Aug 08, 2003  |  By: MARK REILLEY  | COMMENTS     

WHEN TALLULAH BANKHEAD said, “Only good girls keep diaries, bad girls don’t have time,” she obviously couldn’t have foreseen the phenomenon of blogging. The Web is crawling with girls and boys, good and bad, who regularly write in their journals.

But these aren’t pink plastic, hasp-locked “My Diary” books concealed under the bedroom mattress; they’re Internet diaries called Web logs and are fast becoming a way to let you — and the world — get to know a little, or a lot, about the author.

Web logs, or “blogs” for short, contain day-by-day musings about life, including the mundane (“I like Madonna because she looks a little like my mother.”), strange (“I like to weigh myself after I poop.”), amusing (“I take the lemons life gave me and throw them at passing cars.”) and universal (“Growing up I always knew I was different.”).

Instead of hiding them on the closet shelf, bloggers post their entries to the Internet to be seen by anyone with prying eyes and a clicking mouse. And unlike the older brother who reads your diary, snickers and leaves, your blog audience members get to insert their own comments and thoughts about everything you’ve just written.

I have been a more traditional journaler since the 1980s when I began writing about my coming out experiences. For me, being gay meant feeling alone. Friendless. A freak. Trapped in a teenage bedroom reeking of confused melodrama, I desperately befriended a journal that helped me come to terms with all those “Am I the only one?” feelings and fears.

Back then, the name of the game was secrecy; so I kept my journal hidden in the closet, far away from my two snooping, straight older brothers.

Like my conventional blank books, Web logs can smooth the coming out process, though for bloggers like Bart at NYU, secrecy is now augmented by a DSL connection and isolation is replaced by an audience of cyber soul mates.

Bart used his blog (trabaca.com) to announce his coming out. Rather than directly tell his friends he was gay, he let them read about it in a Web posting:

By Bart: “There is something I have wanted to write about here that I haven’t been able to write about before, partly because I haven’t felt ready to tell anyone … What I’m trying to say is that I am gay.”

By Laura: I’m so proud of you. Congratulations!

By Shan: I just wanted to say that your story sounds similar to mine.

By Chris: I was like you a few years ago too…

Bart often gets e-mail from others in the process of coming out who, he says, “mention how surprised they are to find someone else who went through the same thing they did.”

UNLIKE BRIEF AND often calculated chat room profiles and photographs, Web logs can offer a more meaningful portrait of the person behind the keyboard. These details can facilitate relationships by disclosing personality facets that instant messaging might not reveal.

Despite being what he considers a shy person, Bart befriended, traveled with and even shared a dorm with some of his fellow bloggers. “My readers have been there for me each step along the way,” he says. “We offer [each other] support in the ‘You’re not alone’ way.”

That compassionate tone is evident on Goddess Musings, the blog (veronicas.org/babyblog) of self-described feminist, tomboy, liberal, queer-hetero and expectant mom Roni. When her baby, Paris, was two days overdue, Roni wrote:

“My family is starting to ask, ‘Is the baby here yet? Huh? Huh?’ Don’t ask a very pregnant woman that! Especially one who gets very pissy, very quickly!” — Roni

By Cinnamon: I’m crossing my fingers that things will go OK!

By Kira: I too want to wish you a safe and quick delivery! *hugs*

By Beth: Hold on for another week … I wanna win [the online betting pool]!

Bart and Roni are just two of an estimated 4 million members of the online journaling “blogosphere.” Joining the community is easy. Many sites will store your journal on their computers and supply you with free authoring software, provided you display their logo in your journal.

For $15, you can get an ad-free blog. In less than five minutes, I created a username, entered a “bio” (hometown, hobbies, personal philosophy) and was ready to start posting my own entries to the Internet.

Despite their online format, Web logs aren’t much different than “Pillow ...