F.A.

I've been lost in the world of facebook lately. Utterly, fantastically lost. It's been interesting to reconnect with old friends, and fascinating to find how quickly we revisit the way of interacting that made us drift apart in the first place.

I'm talking about a guy from college who I really like talking to but who ultimately gives me the creeps. We had one nice facebook chat - about being parents, and what he was teaching these days - and then he was suddenly coming cross-country to Chicago for a "pleasure and soul-searching" trip and he thought he'd really like to see me. I declined. It was reminiscent of what made me shy away from him twelve years ago: then I worked in the local grease spoon diner where he sat and drank coffee and studied. One night we got to chatting and decided to drive into the city for a drink. It was a nice night of conversation at a piano bar; but then he started showing up during my shifts at work a lot. One night when I asked how he knew I'd be working he said he'd gone to the house where I rented a room. The main door was open so he walked right in and up to my door. When I didn't answer his knock he walked into my room and checked my calendar and saw that I was working that night. When I told him I didn't appreciate him walking into my space without me, he didn't see what the big deal was. And here he is twelve years later, pushing my boundaries in ways I don't like.

That's a mildly creepy example, but there are also the high school girlfriends. Better than acquaintances but never good friends, I've reconnected with some very nice women. Almost too nice. I find myself the recipient of less and less of their chatter after making off-color (but funny, dammit!) comments about breast feeding. Or drinking too much. Or a combination thereof.

And then there are the college buds who always seemed a little out of my iq league. I see them chatting merrily back and forth about teaching and politics and books. I'm the one who heaves big sighs then; I'm simultaneously bored and jealous at people who can wax so eloquent over - say - the history of withholding one's vote as a form of protest.

I'm hoping this realization -- that everything new is old again -- will be the beginning of the end of my love affair with facebook. And that I can get back to a much more satisfying if lonelier brand of narcissism - you!