Tavi Trouble

I don’t allow my girlfriend to have a Facebook account because as it is she doesn’t let a phone call go unanswered or an email unattended, even the crazy “Obama isn’t a U.S. citizen” ones. She must set the world straight and I love her for it, but Facebook would suck the remaining years of her life into nonstop communication frenzy.

That said, I am the link to Lynn’s family on Facebook. And that’s how Lynn’s niece, Emma, came to request my friendship. I have written about how I’m not good with kids. I’m not sure what they like at what age and when my own nephew played with tiny drink straws at a steak restaurant clashing them as swords into a violent X, he dropped one of the straws. I took up the lone straw and said, “Casey, look, it’s an ‘I.’” That landed like a dissertation on Emily Dickenson to the 8-year-old Casey and he looked away from me with pity in his eyes.

I was telling Emma she could Facebook Lynn through me if she wanted and Emma wrote, "awsome , how you doing anything up?”

I wanted to impress the kid. I’m thinking she doesn’t want to hear about my boring life but maybe she would be interested in another kid. Grant you, she’s one of the most precocious and influential kids in the fashion world right now, but she’s also funny and 13, Emma’s age. I wrote to Emma that nothing was up with me, but I'm keeping up with a fashion blog written by a young girl and she might like to read it, too.

The “Comment” button was clicked and I left Facebook to check Brian Eno’s “Oblique Strategies” for the day.

Something in the back of my head told me to check out Style Rookie. She’s freakishly smart and I should read it with an eye to a normal 13-year-old reading it. I checked what Tavi Gevinson had to say on her blog. Remember I have posted the link to my girlfriend’s niece’s Facebook.

Tavi had just turned 14-year-old. That’s safe territory. The next entry was a rail about a photographer accused of molesting under aged models. As I’m reading in horror thinking of Emma calling her parents over to explain the link Aunt Autumn sent, I click on a link in the rant and there’s a photo of a pre-pubescent girl looking distressed with her shirt off and a man’s fingers pinching the nipple of her still unformed breast. Hard.

Holy Shit!

I race back to Emma’s FB page and delete the link to Style Rookie and write, “Nothing much. I like the photo of the horse you posted.” I made a fast retreat to my lame but safe “Casey, it’s an ‘I’” kid talk. Even so, I can't shake the feeling that I dodged a bullet.