i want my orange crush

my first boyfriend was the biggest jerk.

i met him on a bbs. back in the day, back when the internet was still imprisoned in the military networks. i would cruise the dialups. the sysop at the 18 and over board knew me from another bbs and would let me log onto his system so i could chat with all the other folks out there. tommy edited porns all day long, rem was the shy guy who only talked to people through the keyboard, but somehow made that a productively social event, and jason181 was the boy i had a crush on.

he lived in santa monica and i had to ride the bus for two hours to go see him. let me tell you here and now, the rapid transit district in los angeles can not be considered rapid, nor transit. not owning a car at the time, i was subjected daily to the horrors of this "public transit system" that los angeles failed to boast. it was notoriously slow and the drivers were always irritated, regardless of time of day or number of passengers.

i would usually ride the bus to school, but every now and then, i'd find myself trekking through the sprawl of los angeles, tracking down these weird people i would meet via my keyboard and amber monitor. back in those days, it was like talking with someone from another planet. "wow - you live in the next *area code*?"

my first bbs crush was a dick. he grew up in a rich family and knew that his future was at john hopkins university, where he would study whatever practice of medicine brought him the most amount of money. on the one hand, he was funny, talented, and smart - but on the other hand, he was a dick. we would have sex in his vw bug in public and he would grin as horrified passerbys walked through the parking lots. to this day i am amazed that nobody called the police.

my second bbs crush was ivan. he preferred to be called ivo, but i never quite understood why. ivan/ivo had the entire collection of new order's albums on vinyl and it filled his closet. he printed out the lyrics to all the new order songs that he thought were significant to him and i think i still have that printout laying around in some binder somewhere. he had the brightest blue eyes i had ever seen and he was the most cynical goddamned bastard i had ever known. i mean... new order was his favorite band for chrissakes. he drove a used saab and always complained about how many quirks it had. i think he liked to complain about the quirks only so that he could point them out. unfortunately, i never had sex with ivan. it's probably a good thing when i think about it now, but i gotta tell you - when he gave me those new order lyrics, my knees grew weak.

the bbs crushes were the strangest ones, i think. i mean... it was weird back then to talk to someone so extensively over the phone, via the keyboard and then finally get to meet them. i know that it happens all the time today, what with the 'magic' of the 'internet' - but back then, only a certain, weird, kind of fucked up group of people used their computers to talk to other human beings. it was almost unheard of. i'm not saying that the experience is that much different today, i'm just saying that it was... a different group of people. i think they were all space aliens.

i think it would be really weird if one of those people were reading this right now... it would be such a strange mindfuck to have ivo or janis29, or snottynosedkid contact me right now. they were such a significant part of my teenage years, but i rarely ever faced them eye to eye.

i know... i'm a freak. but at least i use my powers for good.

<08.12.01>

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