Dorian Gray And Friend

[poliphilo]

I was trawling the lj universe haphazardly and came across the journal of a guy I last spoke to ten years ago. It was kinda scary. If his icon's to be believed he doesn't look a day older. He's still in the same job. And he's still banging on about medieval Hungary in the same pompous, mock-Edwardian prose.

No surprises. I wonder if he would feel the same if he found my journal. Huh, Tony Grist- same old same-old.

I hope not.

From Chris's journal it was a short hop to Dave's. Dave's user-name is ****-the-twat. He's still as self-hating as he ever was, but now the anger is finding an outlet in paki-bashing nationalism. And he's still chasing teenage goth girls- which was iffy when he was twenty eight and is now downright inappropriate.

I was fond of him. He was a mess the way a puppy of one of the larger breeds of dog is a mess. He had a good heart. It's a shame to see him sink. Life is a tricky business. Some people develop effective strategies for getting through it without sustaining too much damage and others don't.

My first instinct was to give these blokes a cheery wave, but they live too close to home- and I don't want either of them back in my life.

Comments

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

Oh, if that isn't the most bizarre thing to experience? I have always imagined the world of LJ to be separate from the world in which I live. Of the people I meet here, I may cross the physical boundary, but never the other way around. There is an understanding with people on LiveJournal that doesn't seem to exist with people who live in the world above.

I like LiveJournalers better, I can trust them more, even if I cannot see them. They grant me the key to their lives, whereas when I meet a stranger at a bar, I never really know. I like the freedom of this world. It would be so troubling to stumble on the truths of someone I knew before.

It would be downright frightening if they were perverse in some way I did not previously know, or were hateful without apparent reason.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

This is the first time this has happened to me. It probably won't be the last.

Chris has given himself a user-name he was employing as a pseudonym a decade ago- so it leapt off the (virtual) page at me. Dave, too, has only slightly adapted a nick-name that was current in the unlamented days of yore.

People run in such grooves.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

It probably won't be the last, you are absolutely right. That is a little disturbing.

Being a woman of many names and eternal metamorphosis, I find it hard to imagine that they would still be using the same names! How bizarre for you to follow a hunch and find it was just as you suspected!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It was as I'd popped out of the room for five minutes and come back in to find Chris pursuing the same sub-Wildean monologue. He doesn't seem to have changed a bit.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

We are like electrons, moving in whichever direction we want. Some of us go forward sometimes, so backward, some sideways, it's strange to collide.

I probably would not have said a thing, either.

Actually now that I think about it, this sort of happened to me. My ex found my LiveJournal a few months ago and left me a message asking me to ring him. I freaked out as soon as I saw the area code and deleted it.