On a slow, slow, slooowwww Friday afternoon at work last week, I was killing time by randomly plugging names of folks I used to know into the MySpace search engine. I found profiles by one or two folks.
One was a profile of my college boyfriend. About 15 years ago, I was hopelessly hung-up on him, and depressed when he broke up with me. I had schmaltzy daydreams of marrying him and being with him for the rest of my life. Then I saw how he looks now: He must have gained 200lbs and he was obviously wearing a rug on his head. Also, he had the cheesiest-looking ‘stach, and he listed his orientation as ‘straight.’ I couldn’t believe it. He’s who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with??? Thanks for breaking up with me, darlin’.
Another surprise was a jock guy I went to high school with, let’s call him “Brad.” Being a scrawny kid, I was a target for him in gym class since middle school. But when it got around school that I was gay, he relentlessly harrassed me - calling me ‘faggot’ and shoving me around when the teachers weren’t paying attention (which seemed to be a lot of the time). Well…you guessed it! “Brad” listed his sexual orientation as ‘gay’ and has pics of himself arm & arm, and hand & hand with a boyfriend. According to his profile, he’s been in a relationship for 8 years.
Anyway, have you ever gone trolling to find out about people you once knew, only to be surprised at what you found? Not just about their sexual orientation, but anything? Your old stoner buddy who’s now a born-again Christian? Your former hardline feminist friend who’s a homemaker? The hippie deadhead who is now a republican fundraiser? The college republican who’s now a dropout artist? (And yes, these are examples of real people whom I’ve known.)