“Heard you talked to 19-year-old Andy,” says 32-year-old Andy.
I sigh. “Yeah. Man.”
“Tough sledding, huh?”
“No kidding. I might as well have been speaking Aramaic. He had no idea what I was talking about. I actually didn’t realize this until I looked at Wikipedia later, but LiveJournal wasn’t even launched until 1999. So as far as, uh, blogs are concerned, he couldn’t have been much help.”
“You should have talked about zines. He might have understood that better.”
“Honestly, I don’t think he was as hot to trot on making zines as we may have suggested in the past. I think with most people our age — wait, we’re the same age, right?”
“Close. I’m a few months behind you. It’s April where I am.”
“Right. Anyway, I’m pretty sure zines didn’t factor into it much, until later on. I mean, there was John Doe is Dead and The National Cow, but those were exceptions. I don’t think he had much of a sense for himself as a writer until after blogs. The writing he…”
“We.”
“Right. The writing we did through our 20s, and continue to do, were more a consequence of blogging and then expanding that into non-blogging formats later. As opposed to already being a writer, then using blogs to continue that work. You know what I mean? I wish I’d asked 19-year-old Andy about his writing habits.”
“He didn’t have any. I remember. He mostly wrote long school assignments, and impassioned emails.”
“True. Actually, he kept saying E-mails, with a capital E and a hyphen.”
“Bizarre. Although I think you may be remembering that as a retro affectation to make him sound old-timier.”
“Maybe. Also, why do people keep asking us about our supposed marriages?”
“I’d rather not think about it.”
