Cewebrity Obsession

This story is about a lonely and maladjusted guy who obsesses, totally and without just cause, over someone on the net. There are a few things that need to be said by way of introduction in order for this story to make sense. Parts of it will not make sense otherwise.

  1. It really is entirely fiction. I promise. I'm really not a wacko stalker type. This story was written purely for fun as an exercise in that part of the literary spirit that thrives on exploring the darker side of humanity. That said, there's really nothing that's especially creepy in it.
  2. "The Ave" is the local nickname for "University Way" which is the street that runs North/South next to the University of Washington, and on which everyone hangs out because there's a ton of cool shops and restaurants and so forth. I'm sure your college area has such a street near it as well.
  3. This story was originally written about and for a real web personality who writes for one of my favorite web sites. I sent her some fan mail, she replied, and the conversation ended up leading to this story.
  4. Her name, her employer's name, name of the web site, and certain other identifying details have been changed at her request. She was not comfortable with public access to this story otherwise, and I respect that. To that end, I don't actually know anyone named "Sue Folier", any web sites called "Dismay", nor any businesses with the domain name "Blivet.com". (Of course, with the net being the way it is, those last two facts could become true even though they're not as I write this) If you know someone by that name, this story is not about her, I swear. I actually wrote this story several months ago, but didn't post it then because it took me until now to get around to changing all the names and stuff.
This web personality's personal web site mentioned something about where she got a particular tattoo, which I remarked upon:

> > if i were the wacko stalker type i could spin some elaborate fantasies
> > over the fact that you got your tattoo not far from where i live and how
> > you're this totally hip web person whose stuff I really enjoy.  but i'll
> > leave that for someone else.

to which she replied:

> if only i received such elaborate ramblings! instead, i get "hey babe
> yuor hot wnat to meet me in #horny_losers ?"  *sigh*  (not that i'm looking
> for love, but i always enjoy a good extrapolation.)

So I decided not to leave it for someone else after all and to write up such an "extrapolation" for Sue's entertainment. This seems only fair, since Sue has given so much enjoyment to so many through her contributions to "Dismay". The story came out so well, though, that I thought it was worth putting up on my web site. I got Sue's permission to do so if I changed the names and stuff. That's cool, since you never know who will read your stuff when you put it on the web, and I hardly want to incite anyone to pester or stalk the real Sue.

Finally, this story is written as a series of journal entries, from the maladjusted guy's point of view. I set the story in Seattle, where I live, because that's easier than making someplace up. So here's the story already:

09/02/96

1:30 P.M. It's Monday afternoon on an Autumn day in Seattle, and here I am again walking the streets looking for love I probably won't find. And it's raining. What else would it be doing? It has to get us all mentally prepared for the next six months of 4:30 P.M. sunsets, gray skies, and soggy feet. Maybe we'll be lucky, though, and yet get some Indian Summer this month. Today I'm walking in the University district. Well, actually at the moment I'm sitting on a bus-bench, writing in my journal. I'll be walking some more soon, I promise. There are lots of cute college babes around here; maybe I'll meet one. Yeah, and maybe it'll stop raining.

2:30 P.M. I've been all the way down the Ave. and back up now and have I said a word to anyone? Of course not. That would take guts. On the walk down I stopped in the University Bookstore because there are always tons of babes in there. Book babes, mmmm. There was this one girl looking for a psych textbook. She was amazing. Well, actually I suppose most people wouls say she was sort of plain looking but I thought she was amazing. She had the librarian look, and she did it very well. Double mmmm. Large-lensed glasses with thin calico frames, mahogany hair twisted behind her head and held up with those chopstick things. What do women call those? I don't know. A tantalizingly smooth and creamy looking neck that would be totally hidden if her hair were down. And a high-necked cream colored blouse with those little round cloth covered buttons that go through little loops rather than through buttonholes, underneath a dark red pant-suit. She looked, well, deliciously repressed. I could just see that under her studious, focused, hard working exterior was a fun-loving hellion just waiting to get out and warm her nipples in the sun. Of course she'll have to wait till Summer to try that...

Of course, I ducked off to some other aisle after about five seconds. I didn't want her to catch me admiring her. She's probably a psych major or something and would have me totally figured out in another five seconds. She'd probably call security and have me thrown out or arrested or something. Oh well; can't win them all. Of course, it would be nice to win at least one, sometime.

