Notes from "Cole"

My best friend has a blog, The Wanderings and Delusions of a Gay Mormon Boy, in which he "details [his] experiences as a Gay Mormon Boy one year after the actual events in a literary experiment. [He] examine[s his] journey out of the closet, [his] spiritual conflict, and [his] dating life."  His was the first blog I ever read consistently, in part because he's a brilliant poet, critic and writer, and I wanted to see how he would treat writing of a more personal nature; in part because I knew that, as his best friend, I would play quite a role in some of the events the blog would feature, and I wanted to see his take on some of our shared experiences. 

Changing the names of "everyone involved...for the sake of privacy", my friend became "GMB" and I became "Cole."  It was fun to try and figure out who was who on the blog (not that it was incredibly difficult), and I'd often e-mail or call GMB, asking if so-and-so was so-and-so.  Admittedly, I enjoyed seeing my alias any time it popped up in his blog.  I quite liked the air of being in quiet cahoots when GMB would e-mail me to consider my opinion on the turn of this phrase or to ask if he had the details of some event quite right.  I began to track the position "Cole" took on the side of the screen under the Labels tab, and felt surges of theatrical pride any time my blog-name pushed another topic down a rung, leaving things like sexuality, the Church, just for fun, and Mark dwindling in its wake, until it reached the top! I enjoyed the little surreptitious smile I wore as I commented on certain posts as "Cole", and I liked reading the comments of GMB's other readers.  I clicked on the blogger profiles of readers who made insightful comments with which I could agree, and--reading their blog stories and posts--began to acquaint myself with the MoHo blogosphere.