God Can Be Funny at a Cocktail Party When Listening to a Good God-Themed Joke

Do you know how I know that God is a man? Because if God were a woman, we females would not need males to perpetuate the species.

I have a male friend we can call Paprika. Paprika and I have never met in person. We know each other through a blog I used to have about four years ago. We emailed back and forth for awhile, got into a little tiff, and then I didn't hear from him again until about a year ago when he sent me a Facebook friend request. At the time, he told me that he found me because Facebook went through his email address book, found my email and sent me the request. This is bullshit. The email address he had for me was the one associated with the blog, not the one I use on Facebook. I don't even have that old email address anymore. This leads to the inevitable conclusions that: (1) he intentionally set out to find and friend me on Facebook and (2) he lied about it for some reason. Since we reconnected, we've talked almost every day, often multiple times per day, by email. When I say "multiple," I don't mean two or three. I mean upwards of a dozen times per day. I even helped him find his new job.

Now, it may seem strange that I have a close friend of several years acquaintance that I have never met in person. It seems strange to me, at least. I've floated the idea to Paprika several times of getting together in person, either in my city or his, and I invited him to join me on a weekend trip I have planned to Guatemala in November. On each occasion, he has rebuffed me. I told myself that these were obviously the terms on which he could offer his friendship -- we could know each other electronically but that was as far as it could go. It still seems pretty weird to me, but I like Paprika, so I'm willing to work within his parameters.

But now he's pissing me off. He's clearly so jealous of Goose he could spit. I know this primarily because he comments on Goose's physical appearance, calling him "tiny," "small-featured" and "Jewish-looking." (I'm not sure that "Jewish-looking" is an insult, but it didn't sound like a compliment either.) Goose is not a tall man (I estimate his height at about 5'9" or 5'10") but he's not a midget, and I don't think any of his features are particularly small (Goose would want me to note that his junk, in particular, is not small). My point isn't whether what Paprika says is true or not but rather that he is making an elementary play out of the Jealous Person's Playbook (which I wrote): denigrating the physical appearance of one's rival. He also theorized that Goose and I have about a month of awkward emails ahead of us, followed by never talking to one another again and that we should have just had sex on the trip because then we could have chalked it up to a vacation fling. Now, Paprika may be completely right about that. He may, in fact, possess the ability to see the future. I've stated repeatedly here and in my real life that the overwhelming odds have Goose and me never seeing one another again, regardless of how strong our connection felt when we were together. But the issue here is not what will happen between Goose and me but how much Paprika seems to hope for that outcome.

I told Paprika he was jealous and that maybe he should have taken me up on one of my many invitations to get together for a visit. He told me I was funny. Fine. Play that game. I admit that it's unlikely that Goose will be the man who takes me off the market, but it'll be somebody someday (I hope). In the meantime, Paprika needs either to put up or shut up. Assface.