Fakebook (12 page)

Half days are the longest.

They aren't very productive, either. I mostly sat at my office desk, staring at the little digital clock on the corner of my screen.

Who could work? It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving!

It's my favorite weekend of the year. Unlike most holidays, where you're looking for a Christmas miracle or someone to kiss at midnight, there's very little room for disappointment. The only promise Thanksgiving makes is sharing a meal with your family. How perfect is that? It's just so uncomplicated. At least most years.

This was to be my secret return from exile—the first time I'd be in Red Bank since I started this mess. Even on a normal visit I could count on running into an old classmate or a neighbor, but this was homecoming weekend. The town would be packed with Facebook friends.

Despite how much I was looking forward to turkey dinner, I dreaded the train ride getting there. Penn Station would be an absolute bottleneck of Red Bank–born New Yorkers. The holiday would filter out the hundred or so people in the city I couldn't be seen by and put them all on the same handful of trains.

I looked over at my desk and sifted through a pile of promotional swag. I grabbed an oversized hoodie branded by a fitness product and a clunky pair of shades that say “Stay cool” on the sides. This would be my disguise for the eighty-minute ride home.

My office phone rang. It was an unknown number.

“Hello, this is FedEx,” a voice said on the other end. “We have an oversized package to be delivered to you.”

“What? I'm not expecting anything oversized,” I said. “Where is it coming from?”

“Lancaster, PA.”

Amish country? I was instantly excited and suspicious. “
Who
is
this?
” I yelled into the receiver.

The only response I got was a dial tone.

It clearly wasn't FedEx, so I assumed it must be Joe or Ted or someone having a little fun with me. But with the memory of my Photoshop debacle still fresh in my mind, the phone call unnerved me. I tried to put it out of my mind and went back to the important work of watching the clock move. After all, I had a train to catch, places I couldn't go, and people I couldn't see.

On the train, I grabbed a window seat and put my hood up with my forehead to the window, blocking me from most angles. The disguise must have made me look like a real scumbag—but an anonymous scumbag. My reward was a mercifully uneventful train ride home.

Waiting at the station for Ralph to pick me up, however, was excruciating. The time dragged, as I felt raw, exposed, and left behind by my own splintered identity.

In New York, I was able to suppress this feeling. After all, to my coworkers and my closest friends, I was still me, and Fakebook was just a thing I was doing. In Red Bank, however, Fakebook wasn't a thing I was doing—it was who I was. Being physically in the town, surrounded by the people who now thought I was someone else, was viscerally disorienting. My entire being was a liability.

“Where the hell is Ralph?” I thought.

My call to his cell phone went straight to voice mail. He must have been, as usual, saving the rechargeable battery.

“Ralph,” I barked into the voice mail. “It's Dave. Keep your phone on. As punishment, I'm going to let this message run until it times out so you have to sit through it.”

As I filled his voice mail with dead air, I warily watched people walk by. I was compelled to look at everyone who passed me to confirm they were strangers. It felt like only a matter of time before one of them recognized me and knew I wasn't supposed to be there.

It figured that my attempt to blend resulted in forcing lots of eye contact with everyone around me. After all, my “disguise” of a loose-fitting, gray hooded sweatshirt and blocky sunglasses made me look like a police sketch of the Unabomber. Combine that with lurking in the shadows sizing everyone up, and it painted the portrait of a drug dealer trying to get caught.

After a full ninety seconds, I reached the “message size limit” on my dad's phone and hung up. I walked over to a support beam and leaned on it with my back to the bars that lined Broad Street. In a couple of hours, the street would be packed—tonight was one of their big nights.

I'm sure it's the same in many towns. The night before Thanksgiving, the bars fill up with the returning prodigal sons and daughters. People jump on the opportunity to go out with the friends they normally never see and enjoy random encounters with their pasts. Despite our connectivity, there is still something wonderful and irreplaceable about sharing the same space.

I felt really wistful for this shared experience I couldn't have and a little ashamed for disregarding these peripheral relationships to create an online prank turned social experiment. They were so much more meaningful than I'd imagined when I tossed them aside. Tonight's annual bar crawl was just another communal touchstone that I'd carelessly thrown away.

What if I just show up? I wondered. What would happen if I brazenly walked into the Dublin House and just acted like I didn't know what anybody was talking about—acted like they were the crazy ones?

I couldn't do that, of course…but what if I went the other way and totally embraced the story? I could be Fake Dave for a night. All it would take was a single post: “Hey guys, Kate and I decided to spend Thanksgiving with our families. See everyone soon!” If I really wanted to sell it, I could even post an injury on Facebook and then show up to town in a cast, getting people to sign it.

I entertained this thought for a while… It could be kind of fun. I'd be greeted with a hero's welcome, and I could finally enjoy some of Fake Dave's popularity.

But with Fakebook, I was beginning to realize, the stage was more interesting than the performance. It wasn't about pretending to be someone else; it was about having someone else pretending to be me. The two lives needed to be quarantined from each other to really measure how much one impacted the other. To blur the lines between my online persona and my real life would turn Fakebook into just another hoax instead of whatever this was turning into.

Sadly, Fake Dave would have to spend the Thanksgiving weekend on his own. Or rather, I would be the one spending the weekend on my own—he had company. My gamble of introducing Amish Kate had actually worked. Fakebook had people's attention again.

The previous few weeks had been Fake Dave and Amish Kate's “honeymoon” in Harrisburg. I thought it wise and believable to give them a little downtime after their explosive departure from Lancaster. And even though the slow time on the farm had dragged on a bit too long, I still thought it important to weave in these periods of quiet. Events needed to settle before I stirred them up again. Otherwise it was exhausting—both for me and for the audience.

And now I had found a status quo that was far more engaging than the original FarmVille parody. Having Fake Dave usher this girl into his particular idea of modern life was a gigantic gray area and had great opportunities for a little cultural satire.

I couldn't help but laugh at people's judgmental reaction to Amish Kate. All across the country, twentysomethings nursing hangovers were judging me for introducing this girl to their own lifestyles. I took Kate Moulton's photos—the same photos most twenty-five-year-old girls have on their Facebook walls—and showed that lifestyle back to them. “Look at what you did to that poor girl in the mirror,” they complained.

Screw it, I thought. Haters gonna hate, and Fake Dave and Amish Kate were having fun. Plus, there was a lingering instability between them that would keep it compelling. Fake Dave's whole journey was about being unattached, being free. Now Amish Kate was a responsibility, albeit a hot blond one. Her presence undercut his attempts to be a “citizen of the road.” Having Fake Dave not necessarily on board with this—but not immediately sending her back, either—created a world of texture.

She also created a new context for my audience to assess Fake Dave's behavior. Before Kate, it was easy to be supportive of this adventure since even at its most immature, there was no real victim (other than that toilet-papered horse). But now? An innocent woman had been ripped from her family and community, all because she was seduced by some drifter's modest worldliness.

What was Fake Dave's responsibility to her? How much personal responsibility did Kate have for herself? Was this journey still worth doing? Was it romantic or reckless? Insane? It was impossible not to have a point of view.