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Three Elements of Harmony
11 years ago
On the night of November 20th when I got on Second Life my friend Mike was busy, which suited me because I wanted to watch some videos and go to bed early anyway. After I did, and turned out the lights, I was laying in bed thinking about the concept of friendship, and a follow-up to my previous journal entry.
When thinking about friendship, I often like to imagine me talking to myself at age 13. Around when I was 13, I got invited to the birthday party of a popular kid at school, and had a good time. I met a lot of people there, and had a taste of popularity. Trouble is, that popularity really just seemed to manifest itself as saying 'hi' to people in the hallways, and thus was just an annoyance to me. I considered attempting to turn those first sparks of acquaintance into full friendships, but consciously decided against it. I was aware that I was a naturally reclusive person who wasn't good at holding long-term friendships, and more importantly in retrospect, I really couldn't see a good reason for trying to do that at the time besides the feeling that it was expected of a person that having a lot of friends was a sign of success and lack of such was a sign of being a loser. So, I didn't want to form friendships for their own sakes, and consciously decided that I would rather let the opportunity pass and resign to joyful solitude.
But when I asked my younger self "Why did you come to that decision? Why would you find the concept of friendship back then to be merely annoying, when now, recently, you are finally for the first time in your life in the middle of a long-term fulfilling friendship?" My younger self replied "Go back further."
Thinking on it, in my whole life there have only really been three friendships that I've had that are outside of the family and could be considered long-term. I won't give any full powerwords, but they have been Kevin L., Jesse B. and Mike. Kevin was the first of these, and my experiences with his friendship were formative of my current outlook on the concept.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
That phrase has been on my mind a lot in recent weeks. I remember when I was young and it was referenced on The Magic School Bus I didn't get the metaphor, and it was only later I realized it meant that you can offer opportunities to people, but can't make them accept those opportunities. Kevin was a classmate of mine when I was about 6 or so, and also happened to just live about half a mile down the street from where I live. My Mom matched us up for sleepovers, which I now see was in the hope that I would take the opportunity she was providing and make the friendship self-sustaining myself. That never happened. As a brief side-note, right now the very same thing is happening with me and her in reverse. I installed several games I thought she might like on the computer in hopes she would get into them and enjoy them. Instead, she will only play any of the games with a lot of prodding from me, and she will never play them when I'm not around. The exact same thing in reverse happened for Kevin. Mom was our matchmaker, and she would call Kevin's Mom and set up sleepovers, but I never took the initiative to, say, call Kevin myself, or offer to come to his house and do something, or even really talk to him outside of our sleepovers. And thinking on why that was, I came to a realization:
When Kevin was over, what I really wanted, more than anything, was for him to leave.
Now, why would I say such a thing? To be clear, it wasn't for any of the reasons a person would usually think that. Kevin was a good friend, in that he was good at friendship. He was kind, and polite, and open to suggestions. I can see why my Mom paired us, and she was probably hoping I would learn more about friendship from him and use that knowledge for form my own friendships. Instead, though our sleepovers were at best pleasant and at worst boring, to the best of my fading memory for that far back what I really wanted was for him to be gone, not because he was a bad person or anything. I wanted him gone because he was a disruption. Even by the age of 6 or so, I had already become the kind of kid that tended to find great pleasure in solitary entertainment. For the reasons for that, I would have to go back further to investigate my interactions with my family, and that is an entirely different topic, so for the time being I'll just say that's so and leave it at that. Point being that by the time Kevin entered my life, after school I enjoyed watching TV, reading books, and playing PC games. You might notice that those three things are things that can be done alone. And so, when Kevin came over, I had to stop doing what I really wanted to do, and try my best to do something more cooperative and less fun, like board games or building forts or something. That lead to several memorable instances of "What do you want to do? I don't know, what do you want to do?" and really, I'm sure what I was thinking was "Well, what I really want to do is for you to leave so I can go to my computer and play Alpha Centauri, which would be a whole lot more fun than this."
So then, thinking in bed, I thought the obvious question: "Did I never consider the possibility of taking turns?"
And to the best of my memory, I either didn't consider that at all, or considered it and thought it would be a bad idea. So, let's imagine I could stick a plug in my neck like in Andromeda, enter a virtual reality simulation, and simulate reliving those first formative encounters I had with friendship with me knowing what I know now when I was younger. Now, I'm still not "good" at friendship, which I'll get to later, but I would say that I at least know more about it now than I did at the time.
So, say that Mom has invited Kevin over for a sleepover. He comes over, and gets his stuff all carried in, and we have the entire evening to do stuff. Now, in reality what that would probably entail was either us playing Star Wars Monopoly, watching Star Wars together (which actually was fun, I will say) or scratching our heads bored. If I could relive that, what I would try would be to bring him into my interests. I would show him my computer, which then as now was the primary seat of my entertainment and joy, and first show him whatever game I was interested in. But knowing what I know now, watching someone play is generally boring for the person watching, and makes the person playing feel catagelophobic. Since then as now I have only a tiny selection of multiplayer games that can be played on one computer, and only had one computer back then, I imagine what would happen if, for example, I first played a mission of Command and Conquer: Red Alert, and then either mid-mission or after it, switched places with Kevin and let him play it for a while and for me to watch. If that actually worked out, it would do a lot to assuage the feeling of disruption I felt when he came over. Then, the next logical thing for me to change was for me to actually do a tit-for-tat exchange, and give him the benefit of the doubt for whatever he was interested in. Since Mom was matchmaking, it worked out that he came over about a dozen times, and I only went to his house a few times, and when I did it, it was a similar situation, only this time I still wanted to go home. I was naturally less open to new things than he was, and more apt to balk at suggestions for trying things he liked, which probably did more to kill the friendship than anything else. I wish I could have told my younger self that sharing in what someone is interested in, even if you end up not liking it, can be something that helps form friendships anyway, and that even if you don't end up liking what another person suggests, the fact that you even took the time to try what they suggested is flattering to them, and creates something you both can talk about.
So, I wonder, looking back at that first formative friendship that if I could go back and do it again, if I could take what I've learned and turn it into a self-sustaining long-term friendship, or if it would still be doomed to failure because of my personality and the interests we didn't share. As a side note, Mom gave up trying to set up sleepovers after a few years, and Kevin and I drifted away, with him getting interested in soccer in a single-minded way that approaches my interest in PC gaming. He's still a 'friend' of mine on Facebook, but we have hardly spoken a word to each other in 15 years or so, and his Facebook page is a rarely-updated collection of comments on soccer, ice bucket challenge stuff, and booze pictures. So, he's pretty much dead to me.
Don’t Match Up Exactly
For all of high school I had acquaintances, but no long-term fulfilling friendships. When I went to college, I met Jesse. Jesse’s friendship wasn’t quite fulfilling, but it had the virtue of being long-term at least.