The rest of the walk was less eventful. There were some nice looking goth-waif chicks, as always, hanging out on the corners with their "spare change?" loser boyfriends. You know, the ones with the powdered-white faces, jet black hair, and blood red lipstick. The girls; not the boyfriends. The boyfriends seem to be in a perpetual quest to advance the art of slobbiness. Of course, they were smoking. And they were probably ditching high school at the time too. Jesus, is everybody that dumb in high school? I don't remember being that dumb. Of course, I wasn't cool enough in high school to have done stuff like smoke and cut class. Even if I'd wanted to I probably wouldn't have been deemed worthy of cutting class to hang with the likes of people like that.

So now I'm back at the bus stop, waiting to catch "le metro", and wishing there were somewhere around here I could go for a nice hot chocolate. But this is Seattle. It's coffee around here, bucko, or get your sorry ass out of town. I guess I'll just go home and have some Top Ramen. I wonder if that's the same stuff as what they call "pot noodles" in England. Maybe that's more like Cup-O-Noodles. It pisses me off that they seem to have stopped making the vegetarian Cup-O-Noodles. I liked them. Oh well, that's what I get for self-selecting myself into a minority group.

7:02 P.M. I just can't face Alex Trebek right now so I'm writing. I'd go whine to my housemate Stan but he'd just make fun of me. He'd probably say something like "You should try looking on the net, man! You'll never find Ms. Right walking down the street. The net's crawling with babes!" Yeah, right. I see the pie-charts in USA Today. I know he's full of it. Of course, it is fun to respond with deadpanned lines like "You mean like AOL? I hear they have lots of chat rooms and stuff for swapping porno pics!" It's fun to watch the muscles on the side of his neck tense up at mention of the unholy AOL.

I don't know where I got it into my head that I was destined to meet my soulmate just walking down the street. Somewhere, though, I did. I know that it doesn't make a lot of sense but I can't help it. I just have this belief that someday, just like in the movies, it'll happen that way. I'll be walking along, probably muttering to myself, and Ms. Right and I will just bump into eachother or something. There will be an awkward moment while we re-combobulate ourselves, and then our eyes will happen to meet and we'll both say nothing for a moment and then, for once, I'll actually have the moxie to say something like "Um, I really don't ask random women on the street this, but would you like to go out sometime?". And she'll smile a little bit and then catch herself smiling and, a little embarassed, will turn away for a moment to compose herself and then she'll turn back to me and say "yes, that would be nice" and she will be smiling again but she won't stop. And so the next evening or maybe a couple of anxious days after that we'll go out for Italian food or something and we'll have a wonderfully magnetic time and then everything will be perfect forever. Like I said, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but I believe it anyway. I hope I'm right. Or maybe I'll believe it until I find myself still walking the streets alone at 40.

09/04/96

10:32 P.M. Again, this was not a day for Alex Trebek. But I wasn't writing at 7:00 because Stan was home. He finally got his PC hooked up to the net so he was showing off his web browser and stuff. He showed me some pretty cool web sites. There was this one that catalogs like the entire web and where you can search for just about any damn thing you want. Of course, it gives back a lot of pretty poor matches but it's still impressive. And there was this one 3-D VR sort of place that was like a virtual town where you could walk around and see icons for other people walking around too. That one is really cool. You could stop and talk to other people, even. Now I'm thinking that if I ever do get into the whole internet thing that maybe Stan and I will both be right. Maybe I'll meet Ms. Right on the street, but in cyberspace. That would be fine with me. I may have to give it a try sometime.

09/07/96

10:00 A.M. Rise and shine, bucko. Gotta write down that dream before you forget it. OK: I just woke up from this dream that had Stan's sister Valorie in it. Sadly, it wasn't *that* sort of dream. Val's hot, though, and I sure wouldn't kick her out of bed. No doubt, though, Stan's told her all about what a loser I am, and it's not like he'd let me date his sister anyway. So in this dream I was a reporter for that "Beyond 2000" show that's on the Discovery Channel. I had the Aussie accent and everything. I was doing this story on manufacturing processes and I was touring this industrial plant where other industrial places go to have machines made that they need to make stuff. It was very meta. So I was being guided around by some corporate mouthpiece and we came upon Val who was showing off some new machine she'd just designed for a client. Apparantly, the client needed to be able to bake bread. Big bread. Really big bread, in strange shapes. So Val had come up with this system where there was a big teflon coated mold in the desired bread shape, and you poured flour and water and baking soda or whatever into it (the baking soda was important, because I remember that it was specifically not a yeast bread process. No rising), and then these humongous electric mixer things came down and mixed up all the ingredients into a batter. Then the whole thing went into the oven and the batter cooked into bread. There's probably some deep significance to that dream, but I'll be damned if I know what it is. Maybe if I went back to the bookstore there would be a cute psych major in the textbook section who could tell me. Anyway.

