I remember how it started.
First there were enormous boxes that were glorified typewriters, handling "word processing." Along came spreadsheets, and then games on CD-ROMs, like primitive DVDs. Dial-up modems that hissed and chirped in the night. Each little advance led to another, like a natural evolution, and then one day we found ourselves in chat rooms, where we could all be alone together, and things got much more interesting.
At the time it was revolutionary. People from all across the country, all around the world, typing messages to each other, discussing sports, politics, their health, the weather – and sex.
I had just moved to New York City, divorced after a long, long, long marriage. 3,752 years, to be precise. Give or take, I may have lost count. I left behind so much – a workshop full of tools, collections of books, things hanging on walls, friends – and told myself that a new, expensive, fancy computer would make up for it.
My early days in New York were long, and so I'd get home late, order take-out, pour a glass of wine, and "talk" to people – chat, as the evening grew long.
Most of the conversations were idle chit-chat – somehow appropriate for virtual chat rooms populated by people with silly screen names – but every now and then I'd meet somebody interesting – someone in my field. Someone who could punctuate and spell really well. Someone who was well read, or from a city I'd been to – or a city that I hadn't been to, and wanted to learn about.
And that's how I met her. She was about my age, separated, and working for a large company outside of Atlanta. She was smart, had a good sense of humor, and knew something about art, a subject I was wholly ignorant of.
After a couple of accidental conversations we started to look for each other in the same chat room, connecting now and then depending upon who-knows-what – schedules, work obligations. I'd tease her sometimes about the South, and she not only took it well, but gave it back to me, the "New York Yankee" who was ignorant of the more genteel traditions.
I couldn't tell you exactly when or how our conversations grew more intimate, but it was clear that the anonymity and distance made us both feel safe. I seem to recall that the next step, no pun intended, started with her feet - one night she wrote that she'd been at meetings all day, formal corporate things, and her feet hurt from wearing heels for ten hours. I suggested that she needed a foot rub...she asked if I'd do the honors...and it seemed natural.
One night I asked her for an email address. She hesitated, and I worried that I had gone too far – but the next night she sent me one, something she had set up on AOL. It was a new address "to protect her privacy," she said, "Just like any respectable lady in the South would."
Our emails and chats grew longer, more intimate, slowly, as she guided me. She'd tell me what she liked – what she wanted. And, perhaps without meaning too, she told me about her needs. She wanted to be loved, but she needed to be desired. The years were ticking by, and more than anything else she needed to still feel sexy, feminine. Her ultimate fantasy – that she revealed over many months – was to be watched. To make love to her partner while another man watched, to imagine that she had the power to attract anyone she wanted, and more than one man, to turn all the heads in a room.
Despite her worries and insecurities, what she didn't know was that, even though I had never seen her, she was the sexiest woman I had ever met.
One night, deep in a chat, I told her I wanted to hear her voice – I wanted to hear her drawl. I had a land line back then, and when I typed out the message – "would you like my phone number?" – I didn't really expect her to say yes – but she did.
Our first telephone conversation was like an awkward date – tentative bits about the weather, our days at the office – but once we were over the initial awkwardness the conversation flowed easily, because in fact we had come to know each other well.
Our second call was different. I narrated her fantasy of being watched...I placed us in it, together, making love as we were watched, and when her crashing, gasping orgasm washed over her it sizzled though the phone into my head, and I was so hard for her that I ached and throbbed.
About a month later I had to leave on a long business trip – around the world, sketchy places with bad phone lines, and I'd be gone for two weeks, maybe three if things didn't go smoothly.
When I told her I'd be away, she purred into my ear, that sweet Southern breeze that was her voice, "Whatever will ah do while you are gone?" Of course, her question might have been simple courtesy – but it wasn't. We were hooked on each other. Her very words excited me, conjuring images of her at home, alone, in bed, and waiting for my call. I kept hearing her voice over the next several days as I prepared for my trip. "Whatever will ah do?"
And so one night, just before I left, I wrote her a story. I thought about her fantasy, and what she had told me, about her height, her curves, and the perfume she wore. I closed my eyes and remembered the phone calls we had shared, and what she most liked to hear. I wrote it down, and then rewrote it, and rewrote it again. I didn't sleep that night, bothered by the need to get it just right – and bothered by a constant, needy erection that didn't subside until I took care of it right before dawn. I emailed her the story, packed my suitcase, and went off to catch a plane.
When I finally returned late one night, nearly a month later, there was a single email from her waiting for me. It simply said "we need to talk." I was worried that I had overdone it, and called her right away.
