Setting: 1991. Massachusetts.
Loation: The multi-line BBS Argus (envision it as IRC/IM/Chat Room of choice before the Internet was widely used and people used 2400 baud modems to connect).
You should probably start by reading about my first time in ‘hot chat’.
I migrated from Future Wave, a BBS with 12 lines, to Argus, a BBS with 128+ lines. At the time a BBS this large was almost inconceivable to me. Imagine the cost of running 120 phone lines to your house. Those that ran this BBS did exactly that. Oh – there were other BBS’s out there with a significant number of lines. But none that were free. I had paid a good twenty or so dollars to join Future Wave. Argus was much larger than any other multi-line BBS and didn’t charge a cent. Because it was free and anyone could be on it, us Future Wave users used to look down our noses at Argus users. People always value more the things they pay for.
Of course, people also like free stuff. I forget what eventually motivated me to move there from Future Wave, but move I did. I just never got over the feeling that there was a catch somewhere. Sometime after I moved from Massachusetts and stop visiting it, they did implement some sort of charging scheme.
But really, that’s not the story. This story is how I learned about sex. My first obstacle was my age. I was fifteen or so. I was not going to have the conversations I wanted so long as people thought I was a young teen. Sex wasn’t the only motivating factor either – I found the random exclamations being expounded by my fellow teens was an ordeal I could live without (“STevE TylEr is a GoD!”).
No – I was better than that! Or at least I thought I was.
I told people I was a 20-something. It wasn’t hard acting older than I was. Using capital letters (when appropriate), proper grammar, and the ability to speak on topics beyond Aerosmith and The Divynls was more than enough to set me apart from the rest of the adolescents. I was surprised at how easy it was to convince people I was something I’m not. Confidence and imagination were key. This would serve me well for a long time (long enough for me to grow into who I wanted to be).
The best and worst part is, I was at an age where I had no remorse about lying, about misrepresenting myself. Perversely, today the inverse is true – I am almost obsessive over self-honesty. I am almost honest to a fault about who and what I am. If you know how to ask the right questions, I will tell you anything. The trick, of course, is knowing what to ask. But honesty is a topic for another day.
In any case, I was not a bad kid. I was just amoral. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but I didn’t think about the consequences either. This would, of course, eventually lead to trouble.
Back on topic – Argus provided a fertile ground for my teenage hormones. The problem is, I was terribly interested in sex but knew next to nothing about it. And let me tell you, learning about sex from a text-only medium is, shall we say, interesting and led to some – then confusing, now amusing – difficulties. I couldn’t let people know I didn’t understand what was going on. I had to fake it and figure things out as I went along. Some of the more interesting conundrums I faced:
1) The clit…is where? Ok, I know it feels good when I describe teasing it. I know it is located somewhere between your thighs. I know it is near your pussy. But where exactly is it? Is it inside? Underneath? And it gets hard when stimulated? No kidding. Me too.
2) Wet. Wet = good. This one was especially tricky, because the first time a girl mentioned she was getting wet when I touched her there, I had no idea if this was a good thing. Of course, next was hot and wet. I learned that if I had them in this state, I was making great progress.
Quiz time, multiple choice.
What is the moral of this tory?
A) Sex Ed in the nineties was sorely lacking.
B) I didn’t date much in high school.
C) I didn’t date at all in high school.
D) Unless you count the older women I met on-line and convinced to meet me.
E) I was a peculiar teenager.
F) All of the above.
Still, I turned out alright. Didn’t I?
Hmm…methinks I’ll choose F. Besides, sex ed was only educational insofar as describing, technically speaking, anyhow, exactly how it is that a woman gets knocked up.
At least, that’s what I gleaned from it when I wasn’t so traumatised by the diagrams that I couldn’t attend.
*grins* It’s somewhat encouraging to know that even you had to start somewhere…
Nice..nice post.
I recall my first experience with phone sex; it happened not too long after accessing chatrooms in october of 1999.
I was mesmerized with this person , his handle was RamblerM – we had chatted a few time in the open forum of a chatroom entitled ‘SPORTS’ located on the MSNBC page…
Needless to say, lol, we didnt chat about sports….
Finally we moved to private chat and the topic turned to sex….
I informed him that I was a very good catholic girl, wanting to be very naughty. Even though I was enthralled with him, I was also afraid of him…
He had the most wonderful “sexy” voice so when he told me to do some things …OH GOD – he took me over the edge…
He wasnt into bdsm at that time, I didnt know what that was other than the lifestyle was very taboo. He was a voyeur. We havent chatted for years, but I still remember our phone sex meetings …just 2 and how I felt afterwards…
Ive since done phone sex, but nothing compares to what I had with him.