Since my friendship with Jesse started in 2008, I can at least remember more details about it than my friendship with Kevin, and what I can't remember I can probably find recorded or written down somewhere. I still remember my first meeting with him pretty well. Based on my e-mail records it was around March 2008, and after some sort of event or meeting with my college's game club, I went to the commuter lounge to use their computers for a while. There, I met a teenager a few years younger than me with short hair, crooked teeth, a high-pitched voice and an androgynous name. Quite frankly, I wasn't even totally sure of his gender until I talked with him more. I found that he was at college because though he was actually in high school he was taking some courses in college, and also had a big interest in PC games. In particular, he was nearly obsessed with Valve games, Portal and Half Life 2 in specific, and also had an interest in game development, which I shared at the time. After the meeting we exchanged e-mail addresses and became pen pals for a few months. I ended up meeting him more often and more regularly, and for my part I played Portal and Half Life 1, Opposing Force, and Blue Shift. However, while Portal gave us common ground, Jesse really had no interest in the earlier Half Life games, and for reasons I can't remember I never played any of the more recent Half Life games then or ever. Also, when it came to game development, we learned we had quite different conceptions of what specifically that meant. I was more interested in developing complete, simple games or mods for existing games, and Jesse was really more interested in 3D modeling. One day, he showed me how to use Source Development Kit, but I just didn't take to it for some reason. I remember that what I really wanted to do with it was to make a flying saucer, but he was more interested in working with scripts on it, which I wasn't very interested in. Also, he in general didn't like the kind of games I was interested in, and would only play any with a lot of prodding. So, even when I was in college it was a very mixed friendship. On the one hand, I really did enjoy seeing him around, and liked meeting with him and talking with him, and he even had two sleepovers at my dorm. On the other hand, it was obvious our interests didn't match up exactly, and neither of us was generally flexible enough to not only try what the other person liked, but actually take to it and enjoy it. Eventually, Jesse did play some games I liked with me, like Worms Armageddon and Age of Mythology, but never played them without me, very much like how these days Mom will play Mutiny and Jeopardy with me, but will never actually seek them out and play them herself, or actually ask me if I want to play them with her.
After graduating from college, we drifted away even more. Without face to face communication, practically speaking the only way to get in touch with Jesse is through Steam chat. And on Steam chat, he's a slow typer who gives short responses and I often get the feeling I'm getting a tiny fraction of his attention when typing to him. So, I went nearly a full year without talking with him at all. I had a change of heart in early 2014, and decided to attempt to rekindle the friendship. I went through and re-read all the e-mails, Facebook chats, and Steam chats, and compiled them into a document encompassing everything I know about Jesse. It was bitter-sweet, since I was able to read those first pleasant e-mails that reminded me what I liked Jesse in the first place, but also read later conversations that recorded instances of frustration and difficulties in the friendship. I then attempted to reconnect with Jesse on Steam, but it was no good. I was knee deep in Call of Duty and StarCraft II, both of which he seemed to recoil from in horror, while he was into JRPGs, puzzle games, and MOBA games, and was also starting to shy away from PC gaming to console gaming. Also, for game development he had pretty much lost all interest in that in general, and was instead focusing purely on Daz3D, which I tried but found I had no interest in. So, though PC gaming and development had united us in the first place, there was really no hope that it would reunite us. Also, when it came to just general talking, it felt like I was digging a mine and only getting iron. To explain, imagine that a person is a mine, and that time you put into interacting with them is like mining that mine. Now, say that if after you spend time with them you go away thinking it was a valuable use of your time, you have come out of the mine with gold, and if you end up feeling like it was time wasted, you come out with rubble. Reconnecting with Jesse was like going into that mine and coming out with iron, in that the time I spent wasn't quite wasted, and I was coming out with something of some value at least, but still it was something boring and common. I never really felt like I was connecting with Jesse as a person and spending the time really enjoyably.
In frustration, I wrote a song parody based on You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift called Don’t Match Up Exactly, which was inappropriate for my parody section on Lyrics Wiki, but on consideration, actually would be appropriate to post on Fur Affinity. For all my fiddling with it, I just can’t seem to get the syllables of the parody to match up exactly with the original song, which I suppose is appropriate considering the topic of the parody.
You're on Steam, playing some puzzle game I bet
I'm going off to play something different
You don't play the same games
As I do
I'm on my PC; it's a typical Sunday night
He's on the kind of game I only sort of like
So I just go
Through a fourth
Play through
'Cause he likes SpaceChem, Torchlight, and Remember Me
I like FPS like Black Ops II Zombies
Dreamin' 'bout the day, when we stop drifting away
And see interests emerge, interests that really converge
I enjoy trying to understand you
Been friends for so long, so why can't you see
Our interests don't match up exactly
Our interests don't match up
I sat next to you, thinking that maybe today
I'd get interested and learn to use SDK
Laughin' on a the computer, thinkin' to myself
Hey isn't this, easy
And you've got art that could light up this whole town
If I tried the same it would be a huge letdown
Do I have skills better than that?
I never won any contest
He likes inflation, I'm a full-blown furry
He renders art and I write stories
Dreamin' 'bout the day, when we stop drifting away
It would really be so sweet, to find tastes that truly meet
I enjoy trying to understand you
Been friends for so long, so why can't you
See
Our interests don't match up exactly
Searching websites, reading your updates
It's all so close, but I just can't relate
Jesse, all I see
Don't match up exactly
Oh I remember you, writing me e-mails, late into the night
You're the one that's outgoing, and I'm the one that's shy
I know your favorite songs, and you tell me 'bout your dreams
Though our interests do match up, they don't match up exact...ly
It's been long enough that I think I understand you
I loved Portal, so why can't you
Please
At least try Call of Duty?
All the time online I see vicious bite
Playing on Steam, but the game just isn't right
Jesse
Our interests don't match up exactly
Do you belong with me? Have you ever thought just maybe
Our interests don't match up exactly, they don't match exactly
Eventually it got to the point I said to myself “You know, this friendship is smoldering, and it's getting to the point that I'm close to wanting it to be put out."
So, I went on Steam and told Jesse "Let's play a PC game together. You choose. Anything you want."
He said "League of Legends."
I said "Would Aeon of Storms be an acceptable replacement?"
He said "No."
So, I downloaded League of Legends on my computer, and felt, really felt, the expression "you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink." I watched the download bar fill up, knowing that I was downloading a PC game, and that I was familiar with the concept of MOBA games from Aeon of Storms. However, I had also learned that I in general didn't like MOBA games, and that in this case I wasn't downloading it because I wanted to play the game, but because I wanted a last chance at rekindling a friendship with Jesse. So I installed it, played a few rounds on one day, and another round the week after, and never played another round of the game again. I didn't want to play it unless I was under duress to play it, so I never started it when Jesse wasn't around, and when my computer had a problem and I reinstalled my OS a few weeks ago, I was actually a little relieved that it uninstalled the game along with all other programs on the computer, relieving me from having to go to it, uninstall it myself, and for all intents and purposes shut the door on ever really considering Jesse a good friend again.
Now these days, Jesse is still on Steam. Our friendship still smolders, and a little part of me wishes we'd have some kind of fight or falling out that would just completely end the friendship. Instead, we're back to going weeks without talking with each other. My friendship with Jesse was important because it was a friendship that first of all, wasn't the result of anyone trying to matchmake us, and second, endured a long time in one state or another. But it also bears to mind the saying “If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning,” which I looked up and is apparently a quote by Catherine Aird. What I mean is that my friendship with Jesse wasn't a good example of friendship, but was a warning about what happens when elements of a good friendship are lacking, and it was a learning experience for me if nothing else.
Pony Waifu
The last of the three major long-term friendships is Mike. As I wrote in a previous entry, I recently returned to Second Life after years of absence, and this time have spent a lot of time in the sims based on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Now, I met Mike very early in my visits to there, but at those times he was playing as a foal, and using text chat exclusively and poorly. Whatever he said was often short, misspelled, and at worst nonsensical. Then one day, in early November I think (I have the exact date written down but that's on my other computer) I was in the Ponyvale sandbox trying out a saddle bag from the Nightmare Night scavenger hunt, and he was around. He either offered help or I asked for it, I forget which, and after a few text exchanges, he asked if I had a microphone, and I said I did. I then saw a Second Life voice call was coming through and answered it. Suddenly, Mike changed into a completely different person. Instead of nonsense jumbles of letters, I heard on my headset a nerdy, friendly young adult from New Brunswick talking to me. He gave me a resizer that worked perfectly, and with the saddle bag issue fixed, we trotted off to a Ponyvale bar, plopped our avatars down, and started chatting. It still boggles my mind that in our first conversation, we bonded over juice of all things. It turns out he's a teetotaler like I am and we started talking about our favorite drinks. I remember thinking to myself at the time the same thought I thought when I first started reading Red Storm Rising: "Other people might find this boring, but I find this enthralling." I found that when Mike turned his microphone on, he really could be best described as "charming". I was surprised at how many of our general and specific interests matched up, and enjoyed getting to know him. I had "met" him before in that I had seen his avatar and exchanged a few words with him before, but I really consider that day the first time I ever really "met" him, and that night I went to bed smiling.
