A Friend in West Virginia, Part Nine

What I learned over time, was that my friend had created something of a false "basic" profile of himself online (he's certainly not the only one who has done that), but unlike some people, it was at least based upon a real person. I'm sort of a suspicious person to begin with, but I didn't really pick up on much of the phoniness at first, but gradually I noticed some discrepancies. He was hiding, and at times it showed. I eventually communicated with four people who "claimed" they knew him in real life, although two of those I communicated with only online. By that time, he and I had become very "close" in terms of daily communication and we had shared information about ourselves, although he still stuck to the basic phony info, but as I noted in a much earlier segment, I'm not sure that once he lays out something, that he can ever draw back, and just say like, "Hey, I made up some things, because I didn't know the people I would be chatting with and possibly be meeting, but you and I get along real well,* and here's the scoop." Now here too, all of us can have a hard time "fessing up" to such things, but it seems to be especially tough for him. In this way, he seems to be something on the order of Donald Trump, without the power or the hairdo.