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2001-07-26 | 5:00 p.m.

Damn, somebody un-favorited me. I wish I could pretend that it doesn't matter to me. (Actually, I can, in real life, where nobody would know what the fuck I was talking about anyway.) But I hate it! Especially since I can't figure out who it was. But that's got to be the best way for it to go down, I suppose. You drift apart. They un-favorite you, and you can't quite remember their name. But I worry that if I think on it long and hard, I'll figure it out. There will be a little shock, a little pinch of recognition. And then the recriminations begin. I should've been more edgy. No, less edgy. I swear too much, that puts people off. I talk about the diary too much, and some people don't like that. I'm boring. I'm bourgeois. I'm too radical. Too conservative. Deep down, I'm just an unlikeable person, and people eventually figure that out. You can't hold it against them. But the excuse I like least is that they already had 30 favorites and I was their least favorite. I fell off the bottom. Was sifted out, like chaff.

Okay, it doesn't really matter to me that much. All things being equal, this doesn't mean shit to me. I'll get over it. I'll survive. The risk of being un-favorited is worth the possibility of being favorited in the first place. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. But it is a tough little racket. Think of it---your friends un-favorite you in real life, and half the time, you don't even know it! I mean sure, there'll be times when you do know it, and that sucks royally, but most of the time you don't actually see them pull your card out of their Rolodex and set it on fire. Am I right?

I do have a few actual real-life memories of being un-favorited. The one that stands out was back when Rory and Juliet were married. (They got married on a whim and it lasted a couple of years.) I was about 21 or 22. Frank said something to me about bringing something to Rory's dinner party, and I said I hadn't been invited. Frank said there must have been a mistake. Surely Rory wanted me there. We were all very close friends, did everything together, and Rory and Juliet had invited everyone else in the group. I shrugged. Felt awkward. Frank insisted that it was a mistake. He was adamant about it and told me to broach the subject with Rory. So I did. Rory and I were walking along a sidewalk and I mentioned it. He told me no, they hadn't intended to invite me, and the reason was that "we don't have enough silverware." He and Juliet had moved into a new apartment, had new flatware and dishes, and they wanted to show it all off to some friends. He never expressed any concern for my feelings, but was angry with Frank for ever mentioning it to me. That's when I suspected he wasn't a true Friend for Life. He was mad at Frank for putting him in a bad spot, which was absolutely true, and he could have gotten both Emily Post and Letitia Baldridge to back him up (actually, I think Emily Post was long dead by then, but whoever was writing Emily Post at the time would have comforted him). But we were not socialites; we were a small and close-knit group of friends. Or so I believed.

I accepted his explanation and we continued on our journey. We certainly didn't argue about it. But it wounded me deeply. I had to make a deliberate effort not to cry. I understand that people have their reasons for doing what they do. Maybe they were sick of me, or angry with me about something, or maybe they just didn't want to entertain my boyfriend. I don't think they meant to hurt me or snub me. But if they had wanted me to be there, additional flatware could have been procured. You have to understand that nobody had anything in those days, and we were quite accustomed to bringing our own chairs to parties if asked, and sharing bowls and pans and things. It was all for one and one for all. All anyone had to do was ask.

But they were newly married, and they wanted to have a party with all their married-people things, and they wanted it all to match. Now they are married to other people, and the flatware was long ago donated to charity. But it was one dinner party I will never forget.

Okay, enough about that. I was thinking maybe I should write an entry sometime detailing all the things you'd really dislike about me. There are a lot of them. I haven't done it before now because I don't think I ought to write entries based on what I imagine to be of interest to people reading it. I find this to be an impossible compromise. If I wrote exactly what I was thinking, it would all be as boring as my real diaries, which read something like this:

He said "We don't have enough silverware." Not enough silverware. Thanks a lot, asshole. I've invited you to every fucking thing I've ever done. Dickhead. Nobody likes me. I am unlikable. I am beyond liking. I try to make people like me, and it makes them hate me more. Not enough silverware. Not enough silverware. Not enough silverware. �

You get the idea. Rut city. Which is not to say that my online diary doesn't approach this level regularly. But I do try to keep it moving along.

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