Of Smear Campaigns

I have very recently written an Intro for a trans-themed site of mine. That Intro talks about my relationship to a troubled trans youth I named Genevieve and in the process mentions a mutual acquaintance of ours.

It's possible to go through my blogs and identify that man. If you read my writing, odds are good you know him as jacquesm. I long ago began simply calling him Jack.

I gave up on trying to figure out how to pronounce his name some years ago. I would bet most members of Hacker News can't say it either and most probably call him the French pronunciation of Jacques plus Muh-theedge. It's probably closer to Mattyoo with a French U ending sound. It's the Dutch equivalent of Matthews and the Dutch version of Jacques is slightly different from the French version.

How do I know how his name is probably pronounced? I have a strong interest in language. I've taken Intro to Linguistics in college and several French classes and I wanted to be a translator. 

But mostly because I have manners which seems to get me in no end of hot water. I tried to figure it out to be respectful to him because he was someone in my social circle and I stopped bothering because asking Genevieve -- who absolutely didn't know -- had her assuming I was crushing on him and she was probably the least worst person to ask with regards to potential social fallout.

Some time in 2010, Jack lost his cool with me and bizarrely interpreted a comment I made as if I was personally accusing him of something. And we talked publicly and sorted the misunderstanding. Two things happened:

1. I had the shocking epiphany that, no, he's not anything like my loser butthead programmer brother-in-law "living in his Mommy's basement."

For the first time, I had some idea of who he was and I felt like a jerk. I began to write a blog post about it but ultimately never finished that because I didn't really have a following for my writing, so I decided my relationship to Jack and Hacker News was more important than any imagined brilliant insights I might have to offer people about social stuff and online forums or whatever.

2. He emailed me for the first time maybe later that day or the following day to apologize.

In that email exchange, he mentioned his "girlfriend." I took that as polite code for "I'm not hitting on you. Let's not have any awkward misunderstandings."

And I also concluded this is why he lost his cool with me. When he lost his cool, I was like "Oh. He actually IS crushing on me and that's why he talks at me so much in spite of me frequently not replying." 

I had spent a year going "I don't get it. He doesn't appear to be hitting on me. Usually men who talk to me this much are hitting on me."

He's Dutch and he would say something to me and a fair amount of the time I was like "I have no idea what he's talking about and I'm concerned that asking will lead to a long public discussion and I don't want this kind of drama. It's not critical that I understand everything everyone says to me and he and others will think I'm hitting on him when I'm just going I have NO idea what you mean."

So I often just didn't reply to him as the least worst solution I could come up with at a time when I was extremely sick and frequently throwing up and in pain.

He tried to be warm and supportive and encouraging once and told me I should do a blog about how I'm getting healthier with CF and my blog about that was listed in my HN profile and I had a horrible headache and was throwing up and just didn't engage with that. Because it's like, dude, if you are trying to be charming, you are failing.

And I just absolutely couldn't think of anything remotely DIPLOMATIC to say to that. So I just said nothing.

So he loses his cool and I'm like "Oh. He IS attracted to me. God, I'm stupid." And then he emails me and mentions a girlfriend and I'm like "Ah. He's attracted and in a relationship. So nothing I do will ever be the right thing and he's STILL trying to be respectful."

So I was like no big, thanks for the apology. And didn't think too much more about it.

In December, Genevieve emails me and we really hit it off. We began talking a LOT. 

On January 31, 2011, Jack writes a blog post titled So Long and Thanks for all the Bits. He was kind of ragged on for that. 

The post itself is a 404. It's no longer online. You can bet money he didn't mention his girlfriend was pregnant.

So he has a dust up with me and shortly thereafter his girlfriend gets pregnant and he leaves HN, probably to be a gentleman and avoid drama with me and avoid personal conflict for himself. 

Somewhere in the first few months of 2011, he tells Genevieve something like "Tell my five good things in your life." And she lists Michele as one of them and he says "You mean Mz?"

So I don't know what Genevieve had in mind when she contacted me and I don't have any reason to believe he put her up to it. The best information I have is she decided to do that on her own because she realized he was crushing on me.

But I have no idea if she was plotting to push us together or wondering if I was a potential threat to her or exactly what. And then she and I became fast friends which she absolutely didn't expect.

When Jack and I had our dust up, he said to me:

My passport is about to expire, I will not renew it because I don't feel like giving up my fingerprints to authorities that have already been seen to abuse every little bit of data they have on us.

I took that as very polite code for something like "Bitch, don't worry about it. I'm NOT going to be traveling to the US to meet you! You aren't that hot anyway!"

And then on March 9, 2011, he writes a blog post called The belt sander and the battle for privacy. A body hack. 

So he changed his mind about getting a passport after talking smack in public to a woman who was under his skin and needed a means to settle this conflict between his public statements about "I'm NOT getting a passport! I don't want to give up my fingerprints to my government!" and his decision to get a new passport.

I knew when that hit Hacker News he had changed his mind about me because someone he talked to very regularly was also talking to me and then talking to him about me. 

This man took a belt sander to his fingertips to make it possible to arrange to have a coffee date with an American woman who spent a year unintentionally giving him the cold shoulder.

We really talked for the first time and we talked comfortably, like old friends, for a few days. And then his girlfriend miscarried about a week after he finally got me to talk to him and I just knew he blamed me and he felt I was an evil woman and somehow him talking to me is why the baby died.

I don't remember the exact timeline anymore and I don't care. It would be a couple more years or longer before I realized girlfriend wasn't polite code for "I'm not hitting on you." It was code for "Most people have no idea and think I'm married, but I'm actually available and hoping to marry you."

I don't really want to rehash this. I never wanted to hurt this man whom I still have enormous respect for.

But I met him via Hacker News seventeen years ago this month and I've been celibate for medical reasons for twenty-one years, so we were never going to get together for reasons having nothing to do with how well we got along, and unlike most men who were attracted to me and realized they couldn't have me, he not only didn't run me out of his social circle, he gallantly left to not interfere with my participation on Hacker News.

So whatever garbage runs around in your head for whatever reason, please kindly don't ever for any reason use anything I say to smear him.