Being Known, and Not at All

The cosmic horror of small-scale fame.

I met him on Fetlife, “the world’s largest and most popular social network for the BDSM community,” in a gay hookup group.

Already I am feeling self-conscious about writing this, because the last essay I published also opened with a personal story about my sex life. I wrote and published a highly revealing piece about my transition and genital preferences two weeks before that. If I keep writing so much about sex, and my personal life, people will view me as superficial and internally empty.

I fret all the time about what kind of splash my writing will make, when it comes out, and the accumulated effect of all my work when it is considered together. I am never not replaying my words and analyzing how they might come across to another person. I’m constantly running a simulation of the judgments people will make about how I spend my time, where I put my attention, and what I choose to say to the audience I have cultivated.

I would be a fool not to consider these things. If I did not think about them and pre-empt them, often in quite a calculated way, I would not be where I am.