friend" (wink, wink) either wants to get in your pants or in your wallet. Or both. 

Back during the Seattle years, though, before Facebook turned everyone into meme-loving, like-clicking, mindless drones, I unwittingly fell into a cybercommunity. Yes, bloggers. Oh, please, people, get off  your judgy high horses. I repeat: Seattle. What the hell else did I have to do? This was back when I was Drizzle's bitch, huddled under a Snuggie, wearing flannel Seahawks pajamas in front of my fireplace, drowning my sorrows in cheap wine. It was dark by 4:00pm, for Pete's sake.

So spare me the snickering.

Anway, despite my initial skepticism and (fine!) snickering, it was good. We became friends. Many of us have met in person. One year, when some asshole hit my car at the same time that my dog needed surgery and This Old Motherfucking House popped up with yet another issue, as it was wont to do, I found a check in the mail (for a substantial amount) accompanied by a witty, this-is-your-life story they'd written to make me laugh. None of them would cop to amounts or even who exactly had ponied up. No way to send it back. Well played.

I was a single mom, people. That shit meant a lot. I even cried. Hell, I'm getting a little misty now.

I was cold a lot in Seattle.

Another time, one of the guys knitted me a gorgeous scarf, using some fancy stitch (they are called stitches in knitting, right?) that actually took some effort. This same guy sent me his old iPod when he upgraded. I still have that iPod. It's sitting right here, up above my two feet of of kitchen counter. I still think of Tony when I listen to Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, whom I hadn't even known about before.

Another guy made time to take me to dinner during a layover in Seattle. He used to encourage me in the advocacy work I was doing. We were supposed to be working together, fighting The Man by now, but Costa Rica. Another time, I drove up north and had the most fun ever with the effervescence that is Auld Hat. (For the last time, no, there are no hidden pictures from that day, you bunch of freaks.) There were other meetups, literally from coast to coast, that we all read about. We felt as though we really knew each other.

And we did.

There's a kind of intimacy that happens. I know about these people's childhoods. Their successes and failures. Fears. The hell-yeahs and the melancholy moments. The things friends know about. Meeting and mailing things wasn't really necessary. It was just extra.

They made me laugh (lordy, but these are some funnyass people), lent a sympathetic ear when shit hit the fan, read the boring, lame-ass crap I wrote that I didn't migrate over here (you're welcome), shared their own stories, supported me, and made me feel like I was a badass who could take on the world. I needed that during the Seattle years.

Wait, which one of us is the Skin Horse?

They became my friends. Real friends. Like Velveteen-rabbit real. Yeah, that's sappy as hell. Just go with it. Boxed wine and nostalgia will do that shit.

Just this week, we cyberhooked up one night. Settle down, not that kind of hook up. Facebook group, not webcam. Freaks. One of us actually is badass and has a radio show, so we linked in, and he gave us shout outs on air and played tunes for us. We laughed and drank and shot the shit, and it was genuinely fun. A party with folks spread from Canada nearly down to the equator. If that's weird or geeky, fuck it.

Guess I'm weird and geeky.

Listen, the Interwebs is chock full o' bullshit. There are eleventy-jillion blogs out there -- most of which suck ass or only appeal to maybe 13 people on the planet -- along with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Ashley Madison, and all the other mind-sucking, entertaining places. A veritable sea of bullshit. So if you end up connected in any kind of real way with people, it means you've connected based on your ideas, your values. Your minds. Your humor. Not just because you work with this guy or live next to that guy or your wife is the sister of that other guy.

Suckers.

Granted, you may end up connected based on a web of lies and fakery, but that's life on or off the Interwebs. People hide all kinds of shit. Be careful out there. Google is your friend.

I've lived most of my adult life moving from one country or city to another, leaving friends and making new ones. The Internet changes that somewhat. You're still leaving, but not really. Here in CR, I found another cybercommunity where people think like me, get me. When you're living in another culture, that's huge. Especially when a lot of the people from your own culture are either stoned surfers twenty years younger than you or folks twenty years older with a stick up their ass who want Costa Rica to be Little 'Murka where we speak English and eat Big Macs. Gawd. Finding like-minded people is good. I've met a few people from the cybercrew and count them as friends. Tomorrow, I'll meet two more. (I was supposed to meet someone today, too, but plans in CR have a way of falling through at the last minute. Pura vida. Maybe next week.)