Now, don't get me wrong when I say I've only had three long-term friendships in my life. I have met a lot of people, and would even go so far as to say that I'm good at meeting people. As well I should be, considering that my job for the last three years has basically consisted of meeting people for the first time and then never talking to them again for 8 hours a day. So, it was a week later when I talked to Mike again, and had another good conversation. My current days off from work are Monday and Tuesday, and on November 10th and November 11th I had a lot of fun talking with him and doing things on Second Life, to the point that I didn't want to have to wait a whole week before talking to him again. I currently work 1:30 PM to 10:00 PM, and he's not on in the mornings, so when I got home, rather than going to bed on November 12th I went on Second Life to talk to him, and had a pleasant late-night pony chat, and then another the day after, and then on Friday we explored a Pyramid obstacle course together, just the two of us, and I again went to bed smiling. Now, on November 15th I had tried to listen to Fallout Equestria and found it was horrible, and instead spent that day writing my previous entry, and on the 16th had a sort of crummy chat with him, but then had fun on the 17th and 18th, had an excellent meeting with him and a friend on the 19th, he was busy on the 20th so I went to bed early but stayed up late thinking about this journal entry topic, and then last night had a great talk with him where he professed to me his dreams.
Now, there are a few things to note about my friendship with Mike.
First of all, if Don't Match Up Exactly is the theme song for my relationship with Jesse, Tubby Wubby Pony Waifu (http://youtu.be/1DgbB_uN4Ww) is our theme song. I'd say almost all the lyrics match up, except for
Profess to me your foolhardy dreams
The things you find you're fond of
Tell me your every wish
I think that I'm in love
I have put a lot of thought into it, and wondering if that warm fuzzy feeling I often go to bed feeling after talking with Mike is love, and come to the conclusion it isn't. It's friendship, warm and pure. I know what it feels like to have a crush on someone, and might have felt what it's like to be in love before, but I'm really not sure how true the ladder statement is. So, I know that this feeling I have for him isn't a crush, and it's friendship, but it's of a nature and intensity that I'm unfamiliar with.
Second, if you compare the descriptions of my three friends carefully, you'll notice that there are three "elements of harmony" that Mike has that my other friends were missing:
1. Shared interests. This is the most important thing of all, and that's the major warning I take from my experience with Jesse. For there to be friendship among people, there has to be affinity, and for there to be affinity, there needs to be shared interests. It wasn't just that Jesse and I disagreed on a few things that we liked. Mike and I don't have interests that match up 100% on some things, as the Fallout Equestria instance shows. But Jesse and I were really missing any interests at all that matched up exactly. When it came to anything you can think of - movies, games, music, religion, TV shows, et cetera, Jesse and I had views and interests that were close, but really not a single instance of note of actually matching interests. On the 19th when we were chatting, Mike said he had the DVD for "Brother Bear" and I said "I really loved that movie." I told him I had the DVD for Watchmen and had watched the movie about 6 times in one form or another, and he said he loved that movie too. It's a minor example, but a good example of the fact that Mike and I really do have specific interests that exactly match up, such that I'm actually confident to try or at least learn about the things that he's fond of. As for Kevin, time has erased most of my memory of what things he was really interested in aside from Sponge Bob and Soccer, and those two things only stick out because they were interests of his that I balked at.
2. The Grease of Friendship – voice. Now this is an interesting one, since obviously my entire interaction with Kevin was face to face and using our voices. But for Jesse and Mike, voice communication was an essential grease to friendship. Now, the reason why I call it the Grease of Friendship is that it's possible to get to know someone with just text, and there are some people on Furries Xtreme that I talked to multiple times and got to know them well enough for them to be short-term friends. But I must note that those people typically gave me full attention, and typed responses quickly and legibly. Jesse's and Mike's text messages don't meet those definitions. It's to the point that shared interests or not, I think the major reason I felt like I was digging iron when talking with Jesse was because there was so much friction in communicating, and that when I have to wait 5 minutes for the response to a question that would have taken 20 seconds to respond to on voice, perhaps it was destined that I wouldn't have a good time talking with him. We did voice chat on Steam once, but it wasn't pleasant because he just has his crummy laptop microphone, which meant it had a total lack of privacy and meant he wouldn't be able to play a game and talk like I do when I play Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and we ended up just talking about how our interests don't match up exactly so we never did a Steam voice call again. Also, I was thinking about it, and if Mike's headset were to break and he didn't replace it, that would kill our friendship faster than almost anything else and eliminate any chance of getting that warm fuzzy feeling that I feel after an enjoyable conversation with him ever again.
3. Doing stuff together. Now this one is a common thread through all the three long-term friendships. Perhaps there are some old ladies that get together just to gab, but I've found that in general, just talking to someone gets real old real fast and often feels like a waste of time. There are probably a dozen furries on Furries Xtreme that I have talked to precisely once, learned a little about them, and never wanted to talk to them again. I've already gone on in detail about the problems I had doing things together with Kevin, and I would say that this, more than anything else, was the primary reason that friendship never took off, and it doesn't bear repeating how much this also was the primary factor in my relationship with Jesse not taking off. Since my interaction with Mike is through Second Life, that offers a unique kind of opportunity for interaction. Now, to be clear, as a "game" Second Life really sucks. I learned long ago that if you try to use Second Life as a First Person Shooter or a Racing Game, that with the way it is set up and how the environment loads, those genres of games in Second Life are actually shittier than comparable games from the early 2000s. Instead, the opportunity of Second Life is to do SOMETHING, which can at least be a catalyst for conversation. The Pyramid exploration was an excellent example of that. I'm sure that if we were both just talking to each other on the phone we probably would have been bored of each other in 5 minutes. Instead on November 14th when Mike and I explored a Pyramid, we stopped to look at and comment on the art and sculptures decorating the tunnels as well as the various traps in the sim, and use those as starters for conversation. It also created a general goal we could both work towards, in this case getting to the end of the obstacle course. Now, keep in mind that this whole obstacle course would have been a very crummy game were it being played on its own, but going through it on Second Life really counted as "doing stuff together", and I ended that night smiling, and thinking of the funny things Mike had said and the interesting things we talked about.
"Do you think we both have a chance? Can we even get by? I know the odds are against. We'll make it if we try!"
Even on times where I've gone to bed smiling, when the morning comes, that's when my worries and fears about the friendship start to enter my mind. Here's the part where I air my personal fears publically but anonymously. In short, I'm afraid that I'm going to blow this friendship. History certainly isn't on my side. I'm historically a reclusive person that enjoys doing things alone, who fears criticism, and worse, as this journal entry has pointed out, has failed in my other two long-term friendships. I fear that I won't be good at this friendship either, and that one way or another, this friendship will end in tears, or more likely, end in slowly fading away like Jesse's friendship.
