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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