Bad Blood

I honestly believe that for the most part I’m a positive person, so maintaining the aura of Ben the Benevolent in my blog posts comes quite naturally, however, the same way Doctor Jekyll had his inner Mister Hyde, there are times where it’s more appropriate for me to be Ben the Bitch. The story I’m about to dive into is most definitely one of those times.

When I was in the thick of writing my Black Lives Matter post last week, I took a quick break and went upstairs to grab my phone. I should note that I never have my phone sitting next to me when writing. It proves to be far too much of a distraction, so if there is any hope of me getting anything productive done, I can’t have it around. Well, once I had my phone in hand, I had the most peculiar notification from Instagram. Someone had reported one of my posts – one that was nearly three years old mind you – for an “intellectual property violation” and as a result, Instagram had temporarily removed the video from my grid and gave me the option to offer a rebuttal.

In retrospect, I suppose that perhaps I shouldn’t have been too surprised by someone taking the time to report this nearly three year old video. After all, I’ve made mention twice now in the past month to the contentious drama that unfolded as a result of my Ex-Girlfriend blog post that was shared back in January of 2019. The first mention came in It’s My Party and then a couple weeks later, I gave mention to it again in Blood Brothers – which, I’m pleased to say has just surpassed Library Juicer as my most viewed post of 2020!

Now unless someone specifically tells me that they did, I have no clue who reads my blog. I can see the total number of people who have viewed each page, the manner in which they’re accessing my site, and what kind of device they’re using to read my latest story, but naturally, there is no real way of knowing exactly who my audience is. Well, given that I do know which Instagram post someone took the time to report, I can assume at least one of my recent blogs was read by a former friend of mine or perhaps even his fiancé.

Yes, I am well aware that when one assumes something they make an ASS out of yoU and ME, but no logical person would scroll past approximately two hundred – if not more – of my Instagram posts to report what would be to them a seemingly random video. The video reported was shared on September 3, 2017 to celebrate the birthday of my now former friend and the Best Man at my wedding, Joseph. It makes a lot more sense to assume that the individual who reported the post was also tagged in the post.

It derailed me for a bit, but I was able to get that Instagram video reinstated onto my grid. Long story short, I had to cite that while yes, I did own the images; no, I did not own the music I set the picture collage to. The song in contest was I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers, which was the song Joseph submitted for our DeShon Dynasty wedding soundtrack. I’ll never be able to hear that jam without thinking of him and even though we’re not friends any longer, I still love that song. Everyone knows good music doesn’t go bad, even if it elicits thoughts of people from one’s past. While the individual who took the time to report my Instagram ended up taking a small bit of my time as well, I thought I would now take even more time to share exactly what transpired between Joseph and I that resulted in the demise of our friendship.

When I asked Joseph if I could share the story about the hilarious lunch we had at The Cheesecake Factory when I scared him and his ex-girlfriend half to death, he said he was all for it and that he would be more than happy to provide me with any information necessary to conceive the perfect post. Following the publication of Ex-Girlfriend, he told me he loved it and that it made him laugh. So, with his blessing before and his reaction after, I was proud of the way the post turned out and for four days all was right in the world.

Then if you read Fanmail, which is now more or less a jumbled mess since that time I deleted all the photos on my blog, you would recall that an absolutely insane woman and her theatre troupe of social justice warriors bombarded me with hateful messages demanding the deletion of the Ex-Girlfriend post. Obviously, I wasn’t about to negotiate with terrorists, so I blatantly ignored their oft-repeated demands. In the keyboard arena that I had suddenly found myself in on that cold January night, I didn’t waste any of my time with any of the underlings and only defended the benevolent nature of my post to their malicious ringleader. She kept telling me to delete the post “or else” and I just kept thanking her for the HUNDREDS of views she was generating for my site. I didn’t care that these people were feigning outrage at my story. I was just thrilled to be receiving as many views as I was. In fact, that evening gave me the second biggest day of views ever in the now more than two year history of my blog. So, why would I do anything to alter course? This was wonderful for me, Joseph however, saw things much differently.

