My Friend's Name is Daniel

Game changer time.

It’s time to name names.

Daniel Patrick Wozniak, for example. 

Go ahead, Google it, I’ll wait. 

That’s right folks. Bye bye pseudonym!  This blog is about to change. 

As I told you in my last post, I’ve been having an “existential crisis” because Pat didn’t know I was writing a blog about our relationship.

And the only way to stop stressing was to just tell him about it.

This made me nervous, but I couldn’t say exactly why. It wasn’t like I was afraid he’d be angry at me.  My concern was that he’d feel I had violated his trust. 

It’s probably weird to most people, but Daniel has become a good friend in the past eight months and keeping this from him bothered me. 

I hadn't used his real name, but it wouldn’t take a cyber genius to connect the dots from the description of the crime.

On Friday May 22, I visited him at the Orange County Jail in Santa Ana and I told him.

His reaction floored me.

Instead of being upset or even concerned, he seemed amused.

I reassured him that I wasn’t using his name though, so no worries there…

He asked me, “Why not?”

This seemed like a foolish question on his part.  

“Umm…I don’t want to write anything that will get you in trouble.”

He laughed.  

Yes, OK, that statement is rather ridiculous considering where I’m visiting him.

Basically, he said that there’s already a ton of stuff written about him and most of it’s bad, so go ahead and use his real name.

I’m guessing he thinks what I write will be all good stuff.

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Existential Crisis

(post 8)

I haven't posted for a while.  I've been going though a bit of an existential crisis, you might say. 

I wrote my first letter to "Pat" in August of 2014.  I started this bog about 5 months later.  I still haven't told him that it exists.  

I am going to, though.  

When I began writing to this man who is in jail, I had one goal in mind.  I saw him only as a crime and I saw myself as the next Truman Capote.   (Side Note: Yes, I'm totally aware that there have been a gazillion true crime books published since In Cold Blood came out in 1966, but Truman Capote is cool.) 

By the time I started actually posting in this blog, though, he'd already become more than that.  Pat isn't just a topic.  He's my friend.  

There are probably tons of people who would think that I'm "nucking futz" for calling an accused murderer my friend.  I wonder about it myself, so I don't blame them.

The thing is, they don't know Pat.  

I think I do.  

I sure as hell hope I do.  

I really want to believe I do.

Because this all became very real on Friday when I had coffee with a Dateline NBC producer to talk about Pat!

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