A friend says: "I think the banning is more because they want members to feel safe. It’s not that they think you are a physical threat but people are worried what you might write about them. It’s something for you to think about — how you can make the people around you feel secure that they aren’t always "on the record"."
This makes sense. Making people feel safe is a delicate thing because it can’t be tackled head-on. The more you assure people that they are safe, the less safe they feel. You can’t say anything that will make people feel safe. I don’t even bother. If someone tells me they don’t feel safe around me, I don’t bother talking to them. Plenty of people feel safe around me. I’ll talk to them. The rest can whine and try to keep me out of their shuls.
It’s the same way with girls. Many girls I’ve dated have felt perfectly safe with me. Some did not even discuss my blogging about them. It was just obvious to each of us where the boundaries were. Others were fine if I wrote about them in ways that kept them anonymous. Some did not want to be written about at all. Those who were nervous about my writing on them, I just left them alone. Why bother? You can’t assure people on this stuff. They either trust you or they don’t. Whenever anyone says "Trust me", I get nervous. When they say, "I’m telling you the truth", I immediately suspect they’re lying.
I have friends with whom I’ve crossed the line in various ways. They’ve reprimanded me. I’ve apologized. We moved on. I may have posted a bikini picture from their MySpace page or wrote something that weirded them out and so I erased it. The friendship may have taken a few lumps, but it kept on ticking.
I’m a writer. By pouring out my heart online, I’m going to be at tension with a lot of people around me who prefer their world more sanitized. Oh well. Humbly the cross I bear.
In high school, I got thrown in the dumpster by the football team when they didn’t like things I wrote about them. My high school journalism advisor Robert Burge wrote in my yearbook in 1984 that he’d never had a student who challenged him as much as I did. Various pornographers gave me death threats and knocked me around because they didn’t care for my blogging on them. Five people have sued me. Some friendships have been lost for life because of things I’ve written, others for just a few weeks or months. Five shuls have ejected me.
Considering who I am, when I look back on my life, I don’t see how I could’ve acted differently.
I have a demon inside and he’s hungry for attention.
Grrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwll!
Rock my like a hurricane!
Big city nights! You’ve got running around.