I know I haven't written since Monday and now it's Saturday and I feel guilty for neglecting my journal. I should just blame my high school senior year English teacher for getting me into this habit to begin with. Of course I enjoy it journal writing a lot more now that I know nobody's going to read this stuff. If I wrote down half the things back then that I do now, I'm sure my parents would have heard about it straight away and I'd have been in therapy quicker than you can say 'Sybil'. I haven't written because the rain just got worse all week and so I didn't feel like going out much, and so there wasn't much to write. But, luck of the ages, today it's sunny and Saturday at the same time. I'm going to go walk aroung Pike's Place today. Maybe pick up a nice Amerasian girl. They have such nice skin, and usually their boobs aren't too big either. Speaking of large boobs, there was a--get this--Pamela Anderson movie on sin-a-max last night that was a total "Die Hard" rip off, except that it completely sucked. I didn't watch the whole thing, but it seemed to be purely an excuse to have Pamela Anderson in a movie and to show us her tits. That woman has truly scary breasts. I can only imagine that they have to be uncomfortable to carry around all day. They really are too large. They make her head look freakishly small by comparison. But who knows; maybe her head is freakishly small and that makes her chest look bigger. It's not like I was there to measure. Oh! Wow! I just remembered another dream from last night. Well, more of a vignette, really. Too short to have any plot. Somehow Pamela and I were in bed together. I had my head on her chest, resting on one breast and playing with the other. It had sort of a coarse texture to it unlike what I imagine real breasts feel like. (Well, unless I subconsciously remember some sort of breast-texture data from my nursing days in infancy then I'm just imagining.) We were chatting and I asked her "So I'll bet most guys ask, don't they?" "Ask what?" she asked. She was just as bad an actress in the dream as in the movie. There was this one scene where she and some kid were hiding under an office desk from the bad guys and she was trying to get the kid not to be scared. The kid did a much more believable job than she did. Anyway, I answered "Ask whether they're real." because of course I really do wonder whether or not they're real. The dream ended before she answered, though, which makes sense because I have no idea whether or not they're real. Like I said; it's a good thing I self-censored my journal in high school. Of course, now it's sort of a shame, too, because it would be interesting to go back and see what my state of mind was really like then, but all I have is an edited-for-television version of it tucked into my bookshelf.

Oh yeah; I mentioned to Stan my theory that maybe we're both right about how I'll meet ms. Right. So of course now that I say maybe I will try to meet women on-line, he's all acting like it'll never work. I swear he's just purposely being difficult sometimes. He said "Yeah, and I'll bet you if you do find Ms. Right on-line that you'll have to go thousands of miles to meet her." I hope he didn't jinx it or anything. What a pessimist.

1:15 P.M. I'm sitting at a little lunch place in Pike's Place now. I hardly need say it, but of course I have not picked up any cute Amerasian babes. To be honest, I don't suppose I was really expecting I would. Still, though, the trip hasn't been a complete loss. On the way here from the bus stop I was walking down Pike street and saw another way excellent looking babe. She was on the other side of the street, but still. She and her friends (a guy and a girl; the guy was probably her boyfriend or something. The good ones are always taken...) were just coming out of that tattoo place. She was walking funny but I didn't see a bandage on her leg or anything so maybe she'd just gotten a tattoo on her butt or something. I think, actually, that if she hadn't been with those other people I might have actually gone over and talked to her. For real even. Man, she was divine. Again, I don't think that you'd ever see her walking down the gangway with Iman or anything, but I thought she was pretty as a peach. I think I've always had a weird sense of beauty, though. I might not have asked her out, but I'd have at least asked her what she got inked into her flesh. I'll have to come down here some more; maybe I'll see her sometime when she's not with other people. Maybe not, though. Judging from past history I'd just wimp out if I ever did see her again and not say anything. Someday, though, I know I won't wimp out. I just hope that I don't get totally shot down when I do. Who knows how I'd take that. Well, actually, I do. I know I probably wouldn't take it very well at all.