The odds certainly are against it. There are plenty of things that would kill the friendship. The most obvious and final thing that would kill it wouldn't be an argument or something, but for one of us to go incommunicado. If Mike or I were to leave Second Life and not come back, or like I mentioned if voice chat were to suddenly stop, that would completely halt the friendship dead, and there's practically no chance that exchanging messages on some other web site would rekindle the kind of friendship we have. Thus, one of my primary concerns is striking a sustainable balance in interacting with him. I fear that if I try to talk to him too much, it will be like burning my candle at both ends, and I'll burn out, lose interest, and stop wanting to interact with him. But I also fear that if I interact with him too little, the current friendship will die into the smoldering heap of a friendship I have with Jesse. And at that, it bears mentioning that I have a lot more trust in Mike than I have in myself at sustaining this friendship. He was a real wallflower in high school too, but these days on Second Life he has a little network of friends that he seems very adept at sustaining, and has already sustained friendships with some people much longer than I am. I'm the one without history on my side when it comes to long term friendships, whereas at least recent history has been kind to him. Also, as I mentioned he really is charming in his own way. For me...I really don't know. I wouldn't think I'm charming myself, but then he does seem just as happy to see me in Second Life as I am to see him, so I must not be failing on that point for now. Just the same, that's the other major thing that I worry about in the mornings: How did I do with the conversation? I wonder to myself if I said anything that he might find insulting or a put down, or something that might make him not like me, or even if I might have just rambled on at some point and bored him. I'm glad to think that our friendship has built up some inertia so that it will survive some kind of bump in the road like that, but I am also acutely aware that too many bumps will slow anything down. So, I feel that to actually sustain this friendship, I need to take together all things I've learned about friendships and relations in my life (and maybe take to heart a few lessons from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic to boot) and apply them to the task of sustaining a pleasant friendship for a long period of time. It feels like a Herculean task, but I also remind myself that when my twin nieces were three years old they had already mastered the basics of friendship, even before they had fully mastered language, so it must not be too hard.
Now the only questions that remain are what my goals are for the friendship. I put a lot of thought into that, and I would say my immediate goal is to still know and like Mike come January, and most importantly, still keep this desire I have to keep interacting with him. I was about to say that I didn't pick January for any specific reason, but then thought more on it, and that might not be true. Mike has another friend on Second Life that he is very fond of, and currently knows him for about three months. Now obviously if they're still friends in late January they'll have been friends for 6 months, but I wonder if I picked January because that would mean that come sometime in January, I will have known Mike for the same amount of time that he knew his friend when I first met Mike. I know I am certainly self-conscious about how short I have known Mike so far, and I'm not sure my train of thought went on that path when I decided January, but it's certainly possible I might have been thinking that. But anyway, point being is that my general goal is to keep the friendship going for several months.
As for more specific goals, I've thought about that a lot, and concluded that my main specific goals could be summed up as "total knowledge" and "total trust."
"I think that you're rather unique. Perhaps you're something new. And if you'd like to oblige, I'd like to get to know you."
Mike is the most open and honest person I've ever met. While on Second Life there are a lot of people who, when asked a question, will either give some half-truth or even sometimes an in-character response when an out-of-character question was asked (example: "How old are you?" "I am thousands of years old." "What? No, I was asking how old are YOU, as a person!") as far as I can tell, Mike has told the whole truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth to every question I've ever asked him (and I'm happy to say that I think I also have never lied or bent the truth when talking to him). So, he's an open book to me, and the question then becomes what parts of him I want to read. I have already learned many, many things about him as a person. He has answered my questions in great detail when I've asked about his background, and he's professed to me his foolhardy dreams and the things he's fond of. In fact, many times when I've talked to him he has so completely satiated my curiosity that I have trouble thinking of other things to ask him and talk about. So, I suppose what I mean when I say "total knowledge" is that I want to eventually come to a point where I know everything that I would care to know about him and not be able to think of anything left that I'm curious about, which given what I just said, it seems I might already be close to that goal.
"Your hair's soft as feathery down. Large eyes to look into. Such trust and vigor for life. You are my pony waifu."
Total trust is a different subject, and something I've put a lot of thought into. There are still some things about him that I want to know but haven't asked yet, namely: his powerword, his address, and what he looks like. Each of those, I have some knowledge of already - his first name, what city he lives in, and his general height and weight, but I know that one day soon I will ask for his full name, his full address, and for a picture of him. Now, what's strange about this topsy-turvy world of the Internet is that you might notice that full name and what a person looks like are the first things a person typically learns in face-to-face communication, but on the Internet, to quote Captain Miller from Saving Private Ryan, "But over here, it's a big, a big mystery." Instead, on the Internet, Mike has told me his deepest fears and desires, and I've told him some secrets I haven't even told my Dad, but neither of us has ever shared pictures of each other. It's not that I think he'd say "no" if I asked. I'm sure he'd be happy to oblige, but I wonder if I'D be happy to oblige. I have often looked at myself in the mirror these past weeks and wondered what would happen if Mike saw my face, and how he'd react if I told him my full name and my full address. He's certainly the sort of trustworthy person that I could trust not to spread that information around, and I know if he did the same for me I would never tell a single other person in the world. But I suppose I'm just nervous about when the right time for such a request is. As I mentioned before, I'm self-conscious about how short this friendship has been, and despite how deep and long the friendship feels already, I haven't even reached the one-month anniversary of our first conversation, and I wonder if I would be being too forward to make such requests for such personal information so soon.
As for other things that I want him to trust me with besides those three things in specific, the only other specific thing I can think of is that one day, probably in the long future, I would like to share a Join.Me session with him. In some ways, it's even more intimate to share a person's computer than it is to share in their personal information, or even share in their deepest specific desires. For my work, I spend all day connecting to the computers of strangers, who must have enough trust in me and my company to let me onto it and check it out. However, when I get on those computers, it's for very specific purposes, and I specifically can't "poke around" in their computers unless there is a very legitimate business reason for doing so. Thus, there is a difference between me connecting to his computer for one specific purpose, such as just to play Bowman or Mutiny or to do some pro bono tech support, and me connecting to his computer and being allowed free reign to poke around. And if he were to connect to my computer? That would be perhaps the most nerve-racking and exciting thing I can think of. Could you imagine it? Someone far away, in a different country, connecting to your computer and given free rein to do whatever they want on it. I would still be able to break the connection at any time, but just the feeling of it, the sheer trust of saying "There's nothing I have on this computer that I forbid you from seeing, and I trust you completely not to mess anything up" is like...well...I won't even say where my mind went just a moment there. Point being is that it's a very intimate experience, and despite our open and honest relationship I don't think we are quite to that point yet, but such a conception of total trust is a goal to look forward to in the far future.
It's a little strange to write these long entries that take multiple days to draft, because though the original subjects of the entry were conceived on November 20th, I'm now just finishing this long entry on November 24th. So, in those four days some developments happened related to this topic with Mike, since I currently do have an active relationship with him, though the states of the Kevin and Jesse relationships have of course remained static in the last four days. Last night, he was telling me about how he was doing something a friend had asked him to do not because he really wanted to do it but because he valued the friendship of the friend enough that he wanted to do it to make him happy. I thought about that a lot last night, and was thinking how that exactly fit with the topic I was writing about. After all, a big part of why my friendships with Jesse and Kevin are smoldering or dead are because one or both of us were unwilling to give whatever the other person was interested in a chance, and I can't help thinking that if I took Mike's point of view in a few instances, my friendships with Jesse and Kevin could have gotten stronger and lasted longer, even if perhaps they were destined to die sooner or later for one reason or another. Also, it was a heartening notion, since it meant that at least Mike was willing to give what his friends want a try himself, which removes one of the main barriers that my previous friendships had. Now, the only question left is whether I can return the sentiment, and try what he likes. I also wonder whether in the cases where I really can't try what he likes for any number of reasons, such as lack of access (like not having a PlayStation 3 and not wanting to get one, so I won't share any console-exclusive game he likes), lack of time (also, for video games in general, the time commitment to actually play one tends to be at best significant even in the case of a short game like Gone Home, and at worst astronomical in the case of a game like StarCraft II) or feelings of revulsion or disgust (like while trying to listen to Fallout Equestria) if I can at least learn more about whatever he's interested in so that I can share conversation in it. After all, even if I, for example, will never play a Disgaea game myself, at least if I know about the game I can discuss it and know what he's talking about when he brings it up if I take the time to at the very least learn about the game. I only wonder if that will be enough, and wonder if our shared interests, our shared experiences, and our pleasant conversation will keep the friendship going for a long time, or if something will happen that will end my friendship with Mike like my friendships with Jesse and Kevin ended.
