The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

My screen name says I lie when I'm drunk

"Invalid Entry" 

My friend A. got a computer first. I wasn't that interested, couldn't figure out what the fascination was, and we were verging on a new millenium. I remember one Chinese guy at work marvelling at my lack of technological intelligence, reminding me over and over that Canada (at that time) was leading in terms of computer ownership per household. He could not fathom my sort of 'blah' indifference to it, my wave of the hand whenever he would tease/mock me, and he shook his head in frustration and disgust whenever I'd blindly tell him to 'shut it, geek'. I think I meant my indifference back then. I don't think I had the first clue about what world would be revealed with a username and password.

Then, A. got her computer. She'd wait for the kids to be properly stationed in their school, and for her husband to be safely out of ear/eyeshot, and she'd call me to come over before I'd had a chance to wiggle out of sleep. So, I'd shower and dress, eat something without tasting it, and drive around the corner to her innocent-looking townhouse. I'd push the button for the groaning doorbell before hearing the happy clicks of her dog's nails on the linoleum and the swift thumps of her feet as they came to each step before she'd open the door, wide-eyed and red-cheeked, smelling of coffee and cigarettes. Though well into adulthood, her moreso than myself, the kind of enthusiastic mischief that came to own us in those days was something I'd assumed was reserved for teenagers throwing flaming bags of excrement on teacher's doorsteps. We were mad with the deliciousness of anonymity mixed with possibility, the ability to instantly find information and the chance to explore worlds we would never have done in our physical forms. We became a hybrid of sorts, creating a joint personality which had both of our best characteristics meshed together in one cyber female, assigning her one suggestive nickname before giggling madly as we entered whichever chatroom had the most promise.

We told ourselves it was harmless, fooling the others, because everyone knew it was just a game. There were no attempts at innocent, polite conversation, and what we seemed to find the most stimulating were the people who were so upfront with their intentions, who went for the a/s/l a nanosecond before trying to engage in full-on cyber sexual assault. She and I would take turns on the keyboard, feigning shock and intrigue, thinking ourselves clever for fooling a few chat neophytes. We were lesbians, post-op transexuals, deeply religious housewives who wandered in by mistake (oh, the excitement these 'women' would arouse), women in troubled marriages and women with extremely jealous husbands. We were never under the age of eighteen (we had our standards) and we never impersonated anyone specifically. It was for fun, and everyone understood the rules.

After a few weeks of it, though, I got bored. I didn't feel any genuine sexual urge with any of these people, and if A. did, she was kind enough to keep it to herself. I came to loathe the creatures who seemed incapable of formulating an intelligent thought, who lacked the ability to spell or to understand humour. It was like an infection spreading through brightly coloured fonts and 'lols', sex openly being sought after without so much as a please and thank-you. I had been so curious about cyber sex before then that I have to admit I was really disappointed to find it amounted to 'nothing much'. It wasn't like the real thing, didn't merit an addiction because for me the allure of a man is about his way of making me laugh or in his way of silencing me with a powerful stare. I had never been it for the sex of it. I had been in it for the laughs, and now I was finding it all just a little bit sad.

When I got my own computer a little while later, I still found myself tiptoeing into chatrooms, but not the sort I had before. I went into the psychic-themed rooms, which sounds crazy, but was actually a huge amount of good-natured fun. I envisioned fat, old ladies with glasses tapping away on their end of the wires, trying to see the spirits through pixel scripts and 'namastes'. I will admit to having a few women do incredibly profound readings on me, all of which left me scratching my head in wonder even to this day, but the thing I loved the most about those rooms were the (mostly) women who were in it for the conversation. There was no sexual tension, just intelligent, sensitive and wildly funny banter. After A. and I had stopped speaking (an argument during an IM session that ended with a fateful disconnection that neither of us tried to fix), I developed my own network of friends. While she was still off trolling in virtual rivers of musk oil and bitter fluid, I was learning about reiki, native practices and peppermint scented bathwater. I even tried to 'read' people, and had some bizarre success with a woman from New Zealand whose father I named, described and even guessed/read the cause of death for. I didn't believe in any of it, but the fun I had that left me feeling clean afterward was more favourable.

