The Web of Love:

A stic

By Brandon Ferguson, OP Contributor

During the most unbearable months of my last unbearable
job, my immediate supervisor suggested I try wasting time
on OKCupid.com, a free website for those looking for
love, friendship, and all that grey in between. “You can take
a test to find out how much of a slut you are,” she helpful-
ly offered. Intrigued, but mostly bored, I logged in and cre-
ated a profile.

After taking a few exams and uploading a few pictures,
I figured that this lame site had pretty much run its
course—iny brief flirtation with online relations had
crashed and burned without so much as a beep or peep of
sound.

A week passed and my murderous rage index was ris-
ing, quelled only by the open-eyed naps that consumed the
middle of every weekday afternoon, blankly staring at
whatever it was I was supposed to be doing. A box opened
in the lower right of the screen with a sprinkling of bells: a
new message from OKCupid in my hotmail inbox.
Curious, but mostly bored, I clicked it.

A woo. A woo from some random profile in the infi-
nite expanse of the internet. Woo-freaking-hoo.

As time went on I received more and more of these
woos from increasingly stranger strangers from around the
continent and even some from oceans away. It wasn’t until
the great god of gumption otherwise known as alcohol—
gripped me one night that I went online and tried to make
first contact. It worked, and worked well, and before I
knew it, I was chatting with some girl from just outside of
Seattle until well past 3 AM. For two straight weeks, we
would waste away the hours talking about everything from
music to Machiavelli, society to sex. It was
surprisingly enjoyable. It actually had sub-
stance and depth. It was...fun.

As much as I was enjoying myself, when-
ever I mentioned this endeavor to a friend, I
would preface it with an apologetic disclaimer.
“Now, I’m not saying I’m proud of this, but I
recently started chatting online with a girl and
she’s really amazing, even though she’s online,
but we get along so well, even if it’s not really
real, and you have to understand how bored I
am at work....” As my workday naps were
increasingly rescheduled to mid-morning due
to an increasingly shorter sleep schedule, I
began to feel that I was losing my grip on
reality in favor of a life lived online at every
un-obligated time of day. “Oh my god,” I
thought. “I’m becoming one of...¢hem.”

Months passed and I had finally fully
weaned myself off of this silicon chip addic-
tion, limiting my cyberspace visits to only a
few a month. I still checked in on my inbox
just to see what was transpiring in the world
wide web of woo, but avoided the trap of
online conversation whenever possible.

PinkPussycat86: “Haven't seen you on in a
while! ;-)”

Adorangeable: “Been busy.”

COckmast3r: “What’s new love? Lol”

Adorangeable: “I think I have pancreatic
cancer. I piss blood all the time. Lol”

Tasty_Toes_22: “OMFG! Wanna see some
new pics of my feet that rock?”

Adorangeable: “NAFC! Not a fucking

ky lesson in online love connections

chance!”

My time on the web was wearing thin.

Still though, this social experiment needed qualitative
evidence to go along with the endless hours of wasted
quantitative study. A connection needed to be made in the
real world, away from the blur of screens and whir of of
fans. The opportunity arose a couple months ago when the
first girl to ever woo—the one I had wasted 2 weeks of no
sleep on—wanted to come up from the Emerald City to
visit me in my hidden laboratory of Lotus Land.

To be fair (and honest), I was pretty excited to meet
“tehuberbabe”—her screen name. We had had great con-
versations in the past, and even if they had inexplicably
and rather quickly led to sexual innuendo and intense senti-
ments of love that were founded more in key strokes than
heart strings, there was still a strong likelihood that it could
be replicated live and in person.

The great mystery of long distance and online relation-
ships is usually boiled down and reduced to one stock
question: what will they look like? But with photo albums
and webcam’, it’s easier than ever to superficially judge
from afar. I had seen pictures from her profile. I had chat-
ted with her at great length. I knew what to look for at the
Greyhound station on Main Street when she arrived, but I
still wasn’t sure what I would find.

What I found was a shockingly pink-haired nerd girl
with square glasses, wrinkled baseball tee, Capri pants and
black socks with one-strap sandals ambling aimlessly in my
direction. Our eyes widened and shoulders rose when we
recognized each other. We embraced when we met. She

“This is a far cry
from my stool at
Cheers Normy!”

 

   
   

hair behind her pierced ear as she said “I
t you'd be bigger.”

“Me too,” I said.

We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting and touch-
ing; doing what we had spent hours doing before but with
the childish curiosity of an eight-year-old coming across a
dead raccoon, poking and prodding to see if it’s real.

After that it was drinks and dinner and then for dessert,
well, you know.

By the morning after, she was discussing citizenship,
moving north of the border, and how perfect it would be
if we could be forever as we now were. But there was an
uneasiness to it all—beyond her polyamorous boyfriend at
home, whom she had also met online, I was dismayed by
how much she spoke of things that weren’t in the present.

“When we talked about our dreams....” “How good
will it be when...” “I knew from the first moment we
‘met’ that we'd...” Like the people who spend an entire
evening reliving past evenings, then magically classify that
very nostalgic night as one to retell for the ages, we were
doing everything but living in the moment. This icon come
to life, these words come to pass, were still dwelling on the
profile and planning for the future.

We were on Granville Street in the piercing district,
enjoying the novelty of a Canadian poutine by Fritz, when
she relayed a story about a friend’s tongue stud gone
wrong.

“Tt became infected and overgrown,” she explained,
between mouthfuls of curd and gravy. “They had to use a
scalpel to cut the stud out of her tongue.”

At this her mouth opened and her lips
recoiled, exposing her look of fright and disgust
to me. But all I saw was the orange plaque caked
to her lower gum-line and the black specks of
decay that peppered her upper canines.

“Ew,” I said, turning back to a Styrofoam cup
that no longer interested me.

Images and experiences do have the ability to
transcend time—no doubt. But they are never
quite so serene as in the times in which they hap-
pen. That’s the beauty of building a relationship
the old fashioned way, I think; being there to
experience every new discovery of common traits,
shared ideas, found love. A profile is created; it
blends what’s happened so far with what’s hoped
for; the hope is to catch a future mate. Profiles
ultimately live and die in the stagnant waters of
tense. The past has happened and the future waits.
It’s hard to build anything living and breathing in
waters that don’t move.

She went on her way later that day and it’s
hard to say what I felt. Disappointment, possibly.
Humiliation, maybe. Confusion, definitely. But as
I freely moved by myself, taking the long way
home, I considered what had transpired over the
past 36 hours and came to two conclusions.

First, of the weekend: I thought it would have
been bigger than it was.

Second, of myself: I needed to brush my
teeth.

*All screen names have been changed to protect
the, er, integrity of online individuals

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