10/20/96

2:37 P.M. I can't believe I almost lost my journal. Shit. I haven't seen it in over a month. I was sure it was gone but I just now found it wedged between my night stand and the wall. I must have put it there some night so it would be there in the morning in case I woke up with a memorable dream but knocked it off in the middle of the night. That's all I can think of because I don't have any pets and I don't have a girlfriend so it could only have been me. Unless someone broke into my room while I was sleeping or something but how likely is that? I guess I don't actually have anything to say at the moment except that I'm glad I so glad I found it so I wanted to write something down right now. I was so pissed about losing it that it's good to have it back. Now I just have to get back into the habit of writing in it. Right now I'm going to put it safely away in the top right drawer of my desk where nothing can happen to it unless the apartment burns down.

10/27/96

11:20 P.M. Of course, out of sight is out of mind. Who knows how long it would have been before I'd remembered to write something in my journal except that I was browsing the web and I saw something that reminded me of something that reminded me of my journal.

Anyway: I got "new in Dismay" e-mail today (Dismay is this cool web site that will send you e-mail when they have something new to read), so just now I went and read this depressing story about a guy remembering a friend of his who had died after leading a short but troubled life. Still, though, what I've seen in Dismay has always been interesting (if not always uplifting) so I thought I'd poke around in the home pages of Dismay's writers. Get this, it's just too much coincidence for me to take. One of their writers is this woman named Sue Folier. I saw her picture on her web site and I knew, right away, that I'd seen this woman somewhere before. I figured it was probably in one of Stan's "Wired" magazines or something. But then I read this one page she has about how she got a tattoo and my jaw just dropped when I read it. Get this, she got her tattoo in Seattle, down at that place on Pike street! She apparantly lives in the San Anselmo area now, by San Francisco, but wow! It totally fits. The girl I saw was a blonde, about the same build, with two friends. I looked up my old journal entries (well, not that old in terms of pages. I really need to write more) and the timing is right and everything. Sue got tattooed last month, which was when I saw that girl. Sue says she had two friends with her, a man and a woman, just like that girl. I can hardly believe that I actually saw Sue Folier. I read her resume sort of page, and man, she's like web-famous and stuff. I should have gone and talked to her, even with her friends there. At least now I know what she got tattooed on her leg--it's a dragon. An Asian sort of dragon. It's kind of hard to tell in the pictures on her web page, but that's what it looks like to me. For that matter, I'm not 100% sure it was her I saw because the pictures are sort of grainy and I didn't exactly see the girl coming out of the tattoo parlor close up or anything. But still. It had to be her. Wow. My brush with fame. So all that reminded me of my journal and it seemed like the perfect thing to write down. I wonder if Sue ever visits the virtual city place. Probably not. She probably doesn't have time for chat rooms.

10/29/96

4:45 P.M. I'm on the bus going home. It's hard to write on the bus because it's too shaky but I'm bored. Sorry my handwriting sucks. I should get an Apple Newton or something like that. Of course, it's not like I can afford a Newton. And of course, I'd still have to do handwriting then, too. Maybe just a nice normal laptop. Or maybe I can come up with an even more expensive solution. Shit. I hate being poor. Ok, so I'm not actually poor. I have a living-wage college student job, I live in a decent apartment, I have e-mail. How poor could I be? But it's not like I don't have to watch every dollar that comes in and out of my life. That gets really tiring sometimes. Oh well. Someday I will graduate and get a real job somewhere (maybe out of this rain-soaked cloud bastion, even), and start making some real money. Things could really improve. Maybe having more dough will make me feel more secure, which might make it easier to meet women. Or maybe not. I refuse to believe that those Visa "maybe money can buy happiness" ads are correct, but at the same time I do wish I had more of it. This smacks of logical inconsistency. Too bad we weren't all born Vulcan instead of human.