Then, I found a new chatroom with a handful of people who seemed 'normal'. The owner of the room was a pleasant man from somewhere in the Middle East who was exceedingly polite and willing to 'read' people without much provocation. He was seldom ever right, but we got along fine and one day he entrusted me with the secret that he, though married, was involved romantically with another member of the room who was also married. They'd never met in person, had never heard one another's voice, but somehow they were in love. I kept their secret and even took over hosting duties while the two of them went off to have their electronic sex in a private room, and I wielded that golden gavel with the zest of a vainglorious dictator.

One uneventful, grey November day, a new guest entered the room. It was significant because he was exceptionally polite, was obviously new to chat (what does a/s/l mean, if you don't mind me asking?), and the conversation was direct and benign. He made me laugh a few times and I remember telling him to come back at night when more people would be in the room (and when I knew that the owner would not be there because of the time difference). The owner had become a little 'weird', becoming strangely possessive of all the women in the room, and he was often rude to male guests. I read it as insecurity, but it was something more. One day, when no one else was around, the owner asked me if I wanted to see his family pictures in his 'private community'. Sure, I'd said happily, always nice to put a face to the nickname. When he gave me the password, I was treated to a series of photos of him wearing a yellow happyface t-shirt and nothing else. Pic after pic of upright penis, I started to laugh. Seriously? Even the married/involved psychic guys are into this?

Eventually, it all came out. I told a friend of the woman who was involved with the owner, and then the woman cyber-attacked me because she'd believed I'd gone after her man. To sit there and get upset over people I didn't actually know made little sense to me, so I sat there, stunned and unsure of how to react. The guest who had come in that November day, the man who made me laugh every single night, sat back quietly while all the nasty words popped up on the screen, flashes of angry colour. I was banished from the room, a scarlett letter branding my nickname, until a while later the room opened again and the level-headed people invited me back. I explained myself, they understood, and we tried to regain some normalcy, like it were possible. The guest from November suggested I start my own room and that he'd co-own it with me so that we could control who came in and what was being said. I eagerly agreed, and it became a room for people over thirty to just come in and laugh a lot. We did, night after night, sometimes toward morning, and it never felt strange or wrong, even though I was in an actual relationship with someone who had come to realize I was lost in another world even though I was sitting right in front of him.

Eventually, the new room came to an end but it did not sadden me. The November guest and I had developed a very real connection with one another, had somehow fallen in love despite never being in the same room with one another. His marriage had fallen apart early on in our friendship, and my own relationship was on wounded legs, but the way we made each other feel each day, the renewed sense of meaning made us both wonder if we were meant to be more than a fantasy. We arranged to meet, just for coffee he'd said, even though he was travelling five hundred kilometres to do it. I told myself it wasn't wrong. It was coffee, we'd known one another for eight months, he'd never been indecent or rude to me, we'd meet in a public place...there were no expectations.

He came to meet me, I moved toward him as he sat on a wooden bench and...I saw my future in his face. Against all odds, my fanciful adoration had instantly bloomed into a deep, enduring love. It took me some time to believe it, though.

It doesn't always happen this way, in fact, it rarely does, but the truth is that we have been a couple for many years now and I love him in a way I've never loved another person before. We are in sync, but we were from the beginning because the minds met before the bodies did and that takes a lot of the illusion out. Neither of us were looking for one another in the beginning, but I have to hand it to fate on occasion because in a sea of nobodies, my most important somebody came along with a boat when I didn't know I was drowning. We are one, without a nickname, without a carefully-conjured personality, without motive. We are now a family, and he still makes me laugh.

We both stopped going to chatrooms long before we moved in together. Whatever we'd been needing from them was no longer necessary when we realized that we'd found something better. I don't miss chatting at all, and he says he doesn't either, and when we try to figure out what brought us to them in the first place we can only cite loneliness and curiosity as possible explanations. I suppose it's the same for a lot of people, but we were lucky and we got out before it became more than entertainment.

I understand that a lot of so-called 'normal' people do it because of the safety of dabbling in the unknown without consequences. It is appealing, no argument. For me, though, it changed my life and even if I never chat again, I can't deny the benefits of having been a faceless screen name for a while. Sometimes, things just fall into place without you working at it.

I rarely think about all the others anymore; the infected, the depraved, the lonely. When I do, I wonder if they've had their fill yet, if they've found what they've been looking for...