2017-03-27 - 9:14 p.m.

Like a lot of the people who I followed here over the years and came to know just a little bit, however virtually, we all had one thing in common: we all read the words of a girl named Becky. I found out that she died a few days ago and though I never met her and only sent her a few notes over the years and didn't really know her at all, I can't help but feel like I did know her, and when I saw that she'd died, it hit me as hard as such a thing can.

When I was in my mid-20s, I was in graduate school, in Norfolk, Virginia. I was far from home, and didn't know many people, and, probably like many others back in those early internet days, happened upon this site and for whatever reason chose to spill myself here. And, just as importantly, to read what others had spilled, were spilling.

I suspect that if there were a prize here for the most lives affected of people not actually met, she'd win it, handily. She did it not by spilling her life out for all to see, but by pouring, dumping, and gloriously. She was a beautiful mess, probably. She wrote and felt and made bad choices. She made really bad choices. She got messed up, as a lot of the most interesting and careless do, in heroin. She made money as an escort. She burned, but bright.

I hadn't been reading her stuff lately but, back then, often I'd check this site just to see what she'd been up to, and it was always something hot and dangerous and stupid and I couldn't look away. I think there were many like me. I worried about her, this person I'd never meet and never would. I wondered what she'd have thought about my music, my books, my girlfriends. I felt sorry for her and I rooted for her and I hoped she'd get clean. Mostly, though, I was enamored, of her guts, her openness, her willingness to cut herself open and let us see what was inside. Always, it was something worth looking at.

I never met her, but I miss her. Maybe that's the best thing the internet, in 2005 or in 2017, can give us.

previous - next