Growing up Wired

Chapter 3: Hail, Oh Hail Thee Alphas

Later that week I turned over my computer monitor on my desk and plugged in the Ethernet cable. The computer fit perfectly into the left corner of the desktop and my roommate still hadn’t shown up yet. Some people were saying that he’d transferred schools but I suspected that the House was having trouble filling its rooms just like all the other fraternities. I hadn’t had a private Internet connection before, hadn’t been able to lock myself away. I lived in a dorm my freshman year and before that my step brother’s computer was so slow that it was worthless.

This Ethernet connection was fast—nitrous-oxide, watch out for the cops-fast. I opened ten windows for ten websites, simultaneously—each pathway tunneling for something new and different. My eyes strained, pulse quickening—power!

The other guys were good about sharing what they’d found. This tall junior with spiky hair had spent his free hours in high school brawling and bullying. For the past week, his temperament seemed mellowed with Prozac and he got his kicks sneaking into my room and bringing up dirty websites on my computer. He’d do it real quick, slipping onto my chair to type, planting ideas. Later he’d say, “Did you like that one, Victor Hastings?” I did. I liked them. Especially this site, Freepics, which was maintained by an army of invisible users. After I typed the name of this girl I wanted, it spit me back a list of links and I was one mouse-click from revealing skin, tan curves of motherhood, her willing eyes. A right-click gave me ownership of her curves and my heart beat with the thought of it when my phone chimed—

‘I was wondering,’ Erin texted, ‘Why did you tell me that people never think about what they’re doing when it comes to the new techy stuff from Best Buy?’

—mine forever to dissect, enlarge, rotate and crop out the unworthy dude’s face. Microsoft Windows suggested a storage file:  My Pictures. It had a slideshow option. I tried it. Naked, young flesh flashed in succession that I controlled or left to click-by at its own, tempting pace. Instead of one wife forever, a million beautiful wives for seconds, a growing, cyber-harem, I, its commander, I, its king and its recruiter.

‘What did I do wrong?’ she texted. ‘What are you up to all the time? Why are you acting weird? Can I come over?’

I was exploring something real. It was real, a reality of the unreal. The world slowly revealed to me hints of its elite, its perfection and I wanted more, chasing and revealing the perfection I knew from my inkling of impending manhood could someday be mine:  video clips and pictures, college girls and professional women, sophisticated and glamorous, slutty and shy, rookie and experienced. Their faces held the history of their lives—the beliefs they held of the naked bodies they had—blends of pride, shame and obliviousness in glinting-wet eyes—

‘Don’t block me out,’ she texted.

The Internet was so deep and seductive. The Internet was a safer bet. And as I sat in the squeaking chair, one hand on the mouse, the other searching, each droplet and pang of flashing images was just the relighting of something she’d gave.

‘When I cried because you wanted sex,’ she texted, ‘that wasn’t your fault.’

*    *    *    *

It was eight-thirty that same night. I headed downstairs, walked through the main floor hallway and took a right. I decided to hangout alone for a few minutes on the back porch before I joined the others.

A brown Oldsmobile pulled into the parking lot’s front row. Our House Mother, Ma Red, short for Redding, stepped out of her Oldsmobile, carefully placing her heeled shoes between the gravel. She wore a beige, double-breasted dinner coat and a knee-high beige skirt with a faint argyle print. A blue beret topped her wavy silver hair. “Excuse me, sir,” she said. “Could you please help me carry in some things to my room, I’ve just returned from visiting relatives and they keep insisting on giving me these silly gifts for my birthday.”