YESTERDAY, EARLY EVENING, I had an hour to fill. Like many of us when faced with down-time, I turned to the internet. In about a minute I was IM’ing a total stranger. He called himself “Feral Bard”.

“What are you wearing?” He typed.

“Nothing,” I lied.

We worked up a speedy volley, each out doing the other for points on wit and originality. Had it been a game show we’d both have won a million dollars. In moments we were naked, so to speak, speaking candidly of desire. The thrust was so direct. I fell in love. I worried the priggish site would evict us for our stripped bare vulgarities. I hurriedly eyed a clock, forty five minutes remained.

We threw compliments around and flirted like it was our last day on earth. He wanted the camera turned on. I typed, “No sir.” He told me to send him a photograph, I refused. His begging was thrilling. Perversely it made me feel high to hold out on him. He told me he was hard. I believed him. “I could feel it too,” I typed. He sent me his phone number, implored I call.

He wrote, “to hear your voice would be the ultimate eroticism.”

I replied, “No sir.” I knew it would be the end of things. Why return to reality any sooner than necessary?

“Call me now,” he beseeched.

“No!” I wrote, “Fantasy so much better.”

I found his insistence and his sternness massively sexy. Yet I was exploding laughing as I typed salacious snippets. The beauty of the chasm the internet provides is the time to think, to debate, right there in real time and yet utterly in private, all at once. I could type one thing, think another, and divulge nothing.

“Don’t you want to hear me when I come?” He wrote, “Phone me now!”

Suddenly there were only five minutes before I’d have to log off. I felt I was already deep down the rabbit hole so why bother with bourgeois convention? I phoned. I asked him if he had a name. He spoke not one word. All I heard was breath. I tried to coax him, I spoke softly at him, but all I got was labored breathing, heavy fast puffs of oxygen. I half expected to hear a death rattle, and then the line was cut. I checked my watch. I was late by 2 minutes.

“Didja?” I typed as I put on my coat.

“Was better as fantasy,” he responded.
Coat on, computer closed, I was in an excellent hyper-jazzed up mood. I would have written back, but I didn’t have the time.

I had to go, I had a date.