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A L S O __T O D A Y - - - - - - - - - -
T A B L E__T A L K
Do virtual communities really exist or is this just another catchy buzz word? Join the discussion in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk
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R E C E N T L Y
Do computers boost productivity?
You are what you type
The little browser that could
Let's Get This Straight
This is just between us, right?
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LOVE IS BLIND | PAGE 2 OF 3 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - In the real world, physical attraction is the catalyst that draws us in: If the body appeals to us, then we investigate sexual interests. But in the virtual world this process works in reverse: If our sexual interests match up, then we ask to see the body. As a result, there's an unprecedented openness in cyberspace. Disembodiment, ironically, leads to an immediately greater sense of intimacy. All the I-have-a-crush-on-you awkwardness that in real life gets padded by random three-dimensional distractions, like playing with the tiny sword that stabs your cocktail olive, must now be softened with words or the screen goes blank. All the thoughts that could otherwise be communicated with a look or a touch can now only be conveyed with the alphabet. Telephone calls and in-person conversations are ephemeral. Spoken words vanish into thin air. Online communication leaves marks. Every chat can be saved on your hard drive for you to read over and over and over, to obsess about, analyze, strategically plan your next perfect string of vowels and consonants and spend hours wondering if it's all too good to be true. I laugh when I hear, "Online sex is safe sex! It's risk-free!" From disease, sure. But who's ever safe from the emotional stranglehold of love? Or heartbreak and jealousy? Within a single day, Stephen and I easily exchanged 50 messages. It wasn't just the volume of the responses that made it seem like things were happening so fast, but the rate of disclosure. In the absence of our physical bodies, the desire to know each other's minds became overwhelmingly urgent. I found myself confessing the most private truths about love, death, sex, religion, my family -- all in the first 24 hours. Even for a loudmouth like me, it would have taken so much longer to coordinate the right place with the right time and the nerve to speak such things while looking into someone's eyes. I've heard a few true stories about so-called cyber cads -- people swapping genders, switching tax brackets, lying about their age -- who get their kicks from manipulating the guileless and lovelorn. But for most people I know, developing online love relationships is about being dead honest. And the truth, as we know, is often stranger than fiction. In a spirited moment, I called up Susie [Bright] and told her, "I'm having the greatest sex of my life and I've never even seen this guy!" She, along with everyone else, wondered, "How can that be?" Stephen and I pushed our psychological and emotional boundaries to the edge because without our bodies, there was nothing else to push against. And it's the power of emotion that turns cybersex into real sex. Our conversations, electronic or otherwise, weren't less real or less meaningful to me because he wasn't lying in my arms. Yes, technically it was my hand on my clit but it was the sentient exchanges between us that took me to the mountaintop. There was nothing I couldn't tell him. I'd never felt so uninhibited and so protected at the same time. His sexual hunger matched mine. Surpassed it, in fact. Anywhere, anytime I might answer the telephone only to hear him say, "Undress." And I would because, well, that's what those crazy, tilt-a-whirl maiden days are for. SUBJECT: Why You Love Rubber Seven days into our affair, I suggested a meeting. He was reluctant. I got a sick feeling, wondering if I'd been tricked. How could he not want to know me in person? Maybe I was just another conquest. Maybe his name wasn't even Stephen. He'd already seen my picture in various magazines and knew I wasn't a total dog. But as far as his appearance, I didn't have a clue. "So, what do you look like?" I once asked after a marathon phone session and he just sighed into the receiver; his amplified breath telling me that a physical description of himself was irrelevant to the magic between us. I immediately felt stupid for even asking. This is cyberspace, baby. Looks don't matter. So I let it slide, getting bits of information from one of our mutual acquaintances instead. "He's a big guy, tall. Curly brown hair," my friend David told me. "Sometimes he wears glasses." I was afraid if I pushed the issue too far, he would go away. I didn't want to lose him. In virtual life, we can disengage from our bodies and all that travels with them: vanity, insecurity, sexual chemistry. At times it can even feel as if we've transcended the corporeal world. Bodies? How superficial! It's who you are on the inside that counts. But I've found that at some point, the desire for the physical becomes overwhelming. You want it to be real or you don't want it. And once you decide to carry that fragile virtual egg across the threshold of real life, there is no turning back. "Why won't you see me?" I typed. " I need an answer."
Over the telephone, I insisted I didn't care how much he weighed. He insisted that my acceptance of him would only "fuck with his resolve" to lose weight. He refused to see me until July 4, 1994, when he would be "finished." "Oh, everybody thinks they're too fat," I cheerfully empathized, "including me." "Lisa." He was concentrating so hard he could barely speak. "I'm working my way down from 350 pounds." In a subsequent correspondence, he wrote, "I DON'T WANT TO BE ACCEPTED AS I AM NOW. I don't want to be what I am now." It was too late. I was in love. Stephen was the first man who accepted in me what so many others found unacceptable: my erotic determination. And he accepted it unconditionally, 100 percent. He got me, my essence, in a way no one else ever had. All of the things I spent so much time explaining to other men -- my ideas on pornography, feminism, sex -- were perfectly clear to Stephen from the get-go. Where others tried to change me and make me feel ashamed of what I did and who I was, Stephen told me my existence was like an amulet to him, warding off cruelty, violence, despair. He called me his hero. - - - - - - - - - - - - N E X T__P A G E .|. "Can I take this off?" |
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