When thinking about friendship, I often like to imagine me talking to myself at age 13. Around when I was 13, I got invited to the birthday party of a popular kid at school, and had a good time. I met a lot of people there, and had a taste of popularity. Trouble is, that popularity really just seemed to manifest itself as saying 'hi' to people in the hallways, and thus was just an annoyance to me. I considered attempting to turn those first sparks of acquaintance into full friendships, but consciously decided against it. I was aware that I was a naturally reclusive person who wasn't good at holding long-term friendships, and more importantly in retrospect, I really couldn't see a good reason for trying to do that at the time besides the feeling that it was expected of a person that having a lot of friends was a sign of success and lack of such was a sign of being a loser. So, I didn't want to form friendships for their own sakes, and consciously decided that I would rather let the opportunity pass and resign to joyful solitude.
But when I asked my younger self "Why did you come to that decision? Why would you find the concept of friendship back then to be merely annoying, when now, recently, you are finally for the first time in your life in the middle of a long-term fulfilling friendship?" My younger self replied "Go back further."
Thinking on it, in my whole life there have only really been three friendships that I've had that are outside of the family and could be considered long-term. I won't give any full powerwords, but they have been Kevin L., Jesse B. and Mike. Kevin was the first of these, and my experiences with his friendship were formative of my current outlook on the concept.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
That phrase has been on my mind a lot in recent weeks. I remember when I was young and it was referenced on The Magic School Bus I didn't get the metaphor, and it was only later I realized it meant that you can offer opportunities to people, but can't make them accept those opportunities. Kevin was a classmate of mine when I was about 6 or so, and also happened to just live about half a mile down the street from where I live. My Mom matched us up for sleepovers, which I now see was in the hope that I would take the opportunity she was providing and make the friendship self-sustaining myself. That never happened. As a brief side-note, right now the very same thing is happening with me and her in reverse. I installed several games I thought she might like on the computer in hopes she would get into them and enjoy them. Instead, she will only play any of the games with a lot of prodding from me, and she will never play them when I'm not around. The exact same thing in reverse happened for Kevin. Mom was our matchmaker, and she would call Kevin's Mom and set up sleepovers, but I never took the initiative to, say, call Kevin myself, or offer to come to his house and do something, or even really talk to him outside of our sleepovers. And thinking on why that was, I came to a realization:
When Kevin was over, what I really wanted, more than anything, was for him to leave.
Now, why would I say such a thing? To be clear, it wasn't for any of the reasons a person would usually think that. Kevin was a good friend, in that he was good at friendship. He was kind, and polite, and open to suggestions. I can see why my Mom paired us, and she was probably hoping I would learn more about friendship from him and use that knowledge for form my own friendships. Instead, though our sleepovers were at best pleasant and at worst boring, to the best of my fading memory for that far back what I really wanted was for him to be gone, not because he was a bad person or anything. I wanted him gone because he was a disruption. Even by the age of 6 or so, I had already become the kind of kid that tended to find great pleasure in solitary entertainment. For the reasons for that, I would have to go back further to investigate my interactions with my family, and that is an entirely different topic, so for the time being I'll just say that's so and leave it at that. Point being that by the time Kevin entered my life, after school I enjoyed watching TV, reading books, and playing PC games. You might notice that those three things are things that can be done alone. And so, when Kevin came over, I had to stop doing what I really wanted to do, and try my best to do something more cooperative and less fun, like board games or building forts or something. That lead to several memorable instances of "What do you want to do? I don't know, what do you want to do?" and really, I'm sure what I was thinking was "Well, what I really want to do is for you to leave so I can go to my computer and play Alpha Centauri, which would be a whole lot more fun than this."
So then, thinking in bed, I thought the obvious question: "Did I never consider the possibility of taking turns?"
And to the best of my memory, I either didn't consider that at all, or considered it and thought it would be a bad idea. So, let's imagine I could stick a plug in my neck like in Andromeda, enter a virtual reality simulation, and simulate reliving those first formative encounters I had with friendship with me knowing what I know now when I was younger. Now, I'm still not "good" at friendship, which I'll get to later, but I would say that I at least know more about it now than I did at the time.
So, say that Mom has invited Kevin over for a sleepover. He comes over, and gets his stuff all carried in, and we have the entire evening to do stuff. Now, in reality what that would probably entail was either us playing Star Wars Monopoly, watching Star Wars together (which actually was fun, I will say) or scratching our heads bored. If I could relive that, what I would try would be to bring him into my interests. I would show him my computer, which then as now was the primary seat of my entertainment and joy, and first show him whatever game I was interested in. But knowing what I know now, watching someone play is generally boring for the person watching, and makes the person playing feel catagelophobic. Since then as now I have only a tiny selection of multiplayer games that can be played on one computer, and only had one computer back then, I imagine what would happen if, for example, I first played a mission of Command and Conquer: Red Alert, and then either mid-mission or after it, switched places with Kevin and let him play it for a while and for me to watch. If that actually worked out, it would do a lot to assuage the feeling of disruption I felt when he came over. Then, the next logical thing for me to change was for me to actually do a tit-for-tat exchange, and give him the benefit of the doubt for whatever he was interested in. Since Mom was matchmaking, it worked out that he came over about a dozen times, and I only went to his house a few times, and when I did it, it was a similar situation, only this time I still wanted to go home. I was naturally less open to new things than he was, and more apt to balk at suggestions for trying things he liked, which probably did more to kill the friendship than anything else. I wish I could have told my younger self that sharing in what someone is interested in, even if you end up not liking it, can be something that helps form friendships anyway, and that even if you don't end up liking what another person suggests, the fact that you even took the time to try what they suggested is flattering to them, and creates something you both can talk about.
So, I wonder, looking back at that first formative friendship that if I could go back and do it again, if I could take what I've learned and turn it into a self-sustaining long-term friendship, or if it would still be doomed to failure because of my personality and the interests we didn't share. As a side note, Mom gave up trying to set up sleepovers after a few years, and Kevin and I drifted away, with him getting interested in soccer in a single-minded way that approaches my interest in PC gaming. He's still a 'friend' of mine on Facebook, but we have hardly spoken a word to each other in 15 years or so, and his Facebook page is a rarely-updated collection of comments on soccer, ice bucket challenge stuff, and booze pictures. So, he's pretty much dead to me.
Don’t Match Up Exactly
For all of high school I had acquaintances, but no long-term fulfilling friendships. When I went to college, I met Jesse. Jesse’s friendship wasn’t quite fulfilling, but it had the virtue of being long-term at least.
Since my friendship with Jesse started in 2008, I can at least remember more details about it than my friendship with Kevin, and what I can't remember I can probably find recorded or written down somewhere. I still remember my first meeting with him pretty well. Based on my e-mail records it was around March 2008, and after some sort of event or meeting with my college's game club, I went to the commuter lounge to use their computers for a while. There, I met a teenager a few years younger than me with short hair, crooked teeth, a high-pitched voice and an androgynous name. Quite frankly, I wasn't even totally sure of his gender until I talked with him more. I found that he was at college because though he was actually in high school he was taking some courses in college, and also had a big interest in PC games. In particular, he was nearly obsessed with Valve games, Portal and Half Life 2 in specific, and also had an interest in game development, which I shared at the time. After the meeting we exchanged e-mail addresses and became pen pals for a few months. I ended up meeting him more often and more regularly, and for my part I played Portal and Half Life 1, Opposing Force, and Blue Shift. However, while Portal gave us common ground, Jesse really had no interest in the earlier Half Life games, and for reasons I can't remember I never played any of the more recent Half Life games then or ever. Also, when it came to game development, we learned we had quite different conceptions of what specifically that meant. I was more interested in developing complete, simple games or mods for existing games, and Jesse was really more interested in 3D modeling. One day, he showed me how to use Source Development Kit, but I just didn't take to it for some reason. I remember that what I really wanted to do with it was to make a flying saucer, but he was more interested in working with scripts on it, which I wasn't very interested in. Also, he in general didn't like the kind of games I was interested in, and would only play any with a lot of prodding. So, even when I was in college it was a very mixed friendship. On the one hand, I really did enjoy seeing him around, and liked meeting with him and talking with him, and he even had two sleepovers at my dorm. On the other hand, it was obvious our interests didn't match up exactly, and neither of us was generally flexible enough to not only try what the other person liked, but actually take to it and enjoy it. Eventually, Jesse did play some games I liked with me, like Worms Armageddon and Age of Mythology, but never played them without me, very much like how these days Mom will play Mutiny and Jeopardy with me, but will never actually seek them out and play them herself, or actually ask me if I want to play them with her.
