You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Blogosphere Again

Many moons ago, way back at the dawn of the millennium, Choire Sicha railroaded me into starting something known as a blog with him. It was called East Coast, West Coast and we wrote about our lives as best friends living on opposite sides of the country. Neither of us knew what a hyperlink was, much less how to code one, and even though we didn't have a clue about design either, it apparently didn't matter. During that early age of blogging when it was this thing that was still very much relegated to the uber commandos of the geek squad, perhaps it wasn't too surprising that a couple of queer crackpots sharing way too much information about their lives found itself an audience on the newfangled interweb.

The day Choire added a web statistics meter to our site, months after having launched it, we were shocked and awed. There were visitors reading our postings, lots of them. It took a little getting used to, but it quickly became rather addictive and for myself, having been released from rehab, I was ready and waiting for the new crack. Having dreamed of fame for most of my life while doing absolutely nothing worthwhile towards achieving any, it wasn't long before I not only didn't mind airing my dirty laundry online, I found myself participating in even more outrageous antics so I could do even more of it - just as long as there was an ever-growing audience. Initially masking it all behind a blogging psuedonym, even the privacy had to go. I wanted full credit for all of my dysfunction!

Forgive me as I digress here for a moment, but I must take a moment to confess that the whole story behind my sleeping with East/West's 500,000th visitor, simply for having landed on our blog at that magic moment, was an act of complete and total fabrication. Not that I wouldn't have slept with him, probably, but when Jonno won the actual honors, as it were, what he wanted was a good juicy story instead. Conjuring up a night with our half-a-million prize winner at a cheap motel in Oakland, well, scandal ensued. Are they really whoring themseves for hits? Although the answer in this case was actually "no" - the truth was absolutely!

While that incident added fuel to an ever-growing fiasco, the man behind hiding behind the curtain was soon exposed - writing as the mole behind Puppetmaster, the online web game hosted by Ernie. The game ended with a bang and as people wondered who East/West's cyberwhores really were, nobody seemed to mind that we were snake oil peddlers who'd somehow landed in Blogville via a tornado. Choire and I soon found ourselves multi-nominated for Bloggies - and we won. I had somehow become a famous blogger and truth be told I was loving it. When Rannie and the Toronto bloggers rolled out the red carpet when I arrived for a Martini party, when I found myself surrounded by New York City bloggers at the Idlewild bar when I was in town, when I fell in love with another blogger in Michigan and we started a long-distance relationship, somewhere along the way I had stopped blogging about my life and my life had become the blog.

And yes my dearest, there was a price to pay for all of it too. Morrissey was right. Some friends really do hate it when you become successful. A Cause celebre for a time finding strangers kissing my ass, there were others who rather suddenly stopped liking me. Strangers at a party were overheard saying things about yours truly that weren't exactly kind and somewhere between all the self-centered parading on my part and the internet's insatiable need for the new and improved extra super-tingling flavor, I found myself in angst. While I'm not sure of the where and why of it all exactly, what I do know is that all the while East/West was zooming right along, my fear that we were no longer the "it" blog really bothered me. Wasn't I blogging just as much and just as hard as ever? Wasn't I still parading in ridiculous situations and silly outfits for your enjoyment? I wanted all the limelight, and when the nominations for the Bloggies that year came and East/West wasn't on the list, I did what any fiending publicity-drug addicted crackwhore would do. I attacked the nominees.

Creating a debacle of a sort, I threw myself into the grave at the funeral, flinging dirt wherever there was a target. While the redemption was watching a giant spike in traffic roll in - like people go to the ocean to watch beached whales die - when the Bloggies were over and the tide rolled out, there were numerous people wounded. I truly regret have done that. There were those who took their blogs offline after being chased by a lynch mob I created, long-term online friendships that were damaged and ruined. I attacked the Dallas/Ft. Worth Area Bloggers claiming a conspiracy that was ridiculous at best, unfairly questioning and tarnishing their reputation in the process. I attacked my good friend Min Jung Kim for scoring a best LGBT blog nomination for her not being queer really out of self-righteous jealousy. Rannie and I had a falling out as I acted like the incredibly spoiled, childish, vindictive child. I'd like to apologize sincerely to everyone involved and the blogosphere as a whole for any and all damage my tirade caused. If there is someway for me to make it up to you, please let me know. I'd like to make the situation right if I can. What's so ironic about it all was that thing I hated the most about the internet, the flaming attacks by others from the comfort of their home computer screens, was the very thing I wound up participating in. My sincere apologies. I was a total ass. I wish you all nothing but the absolute best there is in life, in abundance.