Behind This Web site.

Last night over dinner, Toby Joe asked me what character I thought he was most like from The Feast of Love. I thought about this for a second. My first answer didn’t seem right but it was the first one that came to mind. Diana’s character is rather cold. She feels love but doesn’t often admit it to herself. She’s a lawyer and on the few occasions she feels anything at all, she tries to figure out whom she’s going to sue. Diana is strong, too. But it’s almost like she finds feeling itself weak. Diana gave me the impression that should she admit to harboring such emotion, she’d unravel.

At first, her character is whom I picked for Toby. And I told him that. And he cringed. In the end, I actually settled on Diana’s lover, who, literally wakes up next to life one day.

But I’m not writing to talk about which fictional characters we either identified with or which characters we felt the other was most like. (Although, for those of you who’ve read it, the exercise is rather fun, I must admit.) I’m writing to talk about us, real people.

People come here and they get an idea of who we are, Toby Joe and myself. Through the comments we leave and the stories I tell, people have a general idea about who we are. For the most part, I know that people keep it in mind that although they’re given a window into our life, there is so much more I will never talk about. There is so much more I don’t talk about.

Some people have taken what they read here to an entirely different and dangerous level. It’s as if they firmly believe that they have us ABSOLUTELY figured out. I usually find them uncomfortable, like a bitter pill or sand in wet shoes. They are hard to ignore. How can anyone claim to have someone, whom they’ve never met, figured out? I barely know Tobyjoe and we’re intimate, we see each other every day.

Anyway, here we are, Toby Joe and me. I write a Web site and I keep it almost every day. I write about whatever comes to mind, sometimes employing filler (a lot of the time employing filler), as I don’t have something to say every day. Sometimes, I update because I’m tired of the old post staring me back in the face. I get tired of myself often. Which makes me grumpy. I tend to be pretty grumpy, actually. I’m also insecure, totally imperfect, and I doubt myself 75% of the time, the other 25% is spent trying to figure out how I can make what I feel I have done well even better. I don’t articulate my emotions well to those I know, as I barely understand them myself. I often mingle with sadness. I find comfort in it. But that’s just me. And while I may come off judgmental (at times, harshly so) of others, I’m equally as judgment of myself. Not that that makes it OK, but I’m trying to be honest.

Behind this Web site, there is me.

Toby Joe can come off as cold, just like Diana. Believe me, I have seen this side of him, this façade, before. He may speak harshly when speaking politics. He may offend you with his off-color comments about being over-weight, drinking too much, smoking anything at all, littering, whatever. And I realize that’s the risk we take when we put our words out there like this. And I realize that you can’t please everyone ALL of the time. Those who haven’t met Tobyjoe, haven’t experienced his compassion for others, his loyalty to those he loves and his ability to put everything he knows on hold, personally, to make sure those outside of himself are O.K. Behind that tough guy, lives the sweetest person I have ever known. Just ask him for help someday, you wouldn’t believe what he’ll give you.

Never in my life have I met someone so willing to help others with a problem. He’ll help with anything from PHP to Ruby on Rails, to teaching someone how to love themselves again. He’s always there to help. I’ve watched him come to the aide of literally dozens of geek-minded people with their Actionscript/PHP/Java needs, desperate to figure out why something isn’t working within a tight and stressful deadline. He just does it. He doesn’t ask for anything in return. He doesn’t even gloat. He’s just kind. That part? That part I can’t ever articulate or prove to anyone. Completely kind acts don’t reap fields of flowers. But, rest assured; had those acts been actual seeds, we’d all have a lot more flowers to look at.

Behind this Web site, there is him.

We’re good people, for the most part. And neither one of us are fictional characters. I know I have had my bad days. And I am told via email that I’ve offended people before. I know Tobyjoe has had his as well. Even we work on getting along better each and every day because life is way too short to be combative.

When I asked, “What character am I?�? Toby Joe said I was a cross between three characters: Bradley’s lesbian ex-wife (the first one), Bradley’s other ex, Diana, and Chloe.

“You’re grumpy and sweet, like the lesbian, and at the drop of a hat, too just like her. And you’re sporty and you’ll probably run off with a woman someday. You’re cold like Diana, and you’re flakey like Chloe.�”

“Wow. Not a very pretty picture of me, eh? If I were to die tomorrow, that’s how you’d remember me?”

“If you were to die tomorrow, I’d remember only the good things. And the good things are really, really good.�”

Sometimes, when we sum up the people around us using only words, they come off sounding like the most unlikely people to love.

There’s so much more behind each and every one of us, so much more.

If people take anything away from this Web site, anything at all, I’m hoping that they at least take that.