Humpday Hatemail -- now with voting!

[calimary]

57. Sounds like my former friend who dissed me about taking down his increasingly abrasive posts

on my Facebook page.

"...and you call yourself a liberal! You carry on about the First Amendment and then you say I can't post my rants on your page?" And "you pop up, I pop off. It's MY RIGHT!"

I went round and round with him, pointing out that I post my political views on MY page ONLY. I don't go over to somebody else's page and post stuff there when I know they don't agree with it. I confine it to MY page. He insisted because my posts appeared on the general news feed - where you see posts from everyone you're "friended by." He insisted that constituted my posting my stuff on HIS page. Which I never have.

His posts got nastier and nastier, and more bitter and cynical, and he repeatedly refused to honor my requests to quit peeing on my parade like that. DAMN - it reached the point where EVERY FRICKIN' POST I wrote - again, on MY page only - he'd come in with three, four, five, six posts castigating me, dumping on Obama, dumping on Democrats and liberals, ranting about "they're ALL the same, they're ALL alike, they should all burn in hell, blah-blah-blah." And I'd point out - "uh, dear friend, they are NOT all alike. Show me someone in the current GOP and/or CONservative movement who'd stand up for your rights as a gay man. Show me the republi-CON president or presidential candidate who finally took a decisive stand in favor of marriage equality." And he'd just go on with his bile and venom and anger and bitterness as though what I said either didn't matter or was totally wrong. Well, what I said, indeed, did NOT matter (although it wasn't wrong OR factually-inaccurate). And worse still, once he started, I noticed a few other individuals joining in and piling on against me. On MY page! I started deleting the worst and nastiest of his posts, after giving fair warning in general to anyone who came across my page, and to him in particular. Had no effect. And soon enough, here was this post from him excoriating me for being one of the many liberal frauds who wanted to deny him his First Amendment rights to shit all over MY page. And a second post that said "Enjoy Siberia." And bingo! I was "unfriended."

Funny thing was, he beat me to the punch on that one. I had actually been thinking, the night before, that I may be forced to "unfriend" this guy - but he "unfriended" me first. And I was actually relieved. And funny, I can post my occasional political things now and I no longer get this angry, lacerating, bitter, cynical screeds from him, littering my page. It's a welcome change.

And it's also sad. I'm 59. We're the same age. I've known him since we were both 16. We'd spend HOURS on the phone together because he was so much fun to gossip with. He had one of those really caustic senses of humor and circulated in some high society fundraising arenas and AMFAR and the subsequent Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. I listened hour after hour, to him talk about his long and unsuccessful effort to find love, through all the relationships that started out great and then went sour, through all the betrayals, and one really bad episode with a "lover" who ultimately beat him and stalked him and stole a whole lot of his money - leaving him nearly destitute. I listened and sympathized - sometimes I'd listen while the late-night conversation continued until I almost literally fell asleep (it was almost always on a school night). I had him come sleep in my house when he'd come to town for a visit. Even when I still lived with my parents. And when he'd come out and get a hotel suite, I'd come visit him and we'd hang out and gossip and laugh and enjoy each other's company. We stayed in touch long after the original little circle of friends that brought us into contact with each other broke up and faded away.

And that friendship is over. Not just the Facebook "friendship." The friendship period. And it makes me feel bad to see how negative he he became, and how dark and grim his worldview became. Pretty awful. I'm sad to see this. But thereya go. And I don't care if he thinks I'm a total First Amendment hypocrite. I disagree. I'm not anything of the kind. And I'm not trying to muzzle him or anything. I just didn't want that shit on MY page.