Halloween is nigh upon us, and again I don't know what to go as. I'm such a procrastinator. At least I have a Halloween party to go to this year. Of course, it's at our apartment, and Stan's throwing it, so it's not like I actually got invited or anything. More like I wouldn't be able to avoid it even if I wanted to. Maybe I'll dye my hair. I've always wanted to do that. I could get it bleached and then dyed smurf-blue and go as a popsicle. People probably wouldn't get it, though. I could dye it green and dress all in orange and go as a carrot. That sounds like a better costume except that I don't really want to have green hair. Well, I still have about two and a half days to decide. Stan's having the party Friday night, even though Halloween is Thursday. Probably a wise move, except that we'll spend most of Saturday cleaning the apartment.

11/02/96

1:30 P.M. Yup. It's Saturday, uh, afternoon and the place is a mess. I honestly don't want to get out of bed and face the disaster that is our living room. Oh well. I knew this would happen. It would be ok, except that I can't say that I really had a great time last night. This always happens to me at parties. Everybody there either came with someone or is friends with someone besides me. They all have a great time drinking beer and talking to each other, while I wander around looking for a conversation to join. God dammit, I'm so pathetic sometimes. Maybe I should just pack it in and go to Tibet. Be a Buddhist and take a vow of silence. Then people would think it was cool that I didn't talk to them, instead of thinking I was just a lame wallflower. Of course, that wouldn't change the fact that I'd still be a lame wallflower. Anyway, I should get up and shower. I told Stan that I'd go rent a carpet cleaner machine if he'd pick up the junk and do the dishes.

11/03/96

10:42 P.M. On a whim I sent e-mail to Sue Folier. I told her about how I saw her on Pike street back in September walking out of the tattoo place. She's so cool. I wonder if she'll write me back? She probably gets tons of mail from lonely guys like me who just want to hit on her because she has pictures on her web page. I think her pieces in Dismay are just great. At least she doesn't put provocative pictures up there. I have seen a home page or two where some woman complains about how men are pigs and all she ever gets is lame pick up lines in e-mail, but then the picture she has up there is her high school senior picture (those are always super made-up and glitzy, you know) or some picture of her and her friends on the beach or something. Well duh, babe! Of course you get e-mail like that. If you're gonna put it on display, it's gonna get looked at. Cope already. Anyway, I hope she does mail me back. It's so much easier to talk in e-mail than in real life. I guess it's a lot like this journal, actually. In both places, I can say what I want to say and take as long as I like to say it and nobody interrupts me while I'm saying it. So much more polite than in real life. Of course, e-mail has it beat over a journal because you can actually get responses to e-mail. Then again, it's a lot easier to carry a journal around than a computer. Life is full of trade offs.

11/05/96

12:20 P.M. I'm at school checking my e-mail, and no way! Sue Folier did mail me back. She has such a cool name, and she seems really nice, too. She doesn't seem to believe that I really saw her when she was in Seattle, though. But I did! I can't help it if what she put on her tattoo page is more or less what I saw. She probably thinks I just read that page and made it all up or something. But I didn't. Why would I make up something like that? It's not like I'd use it as a pick up line. "Hey, baby, I saw you get that tattoo..." Yeah, right. I mean, we live several hundred miles away, why would I make something like that up. Sigh.

11/12/96

7:00 P.M. I know I haven't written in a while. I don't know what to do. You know usually I write when I'm out babe-watching, but lately I haven't felt like it. Maybe something's wrong with me. Bob Dole lost the elections, so I should be happy, right? I should feel like going out. Maybe it's just the weather. It's too damn cold and all the women are all bundled up so you can hardly see what they're like. No, that's not it. To be honest, it's Sue (and if I can't be honest in my journal then I'm really messed up). I can't stop thinking about how unlikely it is that I'd happen to see her walk out of that tattoo place. And how unlikely it is that she would happen to be a web personality. And how unlikely it is that I'd happen to find her web site so that I could actually get in touch with her after all. And how amazingly unlikely it is that all three of those things would happen. It just seems like too much coincidence. I sent her mail saying how it really was true that I'd seen her and asked if she'd like to get together in a chat room sometime. But that was almost a week ago and I haven't heard back. She's probably totally convinced that I'm some freakazoid who just wants to know more about her so I can fantasize about her while whacking off or something. I don't know what to do about it. I should probably just let it go, but I don't want to let it go. Still, though, if she won't answer my e-mail, there isn't a lot I can do about it.

