#301 Meet a Reader of SYED
I met someone through this blog before. It was very early on, only about a month into it. Most of the readers I had at that time were because of my first video and not because of what I had written or what I was doing.
Since that time I’ve had 300 posts. I’ve revealed countless embarrassing and intimate details of my life. The whole of SYED like one giant personality assessment of me.
It’s strange when I talk to my friends who read the blog because they know a lot more about me than they ever did before. But most of the time, it’s like the white elephant in the room. They’re not going to randomly say, “Hey, remember that time you were doing a lot of meth?”
Other than that one time long ago, I haven’t met a reader of SYED who wasn’t a friend. But a few days ago I got an email from Sylvia, a reader and sometimes commenter of the blog:
Subject: Scary thing
Hang out with one of your readers who’s back in California visiting her folks for the holidays! It’s scary because:
1. You don’t know anything about her
1a. She could be a homicidal maniac/serial killer whose targets include tall male ABCs
2. It’s scary to meet a new person and have to pretend to be enjoying yourself when you’d really much rather be taking a dump in the comfort of bathroom
3. Can’t think of anything to put here
Whatcha think?
Since she outlined it so clearly, I don’t have to go into why meeting her would be a scary thing.
Actually, being murdered and dismembered, while a valid fear, is not really a big one for me. I’m a guy and can take care of myself. I wouldn’t agree to meet someone at midnight in an alleyway or in the back of their creepy van. I made plans to meet Sylvia for brunch at a busy restaurant.
The fear for me is meeting someone who knows the most intimate details of my life and I know nothing about them. At least with my friends, it’s somewhat a two-way street though a bit lopsided. With Sylvia, I knew that she was Chinese by her last name. That’s it.
Of course I was nervous about it. I’m always nervous when meeting somebody new and this had the added dynamic of meeting through my blog. But I decided I was just going to try and have fun with it. We’d probably be talking about me most of the time and who doesn’t like talking about me??
I got to the restaurant early and sat at a table. She showed up a short time later. I knew it was her immediately because she was Asian and had a that confused “Ok I’m meeting someone here where the fuck are they?” look on her face.
Sylvia turned out not to be a serial murderer and in fact a very nice, sweet girl. I started out by asking her questions about herself since I wanted to even out the personal information deficit. Once we got that out of the way, we talked about SYED.
It’s always awkward for me to talk about the blog. I still haven’t gotten used to it. There’s something very odd about it. It’s almost as if we’re discussing episodes of a TV Show. “Remember that one where you locked yourself in your bathroom?” “What’s your favorite one?” etc.
I’m also not comfortable with being praised for my writing. I blame my mother for that.
She was a cool person to talk to. Our discussion even spurred a couple of ideas for future posts. After about an hour and a half, we paid for our bill and parted ways. I felt like I had made another friend.
Meeting Sylvia is just another thing on the list of things that would never have happened if not for the blog. Those things are often the most rewarding. I also love how SYED inspired her to even ask to meet me. Surely it was scary for her as well. Luckily I didn’t try to lure her into my creepy van.
