What am I doing? I think to myself as I plop down in a lounge chair to enhance my tan lines. What have I done? As the scorching desert sun begins to sear my body, I wonder if my brain has reached a comparable state. Have I become the latest version of Blanche DuBois—fancying myself a wilting flower, thirsty for desire and dependent on the kindness of strangers? All of these thoughts swim through my head while the Jackson 5’s hit “Dancing Machine” wafts from the speakers around the pool.
The intense desert heat has already managed the wilting aspect. The Internet will administer the kindness-of-strangers portion later. In just a few hours, I have arranged to meet a pixel pal, an Internet interlude. I am to become a fully realized man of my word.
For years, I have wanted to write about the Internet, the cyber connect. About becoming a pixel dick and the unique way in which gay men are often too shy to offer the simplest hello in passing, yet effortlessly share their most intimate details and physical “attributes” with anyone and everyone with the click of a key—never to be taken back, never to be forgotten, forever available—like an opened book. But to cover such a vast infusion of technology is not a small nibble, it is a mega-“bite.” So for now, I have chosen to concentrate on the connect of the World Wide Web and why it took me back into the arms of a stranger.
Several weeks earlier, as I sat in a dimly lit auditorium filled with fidgety listeners, a man read from his book—a memoir of a life intermingled with his dogs. Because of my fading eyesight and position at the back of the audience, I was left to rely on only his words. And as he read, those words took me to a place I’d not visited for a long time: a place where words can overshadow, the two-dimensional becoming more influential than the three-dimensional. A pixilated place where your hopes and dreams, attributes and shortcomings, physical and fantastical can align with others. A place where your “net worth” can be discovered then desired or discarded with the click of a mouse. And it was at that moment, slumped in the audience listening to his life, that I remembered how easy it was to desire connection, even intimacy, with a complete stranger. And so I did.
What would Blanche do with the Internet? I wondered, as I trimmed a stray nose hair. How would she rely on the kindness of strangers with the connect of the World Wide Web?
I’ve already pulled out all the stops: applied my pore-minimizing mask, trimmed my nose and (as of late) ear hairs and put on my sexiest aussie Bum underwear, all in an attempt to skillfully morph from virtual into reality. To not only be a man of my word, but of, well … I guess … of my butt. The aussie Bums in baby blue. Perfect, I think. I guess. I wonder. But as I reach into the pile of clothes stuffed in my duffle bag, I’m immediately stumped. What do you wear to meet a total stranger? Does it matter? Wasn’t it my words that brought us to this rendezvous?
From his photo, he’s a T-shirt-and-jeans kinda guy. Should I dress for virtual success and wear the same thing? But what if that’s not who he really is? I opt to align with the façade and grab a T-shirt and jeans. Then I wonder. Why do I care? I’m only the idea of things to him. Yet oddly, rejection looms large. Even though he’s a stranger, I don’t want to be a disappointment. Even though we are firmly grounded in our correspondence, our world wide words, I still want to be picked, even if I’m not sure I want to play.
Perched on a barstool, he is there when I arrive. Beside him on the bar is a pile of papers—our cyber correspondence, our words. Looking good on paper has immediately come to mean something different—more physical, more real. We drink martinis, and sip-by-sip, spoken word by spoken word, we become dimensional for each other. The kindness of strangers suddenly holds a tenderness, and a reality. A reminder that even when we are alone, we can always follow our natural desire to connect whenever we want. And someone will be there, reading, listing, imagining.
The next day, after my encounter, I return to my singular spot by the pool. Ignoring the poolside populace, I reach down and pull it out. Wanting to get lost again in words, I start his book. As the desert sun begins to penetrate, his words do the same, their cranial courtship offering entrée into his thoughts, his mind, his life. My mind follows and I begin to imagine him lying on the lounge chair beside me reading the words to me. And once again I am mesmerized by his words, like soothing piano music.Then, bam! Cher (of all things) slams me back to reality with her iconic bravado. “If I could turn back time. If I could find a way ...Words are like weapons...” How ironic, I think. And, once again, I am alone with my thoughts—the idea of things.
Words, like the Internet, are a funny thing. They can convey so much about a person depending on how they are formed. Sometimes they are enticing—an imagined life. And sometimes they aren't—revealing too much and killing the façade. But without them there would be no communication, no social interaction and no sense of connection—like a blank page or an empty screen.
And, if I am to be truly inclusive, then even the words from this column, are another revealing display, another selfdiscovery on paper. Why? To help? To connect? To personally illustrate that there are others out there with the same confusion, fears, vulnerability, desires, hopes, dreams, disappointments, affections and even kinky fetishes? Or perhaps simply to show that we—you and me—are not alone. Butwhen it comes to the Internet, can real intimacy honestly have a place among the pixels and megabytes? Because whether we’re making friends, finding romance or just looking to get laid, if we are alone when writing about ourselves, are we really connected or separated? You tell me. Because today, the streetcar named desire has a surveillance camera,and depending on the kindness of strangers could be a big misnomer! Perhaps everything that’s new,shiny and pixilated must become old again—traditional in its connect.
Maybe Blanche had the right idea. Maybe it’s important, necessary even, to rely on the kindness of strangers. Maybe she might have made her own sex tape and risen through the ranks of reality TV to become a star. Or maybe too much sharing is, well, too much. And the kindness of strangers is, well, strange. Or maybe I’m just being one-dimensional.
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