11/13/96

3:34 P.M. I was right what I said back on September 7. I didn't take it very well. My hands are shaking so bad that I might as well be on the bus for as illegible as this entry is, but I'm sitting in a perfectly stationary cafe on the Ave. I was walking up the Ave. to get some lunch between classes when I passed by that punk-stuff and sex-toy shop called "Off the Wall". This woman walked out of it and I damn near swallowed my tongue because at a glance she looked just like Sue. She wasn't, but the resemblance was pretty amazing. The same mid-neck length blonde hair, same skin tone, and a similar sort of face. She was wearing a leather jacket over a white t-shirt and jeans. Actually, I think now that her hair was bleached blonde, not natural.

Anyway, I just knew, right away, that it was a sign and that I had to do something about it right then before I could really think about it because if I stopped to think about it I'd never do anything. So I nerved myself up, walked up to her, and actually talked. I said "Hi, you don't know me but I'm a reasonably nice guy. Would you like to go get some coffee or something?" I know I don't drink coffee, but I could always order tea, right? She just looked at me for a second like I was from Mars or something, then brought one hand up, and as she did, formed her thumb and forefinger into a big 'L', which she placed upon my forehead. Then with near godlike disdain she said "Tch. Loser!" and shoved me away. I was just so stunned that I actually fell down on my ass on the sidewalk. What a bitch! It's not like I said "Hey foxy mama! Wanna come over to my place and get busy?" or anything like that. And then, to make matters worse, some grungy little shithead thrasher kid who couldn't have been more than 14 cruises along on his skateboard and laughs "what a dweeb" on his way by. Fuck me, man.

So now I'm in the cafe, trying like hell to calm down but it's hard because my butt hurts and I have way too much adrenaline in my bloodstream and my hands are shaking harder than I can ever remember them shaking, but I am glad for having my journal in my backpack today. I know that if I just keep writing long enough that I will calm down eventually, although I think I'm going to be pretty pissed about this for quite a while. Talk about getting shot down. She could at least have been civil about it. I mean, "No, thanks" would have been just fine. I'd have said, "Oh well. Ok." and been out of her life forever. She's no doubt laughing it up even now. She probably got a big kick out of pushing down the sissy boy. She'll be telling her friends about this for the rest of the week. And her friends will laugh about it too and say how cool she is for being so tough and macho and not one of them will stop for a nanosecond to think about how maybe I was on the level and maybe I was actually a nice guy or to think about how what she did makes me feel.

I just can't win. It was a sign, clear as day. How could it not be? If I hadn't done anything about it, I'd be writing instead about how lame I am for letting opportunities pass me by. But I did something about it and look what happened. Damn damn fuck and damn. Well, what's that thing they say about "If your're gonna go down, go down big?" well, I'd hate to imagine going down bigger. It could only have been worse if she'd perhaps pulled a gun out of her jacket and blown me away. Except maybe not even then because at least I'd be dead instead of wallowing in misery. Maybe it's karma. Maybe I was the world's biggest jerk womanizer asshole in a previous life and I'm paying for it now. Maybe I deserve it. Still, it had to be a sign. I just misread it somehow. Maybe if I'm lucky (yeah, right) I'll have a meaningful dream about it tonight. Sometimes that happens. I may not know much, but I do know to pay attention to my dreams. It's pretty obvious when a dream is trying to tell me something. Usually I end up waking up straight from the dream with it in my mind clear as if it had just happened. Oh, great. Now my pen is running out of ink. What else can go wrong? Bye for now.

5:57 P.M. I'm much calmer now and I have a new pen. When I left the cafe I stopped at Kinkos (and what the hell is with that ad campaign of theirs? "the new way to office?" Since when is "office" a verb?) and bought the nicest rolling-ball liquid ink pen I could find. It even fits just perfect into the hollow place between the binding on this journal and the paper. So now I'm home with a nice cup of cocoa (whoever invented the concept of "comfort food" should get some sort of a prize. Maybe the nobel prize for self-pity. Sheesh, am I in an acerbic mood or what?) sitting on my bed trying to convince myself that I'm not, in fact, a total dweeb loser. This may take some time. After the old pen crapped out on me I sat in the cafe for a while until I felt like going. Maybe a half hour or so. Then I walked home. But the good news, if a silver lining is to be ripped kicking and bleeding out of this whole sorry incident, is that I think I know what the sign meant. It didn't mean I was supposed to ask the ice bitch from hell out. It meant I was supposed to realize that if there's a Ms. Right on the net for me, it's gotta be Sue. Now I just have to figure out what to do about it. Maybe that will come to me in a dream...

