TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

Things have been a little sandpaper and sour milk around here since the intern left after realizing that she wasn’t actually getting school credit to convert Sinead O’Connor’s entire discography from tape to MP3 and sharpen pencils with a paring knife while I’m trying to sleep because the white noise makes me drowsy. Then the au pair went back to one of those Eastern European countries where they speak Pidgen or Elfish and live in ice castles after I paid her in coupons for hugs and back rubs. This was right before the babysitter left to go change diapers for the elderly and wouldn’t even finish ironing my underwear first. Fuck, I haven’t eaten since the cook quit when I asked her to clean the skank juice out of our spaghetti pot. Worse yet, I realized that I’m too old to be on the Real World and that no one wants to adopt a 26-year-old wayward youth.

Thank god there’s one thing that always makes me feel less like I want to go Amish just so I can get my Rusmpringa on and have sex in trailers and join the union of meth lab line cooks: the Internet. The wide wide world is a series of tubes I would never ligate, not just because how else would I find a new nanny to write my status updates, but also because it has provided me with the perfect one-dimensional distraction. Yes, friends and lovers, I have an Internet girlfriend.

I can see you silently judging. Stop. It’s not even weird. It’s 2.009, people. It’s not like she answered the Missed Connection I posted about paying someone to hold the shower curtain away from my body every morning because when the plastic touches my skin I have to take a whole other shower which makes my Catholic guilt spike when I think about how many dolphins my water usage kills.

It’s a little less random than that, anyway. My pal “Clare” moved to San Francisco about six months ago because apparently Carrboro isn’t as “exciting” or “urban” or “cultured” or “gay” as “actual cities that people have actually heard of.” She lived in the Bay Area before moving to the Triangle a bunch of years ago but most of her old friends are too busy adopting dogs and talking about urban gardens to troll for strange, so “Clare” turned to Craig’s List’s platonic only listings. Again, don’t judge. It’s fine. Shit, you met your LTR in a bath house. The pals Clare found are very fun to hang out and laugh with and do whip-its with and one has a seven year old with a thing for Chambord whom I hope will be my drinking buddy in a few decades. The other is my Virtual Girlfriend.

Here’s what happened—”Clare” told her homegirl about this here blog, and, rightly assuming that I am an amazing lover, she friended me on Facebook. I’m still working my way through her 1500 photos, but we started writing shit on each others’ walls and calling each other Virtual Girlfriend or sometimes VG, which is kind of cute and kind of gross for it’s close proximity to that euphemism for vagine that everyone was saying after the Grey’s Anatomy/Oprah thing a few years ago.

In the midst of this Facebook romance, I started my summer project, Text Message From A Stranger, in which I posted my number and invited you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, to anonymously text me about what you had for lunch or if you laugh or cringe when you see a cat on a leash or what you think about cryogenic afterlife. There were, of course, a few creepers. I mean, I did put my phone number on the Internet. Was it really a good idea to give my number to someone who would Google “gay centaur fucking a man”? Probably not, but there have been a few Internet strangers I’ve developed healthy textual relations with. Most have dissipated now that summer is approaching it’s natural death and everyone’s sniffing erasers and kicking leaves, but I was courting more than one phone stranger this pool season and I eventually started to feel like I was cheating on people whose names I didn’t even know. Not having one primary texter to cheat on gave me vertigo. Gays sometimes talk about fluid bonding, which is basically having unsafe sex with a primary partner and wrapping it up for the others with whom they make the love. It was like I was bare backing in the airways. (Incidentally, I think girl/girl safe sex is silly. I don’t care if you can get gonorrhea of the knee—I’m not eating plastic for breakfast. I mean, why did we choose to be gay? Because we’re allergic to latex. Besides, I’m pretty sure that gayelles are immune from STDs because if touching fussies could make you sick, my junk would look like a baboon’s ass, but I keep getting tested and I keep staying clean. Just sayin’.)

There was one particular texter whom I felt seriously serious about, 512 stranger. She seemed to really get me, like when she told me that the world has become unmanageable when an honest woman can get fired even after sleeping with her boss. And when she said, I’ma woo you, bitch, I knew that we are unlimited texting soul mates. Cat in a bunny suit or bunny in a cat suit? Trundle bed or a mattress on the floor? Can you break up with someone for using AOL? How about for wearing Crocs? So many questions to ask 140 characters at a time.

And then one night I asked Small Fry to freestyle for my anonymous texting soul mate. Small Fry, who is truly an amazing rappist and not just because she is white and miniature, laid some “sick beats” and some “tight rhymes” even though 512 actually answered the phone despite texting instructions to send it to voice mail and we had a freak out moment upon realizing that she had actual ears and an actual larynx. It was revealed right after Small Fry concluded her hippity hop masterpiece that 512 stranger is not actually a complete stranger at all but the complete stranger who was also my virtual girlfriend. This was the beginning of an actual three-dimensional meeting.

Yes, I met a stranger from the Internet and may have possibly flown 3500 miles across this gray nation to make out with said stranger via mouth rather than mind (and to see “Clare,” natch)—but I’m interviewing a new life coach this afternoon so it’ll have to wait. Sorry, 512….