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.
She wanted to show me her breasts. She'd had implants and wanted my opinion. What could I say? Again, I was glad of my chair. We sat together for hours, Kaira and I. She worked, I worked, we reached out, titillated each other, laughed, went back to work. We were at home in this new, lewd Wild West.
One day, using her new camera, she appeared on my screen, naked, legs folded on the seat of her chair with her favorite--as she told me--chromed vibrator in her hand. I had no way to hear anything she said or the sounds she made, but I read her (very few) words and watched as she masturbated. I was speechless, any microphone useless, because remembering, even all these years later, I still wouldn't know what to say.
She was, to me, utterly, all-consumingly beautiful. I said I would have dived through the cable. But the truth is I could not move. And I didn't want to. Ever.
What was she really like? How would it have felt to bury my nose, cheek, lips in the hair near her ear? How would she have responded had I cradled her dear face in my blue-collar hands? What would her skin have smelled like, her lips and tongue tasted like?
(You know how it is for yourselves.)