11:47 P.M. I have just gotten out of bed to write one thing. I have decided to make this my Sue journal and not just a general journal. Not that it changes much anyway, because comparatively speaking, anyway, there really isn't anything going on in my life that's worth writing about otherwise. So from now on, it's no news but Sue news!

11/20/96

8:15 A.M. Ok, our first official Sue news. How exciting. Ha ha. I have decided to get an e-mail and web account with some local ISP. This way, I'll have a different e-mail address to write from, and so Sue won't know it's me. I just won't mention tattoos or Pike street or anything. Perhaps a fresh start is all I need. I will do this today. Hopefully, I'll soon be corresponding with mademoiselle Folier again! That is exciting.

11/22/96

4:00 P.M. The people at InterAccess (the ISP I chose) said my account would be all set up today for dial-ip so I can get e-mail and web service. I didn't have time this morning to set up Stan's computer so I could try it out, so I've had to wait all day until getting home to try it. It works, I'm happy to say, but getting it set up wasn't as easy as it ought to have been. Interaccess gave me a disk with some software on it and a sheet of instructions for configuring PPP on Win95. It wasn't too bad except for this one place where their instructions didn't tell me the right IP number for the DNS server so it was messed up because it was trying to use the one Stan had it set up for but apparantly InterAccess has some sort of packet filtering going on that prevents me from using another name server besides theirs. So I had to call them up and actually talk to a human being to figure out what was up. How low tech!

But anyway it works fine now and I sent a message off to Sue. I didn't mention Seattle or her tattoo at all. I'm a little worried now that she'll figure out my new address is in Seattle too because the other day Stan showed me how to use "whois" on the University computers to find out where a site is located. So she could figure out that InterAccess is in Seattle. But I'm not too worried because what's she going to do, filter out all e-mail from everyplace in the Seattle area just because of me? I don't think so. Anyway, I didn't mention Seattle or tattoos at all though because why take chances? I don't think I can afford another screw-up. I just made some smalltalk about how a friend of me told me about Dismay and how I really like her stuff. Hopefully I didn't sound like yet another lonely net guy, and hopefully she'll write back.

11/24/96

7:00 P.M. The net really is better than Alex Trebek, especially when Sue Folier sends you mail! Yay! She didn't say much, which isn't surprising, because I didn't say much in the first place. I wrote her back asking how she got to be such a well known web personality. Sometime I should just print out all this e-mail and keep it with this journal, but Stan doesn't have a printer and I can't access my new e-mail account from school. Oh well. For now I'll just keep summarizing it.

11/25/96

5:15 P.M. So far so good. Sue wrote back and pointed me to the url for her page where she has her resume type information. Of course I knew all that stuff already but she doesn't know that. So now I can officially be aware that she's in San Anselmo without it being suspicious. It's so easy to take on a new persona on the web. Ooh! I just had a frightening thought. What if Sue is made up? What if there really is no Sue Folier and she's just a concoction of the people from Dismay? Of course, that would mean that probably their other "writers" are too, and that would be a lot of work. Sue's probably real. Besides, I saw her on Pike street. At least, the same person who's picture is on that web page, anyway. So I know that person exists, anyway, even if maybe her name isn't Sue Folier. That would be a bummer, though, because "Folier" is such a cool name. Anyway, I've gotten sidetracked. My new persona is named John Pearl. "John" told her that he's a process engineer working at a Digital right now, and that he's thinking about taking a job his company has open that's down in the S.F. area. I figured that picking Digital as a company is pretty safe because Digital does have offices in Seattle, but it also has offices in a lot of other places too. So I asked her how she likes S.F. And whether it was hard to get used to when she moved there.

11/30/96

10:27 A.M. Hm. No mail from Sue in some time. She's probably just gone somewhere for Thanksgiving. I hope she didn't get suspicious after my last message. I had second thoughts after I sent it, but oh well it's not like with regular mail where you just go to the mailbox and take it back if you change your mind (well, unless the postperson has already collected it, of course).

