On Online Girlfriends

My online girlfriend is hotter than your online girlfriend

Here’s a shocker, “Web dating can be disappointing”. No, this isn’t the latest article penned by KABC’s Rick Romero, it’s a story that was published this morning by News.com.au, which I imagine is the Australian equivalent of (insert name of shitty American newswire). Lucky for us, we’re learning about this phenomenon now, and not a decade ago, when it might have actually been relevant. It begins, “Internet daters beware — witty emails don’t lead to love.” After that, well, isn’t the rest fairly predictable?

Rather than rant about the inanity of the doctors who are quoted extensively regarding the perils of forming emotional attachments to unknown people, I figured I’d tell you all about my own experiences with Internet dating. I don’t mean describing awkward situations involving girls I met on the Internet, I mean actual “online girlfriends,” of which I’ve had many. Why? Because like every hot-blooded male before me, I was once a horny teenager who dreamt of ramming his penis into any living female that would allow me entrance, and because I happened to come of age at a time when the Internet got to be mainstream, and because I have no shame when it comes to discussing my awkward teen years. Names have been changed to protect identities.

Shelly: My first girlfriend that I didn’t actually know in real life was a girl I talked to for five minutes at a Bat Mitzvah, wound up “dating” on-and-off for two years, and saw in person only once in the span of time during which we were “together”. She lived in a neighboring town, but we were twelve years old so it wasn’t like I could pick her up and take her out and fuck her in the back seat of my shitty 1985 Dodge Daytona. Instead, we used to talk on the phone for hours every night, and we even exchanged the L-word a few times. Our relationship became strained when I found out from a mutual friend of ours that she thought I was stalking her. How this was even possible for me to do without being old enough to have a means of transportation was beyond me. We broke up. Funny story: I bumped into her several years later at a University of Vermont freshman orientation. I thought our meeting again was hilarious, and wondered if she secretly thought I’d stalked her all through middle and high school until I found out which college she’d be attending. Funnier story: We wound up living in the same dorm freshman year, just a few doors away from each other. I wondered if she thought I went to the housing department and requested to live as near to her as possible.

Dana: Eh, I can use her real name, it was over ten years ago. My first (and only) true “Internet girlfriend” was a couple years older than I was (13), but she never knew my real age. She just thought I was wise beyond my years. She was from Utah, and used the word “hella” long before it became a part of the general lexicon. I used to write about our phone and Internet conversations extensively in my journal. I actually dry-heaved out of embarrassment when I was home last month and found an old printed-out email exchange of ours that included a picture of her. Speaking of which, we stopped talking after I saw a picture of her. She was, of course, immensely overweight.

Heather: A girl IM’d me one day saying she’d seen me walking through our school, and she mentioned that she liked my collection of “vintage” Smashing Pumpkins tour shirts. She was a freshman, and I was a sophomore. Without ever meeting, we had disgustingly long conversations over the Internet (no phone) and expressed all our innermost secrets to one another. She loved to try and get me to talk (er…type) dirty to her, which I thought was a huge ego boost. Anyway, we met in person one day and she gave me a handjob in the woods outside the high school. Our “relationship” was strained after that, and we gradually talked less and less through the years. I think she stopped going to our school at some point, but I distinctly remember going over to her house to smoke pot and watch Radiohead on SNL during the 2000 school year. That night she gave me a blowjob and didn’t swallow. We don’t talk anymore.

Bethany: I was hanging out at a female friend’s house one night during my early high school years, and she accidentally left herself signed into America Online just before we were to start watching a movie. With the lights in the room dimmed, and everybody focused on the loud, big-screen TV, I surreptitiously began messaging all her friends to see what kind of mischief I could make. I wound up talking to a girl named Bethany about the Simpsons, and we continued the conversation once I returned to my home. We talked a lot, and I think at some point before we’d ever met she admitted she felt attracted to me. I remember the first time we met was at my friend Evan’s house towards the end of the school year. It was awkward, but not as awkward as the next time we met, when we drunkenly made out in the foyer of her parent’s place. During the summer of my freshman year of college I gave her a call and fooled around with her in an attempt to convince myself I needed to break-up with my then-girlfriend. Is that cheating? Eh, whatever. The best part of this particular web dating experience was that it inevitably led to one of the greatest sexual mishaps of my life. Yes, I’m talking about the time (three years ago?) I pulled out in the middle of horribly messy drunken sex and left her laying in bed without saying goodbye. Before you call me an asshole…I had my reasons. Anyway, we haven’t spoken since.

Unlike many of my friends and peers, I’ve never used an Internet dating service, so my experiences are somewhat limited. I do know that my sister once had a handsome young Jewish man ask her if she would stand on his face, because he was aroused by the thought of all her weight coming down on his face. Another friend was forced to confront a girl he’d met online concerning her expressing love for him before they’d met. Man, there sure are a lot of unhinged people in the world. And according to this entry I guess I’m one of them.