After graduating from college, we drifted away even more. Without face to face communication, practically speaking the only way to get in touch with Jesse is through Steam chat. And on Steam chat, he's a slow typer who gives short responses and I often get the feeling I'm getting a tiny fraction of his attention when typing to him. So, I went nearly a full year without talking with him at all. I had a change of heart in early 2014, and decided to attempt to rekindle the friendship. I went through and re-read all the e-mails, Facebook chats, and Steam chats, and compiled them into a document encompassing everything I know about Jesse. It was bitter-sweet, since I was able to read those first pleasant e-mails that reminded me what I liked Jesse in the first place, but also read later conversations that recorded instances of frustration and difficulties in the friendship. I then attempted to reconnect with Jesse on Steam, but it was no good. I was knee deep in Call of Duty and StarCraft II, both of which he seemed to recoil from in horror, while he was into JRPGs, puzzle games, and MOBA games, and was also starting to shy away from PC gaming to console gaming. Also, for game development he had pretty much lost all interest in that in general, and was instead focusing purely on Daz3D, which I tried but found I had no interest in. So, though PC gaming and development had united us in the first place, there was really no hope that it would reunite us. Also, when it came to just general talking, it felt like I was digging a mine and only getting iron. To explain, imagine that a person is a mine, and that time you put into interacting with them is like mining that mine. Now, say that if after you spend time with them you go away thinking it was a valuable use of your time, you have come out of the mine with gold, and if you end up feeling like it was time wasted, you come out with rubble. Reconnecting with Jesse was like going into that mine and coming out with iron, in that the time I spent wasn't quite wasted, and I was coming out with something of some value at least, but still it was something boring and common. I never really felt like I was connecting with Jesse as a person and spending the time really enjoyably.
In frustration, I wrote a song parody based on You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift called Don’t Match Up Exactly, which was inappropriate for my parody section on Lyrics Wiki, but on consideration, actually would be appropriate to post on Fur Affinity. For all my fiddling with it, I just can’t seem to get the syllables of the parody to match up exactly with the original song, which I suppose is appropriate considering the topic of the parody.
You're on Steam, playing some puzzle game I bet
I'm going off to play something different
You don't play the same games
As I do
I'm on my PC; it's a typical Sunday night
He's on the kind of game I only sort of like
So I just go
Through a fourth
Play through
'Cause he likes SpaceChem, Torchlight, and Remember Me
I like FPS like Black Ops II Zombies
Dreamin' 'bout the day, when we stop drifting away
And see interests emerge, interests that really converge
I enjoy trying to understand you
Been friends for so long, so why can't you see
Our interests don't match up exactly
Our interests don't match up
I sat next to you, thinking that maybe today
I'd get interested and learn to use SDK
Laughin' on a the computer, thinkin' to myself
Hey isn't this, easy
And you've got art that could light up this whole town
If I tried the same it would be a huge letdown
Do I have skills better than that?
I never won any contest
He likes inflation, I'm a full-blown furry
He renders art and I write stories
Dreamin' 'bout the day, when we stop drifting away
It would really be so sweet, to find tastes that truly meet
I enjoy trying to understand you
Been friends for so long, so why can't you
See
Our interests don't match up exactly
Searching websites, reading your updates
It's all so close, but I just can't relate
Jesse, all I see
Don't match up exactly
Oh I remember you, writing me e-mails, late into the night
You're the one that's outgoing, and I'm the one that's shy
I know your favorite songs, and you tell me 'bout your dreams
Though our interests do match up, they don't match up exact...ly
It's been long enough that I think I understand you
I loved Portal, so why can't you
Please
At least try Call of Duty?
All the time online I see vicious bite
Playing on Steam, but the game just isn't right
Jesse
Our interests don't match up exactly
Do you belong with me? Have you ever thought just maybe
Our interests don't match up exactly, they don't match exactly
Eventually it got to the point I said to myself “You know, this friendship is smoldering, and it's getting to the point that I'm close to wanting it to be put out."
So, I went on Steam and told Jesse "Let's play a PC game together. You choose. Anything you want."
He said "League of Legends."
I said "Would Aeon of Storms be an acceptable replacement?"
He said "No."
So, I downloaded League of Legends on my computer, and felt, really felt, the expression "you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink." I watched the download bar fill up, knowing that I was downloading a PC game, and that I was familiar with the concept of MOBA games from Aeon of Storms. However, I had also learned that I in general didn't like MOBA games, and that in this case I wasn't downloading it because I wanted to play the game, but because I wanted a last chance at rekindling a friendship with Jesse. So I installed it, played a few rounds on one day, and another round the week after, and never played another round of the game again. I didn't want to play it unless I was under duress to play it, so I never started it when Jesse wasn't around, and when my computer had a problem and I reinstalled my OS a few weeks ago, I was actually a little relieved that it uninstalled the game along with all other programs on the computer, relieving me from having to go to it, uninstall it myself, and for all intents and purposes shut the door on ever really considering Jesse a good friend again.
Now these days, Jesse is still on Steam. Our friendship still smolders, and a little part of me wishes we'd have some kind of fight or falling out that would just completely end the friendship. Instead, we're back to going weeks without talking with each other. My friendship with Jesse was important because it was a friendship that first of all, wasn't the result of anyone trying to matchmake us, and second, endured a long time in one state or another. But it also bears to mind the saying “If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning,” which I looked up and is apparently a quote by Catherine Aird. What I mean is that my friendship with Jesse wasn't a good example of friendship, but was a warning about what happens when elements of a good friendship are lacking, and it was a learning experience for me if nothing else.
Pony Waifu
The last of the three major long-term friendships is Mike. As I wrote in a previous entry, I recently returned to Second Life after years of absence, and this time have spent a lot of time in the sims based on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Now, I met Mike very early in my visits to there, but at those times he was playing as a foal, and using text chat exclusively and poorly. Whatever he said was often short, misspelled, and at worst nonsensical. Then one day, in early November I think (I have the exact date written down but that's on my other computer) I was in the Ponyvale sandbox trying out a saddle bag from the Nightmare Night scavenger hunt, and he was around. He either offered help or I asked for it, I forget which, and after a few text exchanges, he asked if I had a microphone, and I said I did. I then saw a Second Life voice call was coming through and answered it. Suddenly, Mike changed into a completely different person. Instead of nonsense jumbles of letters, I heard on my headset a nerdy, friendly young adult from New Brunswick talking to me. He gave me a resizer that worked perfectly, and with the saddle bag issue fixed, we trotted off to a Ponyvale bar, plopped our avatars down, and started chatting. It still boggles my mind that in our first conversation, we bonded over juice of all things. It turns out he's a teetotaler like I am and we started talking about our favorite drinks. I remember thinking to myself at the time the same thought I thought when I first started reading Red Storm Rising: "Other people might find this boring, but I find this enthralling." I found that when Mike turned his microphone on, he really could be best described as "charming". I was surprised at how many of our general and specific interests matched up, and enjoyed getting to know him. I had "met" him before in that I had seen his avatar and exchanged a few words with him before, but I really consider that day the first time I ever really "met" him, and that night I went to bed smiling.
