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This is a sad topic for me. Readers of this journal may recall a few months ago when I posted this entry directing people to a fascinating blog by someone purporting to be a 17-year-old in-the-closet gay boy by the pseudonym of "Mikey" who was a hockey player and a huge sports fan. While I am not myself any kind of hockey fan and would generally not be interested in a sports-related blog, I found Mikey's page quite engrossing, entertaining and often rather touching. But according to this rather extensive article on Outsports, posted a few days ago, Mikey was make-believe, a sham, a fantasy created by a man decades older than his online persona. If what that article contends is true, then there never was a Mikey, just an older dude who let a vast complex of fantasies and fabrications get out of control until he was exposed.

Well, before I get into what I think of all that, I'd like to say that I wish that there was really a Mikey, and I am sure that there are, in fact, many of them around the country and I hope that they have someone real that they can look to and confide in and borrow strength from. Whether this Mikey was real or not, it can still be a rotten deal to be a gay kid.

I suspect a lot of people who followed Mikey or even heard about this situation second-hand probably think that Mikey's creator is a jerk or pathetic or maybe an asshole, or at least a very, very untrustworthy person. I feel somewhat differently because I can understand the dude's motivations on some level. If the case presented in the Outsports article is true, then Mikey's creator is pushing 50 years old. This, combined with some other facts alleged in that article, paint a picture of a gay man who is probably living a very tortured double life: in the closet around most anyone who knows him in "real life," while trying to find some way to be at least a little bit of who he really is in the online world. This situation is totally commonplace, unfortunately, and while it's not necessarily age-related, it's got to be a hell of lot harder being a fifty-year-old closeted gay dude than a 20 or 30-year-old "out" one. At age 38, I am old enough already to have seen how dramatically things have shifted culturally in favor of being out, at least in the civilized non-fundie non-teabagger parts of the country. Sometimes I look at my younger "brothers" who just don't get it just because they're too young to remember...and they're only like ten years younger and I feel old as hell already. So, anyway, I'm not angry with faux-Mikey for this fraud, but I do feel badly for him and I hope he does well for himself somehow.

But this brings to mind the topic of "reality" in media, one that I think about a lot. People nowadays seem to be obsessed with reality and place a high value on what's "real." But isn't it funny that the surfeit of televised garbage, that swamping tide of shit that is called "reality TV" is probably the most fictitious, non-real stuff ever concocted? See Macbeth presented on stage, or read Dhalgren--these are works of fiction but they contain in just a few pages more "reality" than an entire season of Celebrity Apprentice and Big Brother combined. Consider that scandal a few years ago over James Frey and his "memoir" that turned out to be largely a fabrication. It got crazy attention because Oprah picked it for her book club (which made it a bestseller upon receiving the Big O's imprimatur), and then became a big scandal after the truth came out. Oprah summoned the author to her show to be dressed down on TV, and O's fans thought it was a horrible insult and tragedy, blah, blah, blah. But this is the question I had from the start: So the fuck what? If the book was good enough to get the O Seal of Approval, then didn't she think it was well-written, told a worthwhile story, and (therefore!) contained...truth? I didn't follow the whole fooforaw too closely, but I remember hearing that Frey claimed that he originally intended to sell his book as a novel but was advised to present instead it as a memoir. Why? Because memoirs sell better than novels. Why? Because what little remains of any American reading public overwhelmingly prefers nonfiction. Why? Because it's "real." 

I don't know if Frey's book was any good or not, and probably never will read it because its subject matter is about as interesting to me as, well, a sports blog. Also, I'd rather read a novel than a memoir most any day. They read as more "real" to me.

Last point: The dude who created Mikey did a really great job at his fiction. I don't feel badly at all that I was suckered by his creation because it was so believable and richly realized. If I could contact him directly, I'd give him this advice: next time, write a novel. (And don't call it a memoir!)
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