End It On This

Talking to 31 yesterday. Got some light shed.


From: briana
To: 31
Sent: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 7:15 PM
Subject: Re:
31 is a ticking clock. i have forever memorialized you as 31 so we'll need to take some pics on Sunday (before you turn 32 ha ha). but just as blog briana is not me i guess 31 is not you. whatever that means. am i speaking jibberjabberish?

From: 31
To: briana
Sent: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 7:16 PM
Subject: Re:
it sounds like some sort of deep thought process you got going on there.
From: briana
To: 31
Sent: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 7:20 PM
Subject: Re:
i think i am just losing my mind. nothing deep about that. well blog briana isn't me. we got a lot in common but she isn't me. and I am sure you don't always love how I've portrayed you or own how I've on and off perceived you so you wouldn't say that 31 is all you.
From: 31
To: briana
Sent: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 7:22 PM
Subject: Re:
31 is pretty close
From: briana
To: 31
Sent: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 7:35 PM
Subject: Re:
really. that's interesting. because i've done a lot of pondering about you as you have seen. hopefully the outrageous comment i made about you being my friend all these years so you could eventually sleep with me wasn't true. but i did counter that with, "but that's just insane," alluding to the fact that I didn't think you were friends with me to sleep with me a few times and then discard me. That's one of two things that I wondered about a lot. but a lot of him being pretty close is because 31 has spoken for himself very often via text messages and emails. and I've known him for years and years and years.

From: 31
To: briana
Sent: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 7:39 PM
Subject: Re:
yeah that part wasn't true. I didn't hang around all this time as some sort of quest.
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Thank goodness we got that resolved. As my devoted readers will know, I have been racking my brain for months wondering what the fuck I did or didn't do or what flaw he has or did things just get too intense with me being sick or did me being sick freak him out or was it that he witnessed the Illinois stuff and how hard it hit me and didn't want to risk being the arbiter of more pain in my life or did he always just want to sleep with me. Good to know it wasn't the latter. Great to know it wasn't the latter. I didn't really think it was the latter but when you have absolutely nothing to go on but imagination, you mind starts to wander a little bit.

Then last night while doubling back on the Brooklyn Bridge I wondered why I told 31 that blog Briana isn't me. Of course she's me. I don't make this stuff up. I mean come on, could you make this stuff up? But at the same time, each blog is a moment in time, one side of the story, not the whole story and I am extracting a thought, feeling and making it the arc in a story with a beginning and an end. When there is another person involved I am seeing them at a moment when they gave me pleasure or pain or saved my life or destroyed it but clearly everyone is three dimensional and someone who gave me pain for that story might be giving me pleasure in another. For example the above is an ending to months of pondering about 31. But he has been portrayed many other ways all in stories that had their own endings and beginnings.

That's the thing. Life isn't neat. In reality, these moments spill over each other and overlap and there are no endings or beginnings, except birth and death or the socially constructed endings and beginnings like graduation, marriage, new job etc. But the moments I want to write about aren't, "About my summer vacation" in a capsule. If it was that simple, I'd have no need to write at all..

My sister and I always disagree about this. She can't see blog Briana as a character. I wish she could on the one hand but on the other I can't imagine what it must feel like for her and other loved ones of mine to read this stuff. When I first started writing it I was very conscious of that. Like, I don't know if I would want to know certain things if I were them. Or as interesting as it might be, it's too much information when it's your sister or your daughter or maybe even your friend. My feelings have since evolved. Partially because as the blog has developed it has become a story and Briana has become the main character and sometime narrator of the story. She isn't me. I am not my hair. I am not blog Briana. I am not sick Briana. These are all parts of me combining to form Briana. Depending on the day I may inhabit one of these sub-personas. In that way we are all schizophrenics. These are just moments that I've framed. They are all me; I am all of them combined in varying degrees at varying moments. But I can see how the power of these moments can be scary and shocking and intense when read and scary and shocking and intense when it's your sister, daughter or friend. I want them to be scary and shocking and intense but I also want those close to me to understand that I am exploiting these moments. I am distilling them and framing them and thus giving them more power and intensity. In the day to day when a million things happen all at once, those moments I write about are not so remarkable. Out of one person's life there are many stories happening simultaneously. To tell one, you have to leave out the others and let the one you chose have its own spotlight and singularity so it's given justice. So as messy and 'real' as my blogs are, the blog gives me a forum to get out one thing at a time, tell one story at a time; to give every moment its due.

I am also honored to have someone like 31 in my life who despite maybe being cowardly when I was sick or not ever truly owning what happened between us is still here and has let me rant and rave and ponder and speculate about him in every which way allowing me full artistic right over my moments that include him. It's like pictures, some you look good in and some you don't. And he's allowed me to show both the ones that flatter and the ones that don't. Other people aren't so liberal. I've had people disgree with how they've been perceived, as if by me portraying them a certain way in one blog I am setting their whole identity in stone. I have been forbidden to use their exact words, I have been asked to change someone's longstanding nickname out of fear that it was no longer protecting their identity and more. So trust me, the freedom 31's given me over his identity in this work, that's rare. And the fact that he didn't befriend me to sleep with me is good stuff too.