I miss the hell out of my face-to-face friends. Days when I talk with them, I'm happy as the proverbial pig in shit, and it's like no time has passed. But it's weird: sometimes you hear more from your cyberfriends than from your family or face-to-face friends. I think it's because with cyberfriends, that's the ONLY way you've ever communicated. Online. It's the norm. For your fam and "regular" friends, it's a switch. An adjustment. You're "gone" for them. Skype, Whatsapp, Messenger, and the rest get a lukewarm reception. Maybe not for the younger generation or habitual travelers. My daughters are good at keeping in touch, but 90% of our communication is online chat. That's great for me, but it doesn't work for everyone. So it can be hard to connect. A lot of folks overseas say if they're not the ones doing the calling, no one calls the other direction. I don't know why that is, but it's kind of a thing in emigrant circles. You're the caller, not the callee. Maybe it's left over from the Ma Bell days? I need to be better at it, regardless. Because I seriously miss my family and "regular" friends. I don't think they know how much. Probably because my slack ass doesn't call enough.

Aaand, I digressed.

Back to cyberfriends, before I go from misty to pathetically tracing the tracks of my tears. Back in the Seattle years, you bastards helped me keep at least a tenuous hold on sanity. And nearly a decade after falling in with you guys, we're still here. Okay, we got sucked into Facebook's cheap and easy e-thrills, but hey, shit happens. the pendulum is swinging back.

So a toast to friends -- doesn't matter if it's via WiFi or from the next barstool: I love you, man. No, I mean it, a toast. Pass me that beer. No ice.

Mad Hattery

So I know you all are all stalking my blog like a bunch of vultures in breathless anticipation of details from my trip to Hatland.

Hello?

[chirp, chirp]

Guys? Anybody out there?

Fine. It's not like I was blog-stalking either, when Lorraine went to Chi-town, or when the Hat came to Seattle. Please. I have a life, you know. Hmph.

So, what to say? How do I put it to words? The Hat has become Real. Like the Velveteen Rabbit.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you."

Well, The Hat certainly didn't have a stick-out handle, but after a certain number of tasty drinks, she may have had things buzzing inside her. Regardless, she is now Real, with a face and a voice and a fetchingly contagious smile.

I have to tell you all, I was amazed that she'd only been in her charming abode for little more than a month. From the gorgeously curvy (and oh so fitting) chaise lounge with funky pillows, to her Princess bed, to the flowers on her hat box end table, to the pictures on the walls - it was neat as a pin and looked like she'd been there for years. Lorraine would be proud.

I've been in my house for nearly a year. Ain't shit on my walls.
And yes, she actually does have an end table made of hat boxes. See for yourselves. Perfect? I think so.

Also, she had this hostess business down, y'all. I arrived to find a fancy spread of shrimp cocktail, mussels on ice, veggies, spinach dip (in bread bowl, of course), dill dip, 3 different cheeses, kalamata olives, and petite quiche.
Oh hell yes. The Hat rocked the kitchen.

She prepared some refreshing Iced Tea, perfect after my long and arduous journey. This tea was zippy and left me strangely giddy, yet able to grasp all the mysteries of the universe. It's some sort of Italian tea blend a la Lorraine. I liked it so much I snagged the recipe.
(Disclaimer: Italian Ice Tea not intended for those under the age of 21.)

The Hat's hostessing skillz really came to light with her change of attire for every course. The evening began with a flowy skirt and blouse ensemble, went to a frilly summer frock, then to basic black. She rounded up the evening with silky PJs in the color scheme of her chaise lounge, bedecked with flowers and a snappy trim. Impressive. I suspect she may have Superman phone booth skillz to boot, as I never actually saw this happen.

