Multiply 365 Day 125 - The big reveal

I have been dancing around a topic the last couple of days, not really sure how to address it in a blog form in such a manner befitting of a blog entry.  And also there is the whole idea of exposing myself on the page.  I think I would rather expose myself in front of a webcam, it would be far easier.  But alas it would bring the minimal amount of hits this page gets to a screeching halt, so it would be far better I keep my pants on as it were.

Let's begin at the beginning and see what happens.  As I mentioned (at least I think I did) I have been doing some online chatting recently.  About a month and a half ago I blew the dust off of my old Yahoo Messenger, just to see if it still worked.  Seeing as how it was a Yahoo product, that wasn't a given, but I managed to fire it up with few problems.  As some of you know, there are chat rooms that one can access with Yahoo, and I decided to make use of them, to see if they had changed all that much since the last time I was there.

Me being me, a single guy and all that jazz, I decided to check out the adult rooms.  They were mostly made up of bots and horny guys.  I know, shock of all shocks, and truth be told, I too can be a horny guy if the time calls for it.  There seem to be a few regulars that hang out in specific rooms, usually having an innocent (at least by adult room standards) conversation.  I would pop into these conversations from time to time, thus meaning that even while my writing content here has diminished of late, I have nonetheless been writing quite a bit, just conversing with a different crowd.  And I have met some interesting people that have had the chance to talk about things that I normally wouldn't get to talk about in my day to day life.  As I also mentioned previously, I was able to strike up a conversation the other day with someone who lives in Georgia and like me is a fan of the writings of Andrew Vachss. I also ran into someone who lives a little closer to me and we ended up talking about lots of things, like cool places to hang out in Pittsburgh  and how to build a better lasagna.  A cool feature that apps like this and Facebook do not let me do. 

On one such foray into the rooms I was busy trying to put all of the bots on ignore that I saw pop up on the screen.  This is usually a two fold process, you can either ignore them as they post messages in the chat screen, or you can run through the profiles off to the side and if their profile has a link to another website, it's a pretty good chance that it is a bot.  If one is diligent enough, you can get the room down to just the living, breathing peeps.  As I was checking out names, I ran into one I was unsure of.  The profile was pretty brief, just a name and a general location (neither of which is your business, line in the sand there kids) and there were two pics in the profile as well, both fully clothed but both also incredibly cute.  I just made a mental note of the profile, there was still nothing in it that convinced me one way or the other of whether this was a bot or not. 

Over the next couple of time in there I again saw the same profile, so finally I just figured I would send a message complimenting the photos and see what happened.  Worst case scenario I would get a spam message asking me to go visit www.gotouchyourself.com or something and I would move along to bigger and better things. 

Alas I did get a message back saying thanks for my comments and I said something along the lines of I am sure that it wasn't the first compliment she had gotten on them, or something like that and away we went.  I can't remember how long we talked on that occasion, nothing overly serious, we exchanged a couple of pics (again I was not naked otherwise I am sure the conversation would have ended right there) but I am not going to lie and say there was no sexual talk involved, no roleplaying or cybering or anything like that, but it was an adult room so more topics were mentioned than say at your normal Sunday family dinner.  I thought it went well, enough so that a couple of days later I went and sent a friend request to her, which she accepted.  So I am thinking, life here is pretty cool, I wasn't the only person that had a good time conversing.  Over the next week or so we ended up chatting a few more times, again no cyber sexing or anything like that, but she did show me some other photos of her, to which I had to ask if it were even possible for her to take a bad one.  She is that pretty, and me and all of my self esteem issues (which were the clues strewn about in the last blog for those who had a keen eye) was wondering what she was doing slumming with a guy like me.  That being said, it was only a few chats, it's not like there was anything all that serious said in any of our conversations, but I did feel stirrings of things that I have missed out on for the last couple of decades by basically shutting my life off to those of the female persuasion. 