He first told me he thought it would be best if I deleted the post because “you don’t want all the negative attention it’s bringing you.” He was less-than-thrilled when I told him that I was in fact loving all the attention it was bringing me. As tensions between myself and these nonsensical social justice warriors continued brewing, he started getting more and more frantic about the nature of the situation and started pleading with me to delete the post. His intensified reaction came across most bizarre and caused me to do some quick social media sleuthing to find out why he was reacting the way in which he was.

As it would turn out, Joseph and his ex-girlfriend from the story both attended high school with the theatre troupe ringleader. The three of them all clearly knew one another in some undisclosed capacity during those high school years. I started asking him what kind of blackmail this woman had on him and rather than answering, or even acknowledging my questions, he just continued pleading before soon demanding I delete the post. I told him that never in a million years was that going to happen. He then said that my blog was putting him and his “new family” (he was talking about his then pregnant girlfriend, she’s since had their son and become his fiancé) in danger and that if I didn’t delete the post, he was no longer going to be my friend. He had given me an ultimatum: if I didn’t delete that post, he was going to delete our friendship.

Let me just say, I’m not a fan of ultimatums in any way, shape, or form. Thankfully, I haven’t really been given a lot of them over the years, but each time I do receive one, I don’t respond well. It isn’t because I’m incapable of making one choice or the other. I’m rarely indecisive. Frankly, it’s just that they really piss me the fuck off. This maneuver on his behalf made it all too easy for me to tell him that I would be standing by my art and if it meant the end of our friendship then so be it.

I imagine he blocked me on all forms of social media soon thereafter, but because I was busy putting all the threats from the theatre troupe into a brand new blog post, I didn’t notice till the day after Fanmail went live that I was blocked. Once I discovered this, I sent him a text and surprisingly, he hadn’t yet blocked me there. He wrote back promptly telling me that he saw my Fanmail post as me just soliciting further negative attention (he’d inevitably say the same about this one here). Naturally, I disagreed, but I certainly wasn’t going to waste my time arguing, there was no longer any point in doing so. I told him goodbye and wished him all the best and that was the last time we talked to one another, but not the last time I reached out to him.

Some have labeled me “weak” for doing so, but I’ve messaged him twice since all this. Honestly, despite the absolutely ridiculous ending of our friendship, I hold zero grudges against him. The first time I tried contacting him was in March of 2019 to let him know when Melissa and I would be in California in the off-chance he wanted to get together I was willing to do so. The second instance was at the end of this past April, I messaged him saying that I hoped all was well with him and his family and that I hoped he remained in good health given the severity of the Coronavirus pandemic. I also made comment on how adorable his baby boy was and that I was excited for him to get married. Now I know he read that last message because Melissa noticed sometime thereafter he had blocked her on Instagram prompting me to then discover that his fiancé had done the exact same to me.

One might think me cold for my willingness to allow our friendship to end, but to be honest, the person I quit being friends with wasn’t the same person I’d been friends with. I’m not going to go into great detail here, but Joseph can be a bit of a chameleon. In its final months, our friendship looked nothing like it had before, so honestly, the opportunity to end it was really somewhat of a blessing for the both of us.

Joseph is by no means the first friend I’ve lost and I’m sure he won’t be the last, but I imagine our ending will remain the most bizarre. I mean, come on now, my blog – that he agreed I could write – put him and his family in danger!?! What kind of blackmail does that girl have on him!?! I certainly don’t know, but I believe it’s safe to assume (I know, I know) that it’s got to be no good.

So there you have it. After twice “teasing” the fallout from that Ex-Girlfriend post, you all finally have the story. I don’t hold any negative feelings towards him. He was often, but not always (we bickered somewhat frequently) a phenomenal friend who I still share dozens – if not hundreds – of fantastic memories with. He was instrumental to my Disneyland proposal to Melissa, which was why I selected him to be my Best Man. By no means do I regret that decision as I still feel he played the role perfectly. It’s unfortunate our lives took us in different directions, but nonetheless, I wish him and his adorable little family nothing but the best.

As always, thank you so much for reading! Feel free to leave your own story about friendship loss in the comments below or just anything you want – you know I love reading your comments! I’ll be back next week with something new for you all, so until then, I hope you have THE BEST week ever!