The Boston Phoenix had two interesting personality profiles in the September 24, 2010 issue. The first, Friends with Benefits was a piece by Eugenia Williamson about Alex Freeman, a 21-year old UMass Amherst college student. He’s a communications major, makes short films (www.youtube.com/user/alexanderfjfreeman) and is a lyricist for the band The Synaptics. And he has several Personal Care Attendants (PCA) to assist with his limitations caused by his cerebral palsy.
What was interesting was how Freeman’s views of privacy differ from the rest of us. His friends are his paid PCAs and as such assist him with the things that “need to get done”. As Freeman says, “Most people would have a problem if someone helped them out of the bathroom. But I don’t have a problem with that, because it’s part of the human condition…What needs to get done, needs to get done”. After he was neglected by some irresponsible strangers hired to care for him, he transferred from Fitchburg State University to UMass. He finds there is a conscientiousness in friends who work for him as a PCA that random strangers don’t sometimes possess.
How does he get to indulge in the things other 21-year old college guys do, “do you mean porn?” he says to Williamson (Freeman meets every question, stated or unstated, head on). “With different PCAs … I have to know how they’ll react. I’m different around women than I am around men…”
The other self-profile, to which I’ll refer to its subtitle (since this is a family-friendly blog) – How Internet Search Engines are Ruining My Life – was like a pre-emptive confessional for future dates and potential jobs. It seems Scott Fayner during creative endeavors in Hollywood was involved in porn: he wrote for the porn magazine Hustler, he married a porn star, and suggests that he dabbled in the “art” (I use the term loosely…pun intended) himself.
The problem lies in the instances where he’s on a date, having a good time, and she Googles him while he’s on a bathroom break, he returns to the table and the initial promising pleasantness has turned to disgust. Or, when a potential employer who may not relate to the west coast hustle is not impressed by his porn-studded resume. Fayner says, “Trying to make it as a writer in Boston with Hustler on your resume is like trying to make it in Hollywood with Howard the Duck on your IMDb page”.
He’s now running a respectable doggie Web site, www.massarf.com. A good way, though, to avoid the perils and pitfalls of Google, according to Fayner, is to never write using your own name.
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