I brought a fine Chilean wine, based on my intimate knowledge of funky wine labels. You wine aficionados out there may recognize this particular blend as Voluptuous Beauty. Exactly. I really had no choice but to bring it, did I? Perfect for an evening at the Voluptuary. It didn't suck. I was proud. You can't tell so much in the cropped shot, but the backdrop for this shot was, in fact, beauteously voluptuous.
Sadly, there isn't as much photographic evidence as we'd planned. But really, who has time to snap pics when you're busy quaffing tea and untangling the mysteries of the universe? Anyway, here are a few of the pics. See, not too incriminating.

Below you'll see her Hatness chatting up one of her Real friends. We both had Real friends checking up via telephone, in case either of us turned out to be an axe murderer. We had to use code words and everything. Doesn't actually do much good though, when you tell the potential axe murderer about your code word.

(It does pay to be careful though, as this Australian farmer recently found out. He was kidnapped during an Internet meeting gone wrong. Of course, his visit did involve marriage and a dowry of gold bars, but whatever. It happens. Be careful out there.)

"So, things are going WELL ... yes, I said WELL."
(hello, adorable! Can we get a cyber wolf whistle here?)

"Wait! You should wear a hat!"
"Right! And pull it down over one eye like in the movies!
Do I look like a princess detective?"

"My! He really is a Dirty Rotten Kitty!"*

Frivolity abounded in direct proportion to the amount of "Iced Tea" consumed. And it really was just her chaise lounge that squeaked when she reached for her wine glass that time. I ended up crashing on the Hat's lovely chaise lounge, as we realized at one point it was 3:30 am. Oops.

Frivolity aside, I'm so glad to have met her. I never would've thought that this blogging business would lead to connections like this. I know there are people who don't see any difference between a blogging addiction and an online gaming or TV addiction.

The difference is the connection.

Meeting the Hat validated my feeling that these are, in fact, real connections. That these keyboard people with unknown faces, cyberly tied by the wisp of a broadband connection, are friends. As I got into this whole blogging thing more and more, I'd sometimes question myself. Okay, Cowbell, what's up -- is this online stuff isolating me from connections in the real world? Am I deluding myself that these are connections at all?

No. This online stuff is about building connections, and these folks are very much in the real world.

What I think about blogging is that it strips away all the things people normally connect over. Looks, age, gender, employment, location, orientation, education, income level, hot-factor, whether you're married or single, whether you have kids or not -- all of that is gone. Out of the equation. What's left is our insides, the core. Our beliefs, feelings, fears, humor, interests. The things that matter.

What is more real, connections based on those surface things, or a connection based on our insides? I'm thinking that a friendship based on shared beliefs is a lot more real than a friendship based on someone's hotness factor or income level.

If you take the step to meet a cyberbuddy in real life, you have already discovered shared beliefs, interests and humor. You have weeded through dozens of other blog sites before finding one that you connect with, and when you do connect, it's because there's something there beyond surface cosmetics. Well, unless someone has a really kickass template, that is.

I'm thinking this blogging thing is a pretty damn efficient way to meet Real Friends.

If you're wondering, yes, I did actually call her The Hat. No, there were no awkward silences. No "holy shit, what the hell am I doing here?"  We were not strangers. It was effortless. Okay, commenting over at The Club wasn't exactly effortless, but that was because of all the "Iced Tea" we'd consumed at that point. The rest of it though, was effortless. We talked about stuff way below the surface. Which didn't seem odd at all.

The Hat is every bit as lovely as I'd imagined. As I've already fawned over her pics at Lorraines, you know I think she is more delicious than a Daiquiri Shake (don't ask). And hello, the neighbor guy's comment? Well, let's just say, don't be too hard on him. Poor guy. The pressure was just too much. So yeah, the sparkly captivating hotness that comes through on her blog? Her. And yes, her smile really is that sunny.

*That last one is a long story. I stole Dirty Rotten Kitty from a friend on the East Coast a few years back, before her dog could destroy him. (He's actually a dog toy, but like the Velveteen Rabbit, is quite Real, and had to be rescued.) Since then he's kind of become like the world renowned Traveling Garden Gnome. He's been spotted in many places, and has much photographic evidence in his travel logs. He now has a new friend.