Not real sex but it was still bad
It's 1996, I'm unemployed, poor and single. However I do have a state-of-the-art 14.4Kbps modem, and I find my refuge hanging around on IRC ('net chat boards), which was new and exciting back then.

I'd been frequenting this particular general chat room for some weeks, made a few friends that I talked with regularly. One was this sweet-but-not-too-bright American woman, went by the name of Pixie (should've been a warning...). One Friday night I'd been working my way through a collection of beers and we began chatting. She asked for a private chat, which wasn't unusual. She'd often complain privately about her useless husband, I'd make sympathetic noises.

Anyway it turns out she's been drinking too, and after a while the conversation starts to take a rather more flirtatious tone. Pretty soon it's beyond flirty: things are starting to get a bit heated and I've taken myself in hand (and so, she tells me, has she).This is before webcams and even digicams are commonplace, but then she says, "Hey, I have this topless pic that my hubby scanned. Do you want me to send it?". Do I ever!

The seconds tick by as the bits wing their way across the Atlantic at a steady 0.7K/sec. Finally it's here. Double click...

Wait a minute, there seems to be some mistake. You appear to have sent me a still of Jabba The Hut, and not even one with Princess Leia in the bikini. I mean, you'd told me in the past that you were curvaceous, but Holy Mary Mother of God, there's understatement and then there's self-delusion. And you caught every branch when you fell from the ugly tree, didn't you? With your face.

I don't think junior has ever shrivelled so fast. Oddly my modem started having 'connection problems' at just that moment, and I was never able to reconnect to that particular chat room.

Stone me, I still shudder to think of the moment I first set eyes on that pic.

Shallow, moi? Oh, yes.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Fri 15 Jun 2007, 13:48, Reply)