12/02/96

4:46 P.M. Mail from Sue! I guess she was just gone for the holidays, although she didn't mention it. She said that she loves San Anselmo and the whole S.F. Bay area and that she took to it like a duck to water. I guess that doesn't surprise me. Her web pages certainly give the impression of someone who is open minded and accepting of others. I guess you pretty well have to be to live there and be happy because it's right by San Francisco. I sent her mail back saying that I was pretty sure I'd take the "job" because I didn't have a family here or anything like that that would make moving problematic. I thought that was a pretty smooth way to let her know that I'm available. And then I asked her what housing prices were like there. I already know that practically anywhere in California is expensive as hell but I needed something to keep the dialog open and that seemed as good as anything.

I'm a little afraid, though, that "John" is getting a little out of hand. I mean, now he's thinking about moving to California and here I am stuck at school in Seattle. What if she says she'd like to meet him when he gets there? What then? I can hardly say no to that, I mean really.

12/03/96

9:00 A.M. I am now officially late for class because I overslept but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because I have Decided. I have decided to let my alternate persona take the job in San Anselmo. Further, I have decided that I'm sick of Seattle. Sick of the gray and the wet and the cold and the rude bitches on the Ave. So when classes let out I'm packing all my shit and moving to the Bay area. I have enough cash to rent a U-Haul for a couple of days to drive down there. I can get one of those u-stor-it lockers to stash my stuff until I get a place. It'll be perfect. I am going to take a shower, and e-mail Sue to tell her that I'm taking the job and so I'll be off of e-mail for a while. I'll tell her that I'll drop her a line when I get settled in down there. Then I don't have to worry about maintaining the John Pearl persona anymore, because I have a plan for when I get down there. But I don't want to write it down just yet. I'll write it down as it goes along.

12/14/96

12:14 P.M. I am now officially done with my last final. Thank god for that. I am headed to the registrar's office to withdraw from the hallowed halls of the University of Washington. I'll probably have to stand in line for an hour for the priveledge, too.

12/15/96

11:15 P.M. I am dead tired. So tired I can barely write. But I have my U-Haul and everything I own is boxed up. Well, except for a couple of changes of clothes, my mattress (how the heck would you box a mattress?) and this journal. Tomorrow morning everything goes into the truck and I am out of here! I will probably not write till I get to the bay area unless something goes wrong.

12/18/96

12:00 noon. Well it's been a busy morning. I got into town last night, but too late to find a storage place. I did that this morning, and then turned in the truck (which ended up costing me about 300 bucks. Ouch!). I now have less cash than I thought because of the truck so I'm staying in one of those student hostel places. Fortunately, I still have my U.W. student card which is still current until the end of the year, anyway. Today I'm going to walk around and see some sights. Tomorrow I will put the next step of my plan into action.

12/19/96

1:43 P.M. If I'd been thinking, I would have taken care of this part of my plan while I was in Seattle. But it doesn't matter. I'm at one of those internet cafe's now. This one is associated with that famous ISP "the Well". A little poking around on the Sue's home page, a little bit of "whois" magic, and a phone call to information and I now know where Sue works. Or rather, I know where the business offices of Blivet.Com are--in downtown San Francisco. And since Blivet's web site claims to have been written by and still maintained by Sue herself, I'll bet I can find here there. Tomorrow morning is it, journal. Tomorrow I will try and meet her.

12/20/96

9:00 A.M. Today is the day and boy am I nervous. I could hardly sleep last night. I must have gone over in my head a million times what I'm going to say. Here's how it's going to go. I am going to dress up, but not too much up. Sue seems like a pretty casual person and I don't want to seem like a stuffed shirt type. But I'll wear some ironed dockers and a sweater. Even San Fransisco is cool in the winter time, I've learned. It's pretty, though. It is a nice city, with the Christmas decorations up and all. I will leave the hostel and catch a ride downtown. I will stop at a florist (I have already looked up in the phone book which is the closest florist to Blivet's offices). I will buy one perfect rose. Maybe a yellow rose. Red roses are so damn cliche'. I will walk into the office and ask for Ms. Sue Folier, please. She will be curious because she is not expecting a visitor. She will come to the front desk. I will say "Hello. I'm John Pearl. We've talked in e-mail. I wanted to thank you for your advice and opinions of San Fransisco and was wondering if I could treat you to lunch?" I will give her the rose.

After that, journal, I don't know what will happen. No matter what happens, though, this will be my last entry. I am leaving this journal hidden here at the hostel when I check out. If things work out with Sue, then I can't risk her ever finding this journal. If things don't work out, I don't think I will be back at all. So wish me luck, journal. And thanks for listening.