Crazy Internet People

I have mentioned before my discovery that there is a whole subspecies of folks who only exist on the internet. Their friends, their social and love lives, the whole thing. I am new to the internets, so this still fascinates me. For these folks? The internet is serious business. I mention this as a prelude to a story that has little to do with the internet, but recently, I have realized just how scary this phenomena is.

Can you imagine deriving your whole self worth from the internet? Validation, romance, friendship, etc? Can you imagine assessing your life by the comings and goings of others on the internet? So completely foreign to me, even though I know that there was a point in the past year where I was tethered to it. I like the real world so much better.

So onto the real world.....

I have a friend -- it is almost hard to call her that, as she and I aren't close. We were situational friends. Way back in the day, she married our "landlord" of the espresso cart days. D was the landlord and I'll be frank -- I never liked him. I met him under less than desirable circumstances, to be sure (he had just ended his engagement to H, who was managing his store, because he was fucking Z, a barely 20-something employee). B kind of admired D. I didn't - ever. I thought he had something, but that something wasn't anything I found interesting. D had said, on numerous occasions, that I was the only woman he couldn't win over. True that.

One of their first dates was at our wedding, or so they like to tell. They told us a few times about them having sex at our wedding. Lord knows, a lot of people got busy at our wedding. It was a good party. And, in the interest of full disclosure, when they got married? B and I had sex in the bathroom -- Columbia Tower. Anyone who lives in Seattle knows you pretty much have to have sex in those restrooms. Tallest building in Seattle, floor to ceiling windows. It is a rite of passage. So to recap, they fucked each other at our wedding, we repaid the honor at theirs.

In any event - flash forward. We lost contact with them over the years and hooked up with them probably seven years into our marriage. D&K now had a kid, M, who is adorable and sweet. I still don't like D, but I like K - she's my kind of woman. Blunt, direct, takes no prisoners. B, for whatever reason, is still in awe of D and tried to bring him into B's company. I strenuously argued against that and won. B is twice the leader than D is and I think, to this day, B still loved that assessment.

Okay - to present times. D and K split up once, about three years ago. It had a ripple effect, including one on B& Me. They were our history and if they could split up, anyone could. That is a subject for another post and I will let it slide for the time being. Thing is, they got back together (never should have) and eventually finally broke up. D now has a 23 year old girlfriend now and K has been trolling the internets for a new love. K really only wants to hook up with a rich guy so she can be in that state of "living well is the best revenge."

God, that was a long set up.

Okay, so, after a few false starts, K is trolling Yahoo personals (which, I have to believe, is the trailer park of the internets). She meets "Sam" - a wealthy executive who claims he is too high profile to post a pic. He sends them to her privately and turns out, he claims to be a 52 year old guy from the Washington coast who is an executive at a family run business that it crazy successful. Private jets, etc. Oh, she is my age -- I think she is 35 or so.

4 dates into it, he drops the bomb. He has liver cancer and is going to die quickly. Much hysteria ensues. Then he suggests that she hook up with his identical twin brother. I shit you not. K does in fact correspond with identical twin brother, who, I shit you not, Sam claimed they were raised by separate families and never knew about each other until a chance encounter on a Hawaiian beach 20 years ago led to their discovery of one another. Even better? After meeting each other on that chance encounter, they never introduced their families. I know. Jesus, I know. Infuckingsane.

Shut the fuck up, I know. Not only do I know, but I know a chick so fucking desperate after the demise of a relationship that she bought this story. Yes, have lost all respect for her. Every single ounce.

You can see how this ends. "Sam" dies, K hooks up with identical twin "Jim" (something I am ill equpped to judge, but seriously? My twins had......demonstrable differences). K starts sleeping with the "twin brother" who is married, but going to leave his wife. He takes her on private jets to Tahoe and talks of a future. Seriously - the most pathetic thing I have ever heard.

How do I get involved? K's best friend J -- who is the J familiar to my posts, calls me and knows that no matter how stupid I am on most things internet, I have some skillz that she doesn't. I tell her to give me a day, but within a few hours, I have disproved the existence of "Sam." Which, let's be honest, required no real legwork, as anybody with a fucking brain would have known.

So here is where I am -- knee deep in another person's drama and I? Am utterly ambivalent, aside from knowing whatever "I lost my fucking mind on the internet" is completely eclipsed. I have, in the past, lied on the internet and invented scenarios to replace the disintegration of my life in meatspace. But holy shit, I haven't concocted an identical twin, separated at birth, that no one knows about, just to get laid. I can't imagine trying to construct that kind of alternate universe for the sole purpose of getting laid. Fuck, batteries are cheap and the fallout is much less.