SATELLITE BOY

I have always considered myself to be rather conventional. So I guess in this age of computers and the internet, I would be running true to form if I were to say I was involved in a cyber love affair.

Liaisons have been known to start with an exchange of glances across the crowded room. Mine started with a meeting of minds across a crowded chat room full of computer generated nuisances and perverts. I first saw the love of my cyber existence as two lines amid the sea of lines. A sensible thought caught between extremely opposite sentiments of derision and adulation, he should have looked incongruous. And yet, he appeared perfectly comfortable. As a matter fact, he looked rather attractive: not a single punctuation out of place, nary a preposition hanging, not a rule of grammar broken and more importantly, he had ideas which were perfectly in sync with mine.

It wasn't love at first read, but something about him intrigued me. He wrote with such sense and humor, I soon found myself blushing and smiling at his innocuous come backs from my heinous taunting. Ours was a relationship that sprung from common interests, but I don't think it would ever have flourished had it not been for the providential but pathologically engrossing cyber phenomenon called THE CHAT. My entire internet experience changed because of it. I have always wondered why apparently sane individuals have been reported to go crazy chatting on the net, and now I know why. Cyber chat is so appealing because it gives you the freedom to be anything you want to be, something I am deprived of since I grew up with strict oriental "values" and rules. (As they love to call it). It allows you to say things you would never have the nerve to say in a society ruled by convention. Because of it, I have been able to shed my tiresome inhibitions and to be the shameless flirt I never before dared to be. It has become my comfort zone - A place where I can subject anyone to my ruthless taunting without feeling even a single thread of guilt. The anonymity it offers is a sweet temptation for anyone who wants to seek solace away from those condescending eyes.

We all get our kinks from something. It can be taking off your clothes, smearing yourself with peanut butter whilst shaking your arse in your Nan's knickers. It can also be strapping yourself, wearing a tacky lacey red thong whilst desperately trying not to swallow a gag ball. I mean, whatever floats your boat right? As for me, I get a real kick out of …laughing at desperados around the internet and making them do things close to jumping off a bridge. Appalling isn't it? It is my game and i love every bit of it. It is my secret perversity.

Let me be clear about this, I didn't set out to be some cyber hussy (or did I?). As a matter of fact, I was quite reticent with my cyber Romeo at first. But whatever reticence I initially had was no match for his disarming candor and wicked wit. Before I knew it, I was spending late afternoons in front of the computer, exchanging innuendoes with him, looking like a tad crazy idiot, laughing by myself as I typed, with the monitor bearing the evidence that I shared that laughter with him.

Even as I was doing all this, I was aware that I was becoming a cyber cliché, a chat addict talking for hours with a complete stranger who could be a psycho or a big time loser. But insight does not always modify behavior and talking with him had become a sweet addiction. So I dealt with this habit, not by abandoning it but by rationalizing it. I reassured myself that this was all in the spirit of fun. Nothing serious or heavy would come out of it.

Feeling complacent, we agreed to swap pictures. I was eager to see him (praying he's not some fat and hairy fifty-year old), to finally put a face on a once stranger made out of zeros and ones. Surprisingly, he turned out to be really attractive. He wasn't terribly good-looking, but when I saw him, I just find him, for want of a more appropriate description…so cute. I guess, even a Neanderthal would look cute if you're infatuated with him. I never thought I'd be stupid enough to let this happen to me. I've done a lot of silly things in my life but this one tops it all. When I realized it had, I manage to convince myself that native intelligence had nothing to do with it, that it was meant to happen and that fate had everything to do with it. I refuse to accept what's going on so I did what any normal person would do-DRINK-eh-opt for a reality check and realized that it was the perfect time for me to come to my senses.

Now I am back to waking up each morning with a firm resolution not to think of him, that this is my game and I refuse to accept defeat. With this in mind, I still find myself glued to the computer by early evening, waiting for him to log-on. His sweet nonsense every time we talk is probably just meaningless banter to him, but it crushed my resolve. If only he would stop saying that he misses me whenever we don't talk. If only he would stop being so funny and sweet and sensitive. Against my better judgment, I find myself wishing he means every word he says and hoping I could take him seriously. But, deep inside, I know I couldn't and I shouldn't. All his terms of endearment are given in the context of a virtual world where one can kiss by popping some annoying icon just like those animated smileys.

I don't know what brought me into this state, wallowing in cyber angst, asking what distorted psyche could have led me to this predicament. On the one hand, my not-yet-fully-suppressed inferiority complex is leading me to think that it probably has something to do with my being almost twenty-five and having a lifetime record of lousy dates, two lesbian relationships, a boyfriend who used to slap me and a fiancé who ran off with some mountain woman. On the other hand, my hard-earned sense of self-worth is reassuring me that that probably has nothing to do with it. For, though I may have sounded a little pathetic, I know I am definitely not unattractive. I have been told that I have a certain charm and I am intelligent. Sure I aint drop dead gorgeous and is still suffering from the absence of hips but I know I'm way too far from being considered a freak.

So what is it? Is all this angst due to desperation or is it because of a compulsive but destined attraction? Hopeless romantic that I am, I still believe it is the latter. My heart aches and I'm still in the state of confusion, but I take solace in the conviction that like all my other delusions, this too shall pass. I'll get over him somehow. Like what I said, this is my game. I am in-charge and though things suddenly take a different turn, I will soon laugh it off. Just like that line from a severely cheesy song…"I started a joke which started the whole world laughing…but damn it I didn't see…that the joke was on me….least for now".

The question is: when is he logging on?