Now, don't get me wrong when I say I've only had three long-term friendships in my life. I have met a lot of people, and would even go so far as to say that I'm good at meeting people. As well I should be, considering that my job for the last three years has basically consisted of meeting people for the first time and then never talking to them again for 8 hours a day. So, it was a week later when I talked to Mike again, and had another good conversation. My current days off from work are Monday and Tuesday, and on November 10th and November 11th I had a lot of fun talking with him and doing things on Second Life, to the point that I didn't want to have to wait a whole week before talking to him again. I currently work 1:30 PM to 10:00 PM, and he's not on in the mornings, so when I got home, rather than going to bed on November 12th I went on Second Life to talk to him, and had a pleasant late-night pony chat, and then another the day after, and then on Friday we explored a Pyramid obstacle course together, just the two of us, and I again went to bed smiling. Now, on November 15th I had tried to listen to Fallout Equestria and found it was horrible, and instead spent that day writing my previous entry, and on the 16th had a sort of crummy chat with him, but then had fun on the 17th and 18th, had an excellent meeting with him and a friend on the 19th, he was busy on the 20th so I went to bed early but stayed up late thinking about this journal entry topic, and then last night had a great talk with him where he professed to me his dreams.
Now, there are a few things to note about my friendship with Mike.
First of all, if Don't Match Up Exactly is the theme song for my relationship with Jesse, Tubby Wubby Pony Waifu (http://youtu.be/1DgbB_uN4Ww) is our theme song. I'd say almost all the lyrics match up, except for
Profess to me your foolhardy dreams
The things you find you're fond of
Tell me your every wish
I think that I'm in love
I have put a lot of thought into it, and wondering if that warm fuzzy feeling I often go to bed feeling after talking with Mike is love, and come to the conclusion it isn't. It's friendship, warm and pure. I know what it feels like to have a crush on someone, and might have felt what it's like to be in love before, but I'm really not sure how true the ladder statement is. So, I know that this feeling I have for him isn't a crush, and it's friendship, but it's of a nature and intensity that I'm unfamiliar with.
Second, if you compare the descriptions of my three friends carefully, you'll notice that there are three "elements of harmony" that Mike has that my other friends were missing:
1. Shared interests. This is the most important thing of all, and that's the major warning I take from my experience with Jesse. For there to be friendship among people, there has to be affinity, and for there to be affinity, there needs to be shared interests. It wasn't just that Jesse and I disagreed on a few things that we liked. Mike and I don't have interests that match up 100% on some things, as the Fallout Equestria instance shows. But Jesse and I were really missing any interests at all that matched up exactly. When it came to anything you can think of - movies, games, music, religion, TV shows, et cetera, Jesse and I had views and interests that were close, but really not a single instance of note of actually matching interests. On the 19th when we were chatting, Mike said he had the DVD for "Brother Bear" and I said "I really loved that movie." I told him I had the DVD for Watchmen and had watched the movie about 6 times in one form or another, and he said he loved that movie too. It's a minor example, but a good example of the fact that Mike and I really do have specific interests that exactly match up, such that I'm actually confident to try or at least learn about the things that he's fond of. As for Kevin, time has erased most of my memory of what things he was really interested in aside from Sponge Bob and Soccer, and those two things only stick out because they were interests of his that I balked at.
2. The Grease of Friendship – voice. Now this is an interesting one, since obviously my entire interaction with Kevin was face to face and using our voices. But for Jesse and Mike, voice communication was an essential grease to friendship. Now, the reason why I call it the Grease of Friendship is that it's possible to get to know someone with just text, and there are some people on Furries Xtreme that I talked to multiple times and got to know them well enough for them to be short-term friends. But I must note that those people typically gave me full attention, and typed responses quickly and legibly. Jesse's and Mike's text messages don't meet those definitions. It's to the point that shared interests or not, I think the major reason I felt like I was digging iron when talking with Jesse was because there was so much friction in communicating, and that when I have to wait 5 minutes for the response to a question that would have taken 20 seconds to respond to on voice, perhaps it was destined that I wouldn't have a good time talking with him. We did voice chat on Steam once, but it wasn't pleasant because he just has his crummy laptop microphone, which meant it had a total lack of privacy and meant he wouldn't be able to play a game and talk like I do when I play Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and we ended up just talking about how our interests don't match up exactly so we never did a Steam voice call again. Also, I was thinking about it, and if Mike's headset were to break and he didn't replace it, that would kill our friendship faster than almost anything else and eliminate any chance of getting that warm fuzzy feeling that I feel after an enjoyable conversation with him ever again.
3. Doing stuff together. Now this one is a common thread through all the three long-term friendships. Perhaps there are some old ladies that get together just to gab, but I've found that in general, just talking to someone gets real old real fast and often feels like a waste of time. There are probably a dozen furries on Furries Xtreme that I have talked to precisely once, learned a little about them, and never wanted to talk to them again. I've already gone on in detail about the problems I had doing things together with Kevin, and I would say that this, more than anything else, was the primary reason that friendship never took off, and it doesn't bear repeating how much this also was the primary factor in my relationship with Jesse not taking off. Since my interaction with Mike is through Second Life, that offers a unique kind of opportunity for interaction. Now, to be clear, as a "game" Second Life really sucks. I learned long ago that if you try to use Second Life as a First Person Shooter or a Racing Game, that with the way it is set up and how the environment loads, those genres of games in Second Life are actually shittier than comparable games from the early 2000s. Instead, the opportunity of Second Life is to do SOMETHING, which can at least be a catalyst for conversation. The Pyramid exploration was an excellent example of that. I'm sure that if we were both just talking to each other on the phone we probably would have been bored of each other in 5 minutes. Instead on November 14th when Mike and I explored a Pyramid, we stopped to look at and comment on the art and sculptures decorating the tunnels as well as the various traps in the sim, and use those as starters for conversation. It also created a general goal we could both work towards, in this case getting to the end of the obstacle course. Now, keep in mind that this whole obstacle course would have been a very crummy game were it being played on its own, but going through it on Second Life really counted as "doing stuff together", and I ended that night smiling, and thinking of the funny things Mike had said and the interesting things we talked about.
"Do you think we both have a chance? Can we even get by? I know the odds are against. We'll make it if we try!"
Even on times where I've gone to bed smiling, when the morning comes, that's when my worries and fears about the friendship start to enter my mind. Here's the part where I air my personal fears publically but anonymously. In short, I'm afraid that I'm going to blow this friendship. History certainly isn't on my side. I'm historically a reclusive person that enjoys doing things alone, who fears criticism, and worse, as this journal entry has pointed out, has failed in my other two long-term friendships. I fear that I won't be good at this friendship either, and that one way or another, this friendship will end in tears, or more likely, end in slowly fading away like Jesse's friendship.
