Complaints Department

"Tech Geek? That's all I get?" Adam is not pleased. He claims he knew what that router on my living room floor could do. He assumed I already had wireless. This jettisons him far past yut old Dirk in the tech-archy. But, Adam, I am sorry. Steve is 25 years your senior, trades in government secrets, and wears nothing but Polo. He rules the Heavens. You: Junior Tech God. Plus: Maker of  psycho UK chili. "Nice," says Adam bitterly.

"What's with 'well-worn'?" asks David. "Why not go all the way? Haggard. Or, hell, skeletal?" Would Jeremy so mind the adjective I granted his face had not buddy David seized upon it as a means of best friend mockery? "I meant, it was a face that had lived," I try to explain. "Leathery?" David smirks. "No!" I say. "Just, no longer the face of a high school boy." David chortles. Jeremy shrugs, wordless. And me — stricken.

"I prefer to think I am an 'intellectual-cum-slacker,''" says the slacker-cum-intellectual the next time I run into him.

Sigh.

This is the problem with using each person you encounter as blog fodder and simultaneously urging said people to log on in the interest of building readership. Alienation? Swift and certain. Similarly, this need of mine to tear into Berliner behavior, then hand my URL to the very Berliners I'd do well not to offend. Friendless I'd be, no doubt, were the Deutsch not possessed of a good-humored masochistic streak. Borne, I assume, from so dark a national history.

Some, of course, shall never see this blog. My subletter F., poor girl. R O S E M A R I E. As for the rest: Rosa. The Moms. Steve. Now's your chance. All dissatisfactions taken into account.

What's that you say?

Rosa can't yet read (certainly not in English)... Steve is train-bound between Berlin and Brussels... The Moms is lying, bikini'd, on an unwired Florida beach...

No kidding.

Ahem..

Comments

[Julie]

you are brave. is so hard to write about people you know and have them read it. i admire your courage. many people blog anonymously just so they can be brutally honest. it's a fine line we tread, trying to write about our lives and what we see. you'll notice on my blog i tend to stick to myself, and faceless corporate enterprise. need to try to branch out and potentially offend more, in the name of storytelling perhaps?

[jess]

i was wondering if your 'characters' are reading your blog! (esp cute-sounding english tech geek!)