She called herself "Kaira." I'm not exactly sure why. Her real, full name suited her. I still remember it, now, twenty-some years later. She'd wanted anonymity, of course, but why "Kaira?" "I like the sound of it," she said. Not that it really mattered to me. I was in my thirties, she was in her twenties and out of her clothes.
I waited for the image to load, the dial-up modem squawked, my chest tightened. "Fiber-optic" was the latest thing, but I wasn't impressed. If I could've dived through that cable and come out on her end, I would've.
She didn't send photos the first time we "met." I'd scanned comments, had seen her name on a rapidly scrolling, brightly-colored list, clicked on it, a private window opened, and I typed, "Hello." We typed, tapped "enter," read, typed and tapped some more, back and forth. Five minutes became fifteen; fifteen, an hour. I made a note of her nickname; she, mine. We agreed to look for each other the next day.
She was online when she said she'd be. She sent a photo, a picture of her face. I was surprised she was so forthcoming and said so. She was sitting in a patio chair, leaning back, looking up and over her shoulder at the camera, smiling broadly, spontaneously. I was glad to be sitting down, for a couple of reasons.
I couldn't breathe. I just looked. She asked me if I'd received her picture. I said I had, thanked her, apologized, regretted that I had no picture to send her, no camera. That was alright, she said, we could still chat. And we did, almost every day, for months, maybe a year.
She became my friend. We talked about all kinds of things, sexual things among them. I never told her much about myself--although she insisted on a physical description, which I gave. Mostly, I made her laugh, she said. "You think. You are polite." That seemed enough.
She made me love her. And I allowed myself to love her.
She bought a web-cam, a new thing then. I was able to see her face move, smile, as beautifully as I remembered. I say "remembered" because I saved no images she sent.