The odds certainly are against it. There are plenty of things that would kill the friendship. The most obvious and final thing that would kill it wouldn't be an argument or something, but for one of us to go incommunicado. If Mike or I were to leave Second Life and not come back, or like I mentioned if voice chat were to suddenly stop, that would completely halt the friendship dead, and there's practically no chance that exchanging messages on some other web site would rekindle the kind of friendship we have. Thus, one of my primary concerns is striking a sustainable balance in interacting with him. I fear that if I try to talk to him too much, it will be like burning my candle at both ends, and I'll burn out, lose interest, and stop wanting to interact with him. But I also fear that if I interact with him too little, the current friendship will die into the smoldering heap of a friendship I have with Jesse. And at that, it bears mentioning that I have a lot more trust in Mike than I have in myself at sustaining this friendship. He was a real wallflower in high school too, but these days on Second Life he has a little network of friends that he seems very adept at sustaining, and has already sustained friendships with some people much longer than I am. I'm the one without history on my side when it comes to long term friendships, whereas at least recent history has been kind to him. Also, as I mentioned he really is charming in his own way. For me...I really don't know. I wouldn't think I'm charming myself, but then he does seem just as happy to see me in Second Life as I am to see him, so I must not be failing on that point for now. Just the same, that's the other major thing that I worry about in the mornings: How did I do with the conversation? I wonder to myself if I said anything that he might find insulting or a put down, or something that might make him not like me, or even if I might have just rambled on at some point and bored him. I'm glad to think that our friendship has built up some inertia so that it will survive some kind of bump in the road like that, but I am also acutely aware that too many bumps will slow anything down. So, I feel that to actually sustain this friendship, I need to take together all things I've learned about friendships and relations in my life (and maybe take to heart a few lessons from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic to boot) and apply them to the task of sustaining a pleasant friendship for a long period of time. It feels like a Herculean task, but I also remind myself that when my twin nieces were three years old they had already mastered the basics of friendship, even before they had fully mastered language, so it must not be too hard.
Now the only questions that remain are what my goals are for the friendship. I put a lot of thought into that, and I would say my immediate goal is to still know and like Mike come January, and most importantly, still keep this desire I have to keep interacting with him. I was about to say that I didn't pick January for any specific reason, but then thought more on it, and that might not be true. Mike has another friend on Second Life that he is very fond of, and currently knows him for about three months. Now obviously if they're still friends in late January they'll have been friends for 6 months, but I wonder if I picked January because that would mean that come sometime in January, I will have known Mike for the same amount of time that he knew his friend when I first met Mike. I know I am certainly self-conscious about how short I have known Mike so far, and I'm not sure my train of thought went on that path when I decided January, but it's certainly possible I might have been thinking that. But anyway, point being is that my general goal is to keep the friendship going for several months.
As for more specific goals, I've thought about that a lot, and concluded that my main specific goals could be summed up as "total knowledge" and "total trust."
"I think that you're rather unique. Perhaps you're something new. And if you'd like to oblige, I'd like to get to know you."
Mike is the most open and honest person I've ever met. While on Second Life there are a lot of people who, when asked a question, will either give some half-truth or even sometimes an in-character response when an out-of-character question was asked (example: "How old are you?" "I am thousands of years old." "What? No, I was asking how old are YOU, as a person!") as far as I can tell, Mike has told the whole truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth to every question I've ever asked him (and I'm happy to say that I think I also have never lied or bent the truth when talking to him). So, he's an open book to me, and the question then becomes what parts of him I want to read. I have already learned many, many things about him as a person. He has answered my questions in great detail when I've asked about his background, and he's professed to me his foolhardy dreams and the things he's fond of. In fact, many times when I've talked to him he has so completely satiated my curiosity that I have trouble thinking of other things to ask him and talk about. So, I suppose what I mean when I say "total knowledge" is that I want to eventually come to a point where I know everything that I would care to know about him and not be able to think of anything left that I'm curious about, which given what I just said, it seems I might already be close to that goal.
"Your hair's soft as feathery down. Large eyes to look into. Such trust and vigor for life. You are my pony waifu."
Total trust is a different subject, and something I've put a lot of thought into. There are still some things about him that I want to know but haven't asked yet, namely: his powerword, his address, and what he looks like. Each of those, I have some knowledge of already - his first name, what city he lives in, and his general height and weight, but I know that one day soon I will ask for his full name, his full address, and for a picture of him. Now, what's strange about this topsy-turvy world of the Internet is that you might notice that full name and what a person looks like are the first things a person typically learns in face-to-face communication, but on the Internet, to quote Captain Miller from Saving Private Ryan, "But over here, it's a big, a big mystery." Instead, on the Internet, Mike has told me his deepest fears and desires, and I've told him some secrets I haven't even told my Dad, but neither of us has ever shared pictures of each other. It's not that I think he'd say "no" if I asked. I'm sure he'd be happy to oblige, but I wonder if I'D be happy to oblige. I have often looked at myself in the mirror these past weeks and wondered what would happen if Mike saw my face, and how he'd react if I told him my full name and my full address. He's certainly the sort of trustworthy person that I could trust not to spread that information around, and I know if he did the same for me I would never tell a single other person in the world. But I suppose I'm just nervous about when the right time for such a request is. As I mentioned before, I'm self-conscious about how short this friendship has been, and despite how deep and long the friendship feels already, I haven't even reached the one-month anniversary of our first conversation, and I wonder if I would be being too forward to make such requests for such personal information so soon.
As for other things that I want him to trust me with besides those three things in specific, the only other specific thing I can think of is that one day, probably in the long future, I would like to share a Join.Me session with him. In some ways, it's even more intimate to share a person's computer than it is to share in their personal information, or even share in their deepest specific desires. For my work, I spend all day connecting to the computers of strangers, who must have enough trust in me and my company to let me onto it and check it out. However, when I get on those computers, it's for very specific purposes, and I specifically can't "poke around" in their computers unless there is a very legitimate business reason for doing so. Thus, there is a difference between me connecting to his computer for one specific purpose, such as just to play Bowman or Mutiny or to do some pro bono tech support, and me connecting to his computer and being allowed free reign to poke around. And if he were to connect to my computer? That would be perhaps the most nerve-racking and exciting thing I can think of. Could you imagine it? Someone far away, in a different country, connecting to your computer and given free rein to do whatever they want on it. I would still be able to break the connection at any time, but just the feeling of it, the sheer trust of saying "There's nothing I have on this computer that I forbid you from seeing, and I trust you completely not to mess anything up" is like...well...I won't even say where my mind went just a moment there. Point being is that it's a very intimate experience, and despite our open and honest relationship I don't think we are quite to that point yet, but such a conception of total trust is a goal to look forward to in the far future.
It's a little strange to write these long entries that take multiple days to draft, because though the original subjects of the entry were conceived on November 20th, I'm now just finishing this long entry on November 24th. So, in those four days some developments happened related to this topic with Mike, since I currently do have an active relationship with him, though the states of the Kevin and Jesse relationships have of course remained static in the last four days. Last night, he was telling me about how he was doing something a friend had asked him to do not because he really wanted to do it but because he valued the friendship of the friend enough that he wanted to do it to make him happy. I thought about that a lot last night, and was thinking how that exactly fit with the topic I was writing about. After all, a big part of why my friendships with Jesse and Kevin are smoldering or dead are because one or both of us were unwilling to give whatever the other person was interested in a chance, and I can't help thinking that if I took Mike's point of view in a few instances, my friendships with Jesse and Kevin could have gotten stronger and lasted longer, even if perhaps they were destined to die sooner or later for one reason or another. Also, it was a heartening notion, since it meant that at least Mike was willing to give what his friends want a try himself, which removes one of the main barriers that my previous friendships had. Now, the only question left is whether I can return the sentiment, and try what he likes. I also wonder whether in the cases where I really can't try what he likes for any number of reasons, such as lack of access (like not having a PlayStation 3 and not wanting to get one, so I won't share any console-exclusive game he likes), lack of time (also, for video games in general, the time commitment to actually play one tends to be at best significant even in the case of a short game like Gone Home, and at worst astronomical in the case of a game like StarCraft II) or feelings of revulsion or disgust (like while trying to listen to Fallout Equestria) if I can at least learn more about whatever he's interested in so that I can share conversation in it. After all, even if I, for example, will never play a Disgaea game myself, at least if I know about the game I can discuss it and know what he's talking about when he brings it up if I take the time to at the very least learn about the game. I only wonder if that will be enough, and wonder if our shared interests, our shared experiences, and our pleasant conversation will keep the friendship going for a long time, or if something will happen that will end my friendship with Mike like my friendships with Jesse and Kevin ended.