Then I started being me, which usually means thinking too much.  I would see her online and question whether I should say hi, or if that would appear too clingy and I should wait and let her say something.  By the same token I did enjoy talking to her, but I realized that through all of our chats we really didn't know much of anything about each other.  Not that I was being all offish, anyone who reads this blog nows that I can be an open book, maybe too much so, after all I am writing this aren't I?  But I also get where a female in those rooms where we first met would be extremely cautious.  For all of the bots and what not that a guy can complain about, a female I am sure is subjected to far worse, including invitations to see every guy who is horny and has webcam capability.  And god knows if any of them are creepy internet stalker guy.  So I can understand someone not wanting to say too much.  One of the first stories we had to talk about in my early talk radio career was a girl (Alisha Kocakevich, hope I spelled that right) who was 13 and talking in those very same chat rooms.  One day while sitting down to dinner with her family, she gets up and goes out the front door.  Her family, unaware of what was taking place, maybe she went out into the front yard for something, didn't realize that she in fact walked out to the road and climbed into a car of a man she met in chat, who then drove her from Pennsylvania to Virginia and proceeded to keep her captive there.  I was the guy at work that was able to procure her online profile and photos (this was before facebook became all the rage) for the hosts to use as reference on their shows.  So I get the whole creepy internet stalker guy, and that guy isn't me but I am more than aware that he is out there somewhere.  (Note to future potential creepy internet stalker chicks, I'm free.) 

So here I was, a guy who had met someone who had piqued my curiosity and in the unenviable position of how to proceed without being perceived as that guy.  My plan was originally to just wait and see if she would message me on those times we were online at the same time.  But that didn't happen.  Finally I broke down and messaged her once and perhaps I caught her late (it was late) or maybe she just didn't want to talk to me because I think I got maybe two words out of her.  This is where a brain that thinks to much just starts to overanalyze everything.  And for the next few days I poured over everything we said to each other like it was a hard drive pulled from Osama's bunker, hoping for a clue or two that might shed some light on things, but nothing was forthcoming.  But I didn't want to start pestering her either, because like I said, I didn't want to be clingy guy either, I barely knew here. It wasn't like a long relationship that just drifts apart, for all I knew I was just one of a number of guys she talks to and possibly the most annoying guy of that bunch (esteem issues again, I know).  But as long as I was just going to sit here and play a waiting game for her to say something, it was just going to eat away at me.

Finally the other night after my blog entry I came to a decision.  I figured I would wait until she came online and then talk to her and just state that I would like to get to know her better, beyond a simple, "wow, you look incredible in that photo too" kind of way.  After all, I didn't know if she was single, married, engaged, with kids, without kids.  Pretty much nothing.  So I was going to just put it out there and if she responded in a positive way, great.  If not, oh well.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  But she never appeared online.  Nor did she the next night.  And I realized that I am incredibly bad at playing a waiting game, so I just dropped everything off in an offline message to her, saying just what I said here, listen I like talking to you but I don't know much about you and would like the opportunity to get to know you better.  And if she had any questions for me, I really do have nothing to hide in that regard, by all means ask away.  Maybe we find out that we have nothing in common, maybe we have lots in common, I don't know.  I'd like the opportunity to find out, but that is up to you.

Since I have sent that message I have heard nothing.  Mind you, I haven't seen her online either, maybe she has gotten it, maybe not.  How would I know?  Usually if I see her online, it is late at night and I haven't seen her then, so maybe she just has had other things going on.  I know not everyone spends as much time on their computer as I do, but I am a geek, it is what I do.  Still, now the ball is strictly in her court, and I am relieved that it is. 

Anyone expecting me to bad mouth her here, you picked the wrong blog.  Truth be told, one of the reasons I didn't want to write this entry was that I showed her my blog page after that fateful Easter dinner.  Because it was a night where I wasn't all that talkative and I didn't want her to think it was something she did, so rather than relive the tale of missing money and black helicopters, I just pointed her in this direction.  I have no idea of how she would feel about being the subject, or at least a partial subject to one of my diatribes on here.  And it isn't like she did anything wrong, we chatted a few times, but maybe she has dozens of online friends, maybe none.  I can't quantify how much she would or wouldn't look forward to talking to me.  More of that stuff I just don't know.  So it is what it is.  I just chose to take it off of my plate.  What happens next?  Well if it is bad you will probably read about it here, if it is good, maybe not so much.