We Are Not Friends
I had to drop my college roommate from Facebook this week. It wasn’t just her support of a MAGA-hat-wearing teenager at a pro-life rally getting in the face of a Native American war vet. No, that was only one drop in the bucket. The biggest grievance was when I checked to see if any of my friends follow Donald J. Trump’s Facebook page. She was the only one.
The. Only. One.
Now granted, I only have a handful of real-life friends, but she was THE ROOMMATE. The one whose brother committed suicide after he came out to his parents, their parents, and it went badly.
When things started getting heated around the 2016 presidential election, she was one of the reasons I left Facebook. I returned and she friended me back around the release of Bohemian Rhapsody (people who know me in real life know me as The Girl Who Loves Queen. One day I’ll have a tattoo…).
I don’t know how she noticed we weren’t friends, except maybe she wanted to tag me in her “We went to see Bohemian Rhapsody” post and I wasn’t there. I still don’t know why. She never messaged me or used the platform to talk to me in any way.
If people think of me when they think of Freddie Mercury, why don’t they also think of how often I’m in their faces about bisexual erasure? Why don’t they also equate me with gay rights, equal rights, human rights, humanitarian efforts? If you think I only love Queen for their music, you are wrong. People hated them for playing Sun City, but they went there for all the right reasons. People think they only played Live Aid to restart their career; that was never their intent. Like Bomi Bulsara says in the movie, “Good thoughts. Good words. Good deeds.” This is the way of Zoroastrianism, the religion Freddie was raised in. He was a better Christian than most Christians these days.
(Maybe his publicist. He was in a coma when this was released.)
I’m only going to say this once. If you like and support our president and think he’s doing a good job, I will remove you from my friends list. If you support MAGA-hat wearing jerks over native people and you think transgender folks don’t deserve to serve our country, we are not friends. If you want to tag me in your posts about Freddie Mercury while also supporting the president’s plan to take money from HIV and AIDS research to build his border wall, fuck right off.
No, I will not be friending her a third time. I know better now.
