The Truth is Stranger Than Fiction - An Introduction

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction - An Introduction

My first foray into the Social Networking world was some years ago, in 2005 I believe, with Yahoo. They had a site called Yahoo 360° that was their own attempt at MySpace, which, at the time, was all the rage. I hadn't been bitten by the MySpace bug yet, but I was already an active member of Yahoo, so to get my feet wet, I set up a Yahoo 360° profile.

Blogging was an extremely attractive prospect to me. I love to write, I love to give myself that type of "outlet" to my problems, fears, joys, and experiences. I've kept diaries and journals off and on over the years and they've always been therapeutic when I took the time to keep them up. But this... a public diary? How do I approach such a thing? How much do I divulge? And what, praytel, do I write about that would actually entice people to read it?

Browsing thru existing blogs, one thing was an absolute MUST: I could not, would not, write about mundane things that no one but myself would care about. I needed an angle-- Something that I could write passionately about. Something that people, in general, have an interest in. Something that would grab the attention of the public. And something that had a "theme." I found that, to me personally, a blog that jumped around all over the place was difficult to read. A theme would keep me in check, and allow me to focus, rather than a stream of conscious that I was sure would bore to death anyone who came across my page.

The idea came to me fairly quickly. I was newly divorced and discovering the delights and annoyances of being single and dating in my 30's. It was perfect!
Love, sex, relationships, dating... The overall general interaction between men and women has always been a fascination and a sure-fire hit to our society, if not our entire species! I had my topic, I was ready to roll...

Yahoo has since shut down their 360° forum, and the experience I had there was both rewarding and therapeutic. So I am going to retell my adventures in a retro-active tale here, and see if I can gather the same, if not bigger, audience I did there. Maybe I can even get inspired enough to bring the whole thing up to date and wrap it all up into a happy ending? We shall see...

So, here we go! Hello, my name is Jennifer. I am 37 years old and I've been divorced just over 6 years now. Fasten your seat belts, boys and girls, it's gonna be one hell of a ride!

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Chapter 30: I admit, I like the attention

So "Shrek" was officially out of the picture, and it was obvious "Aladdin" wasn't going to be available for some time. I wasn't exactly the most available person, either, as I was driving to Pennsylvania the coming weekend, home for three days and then flying to Chicago the following weekend. But I admit it: I liked the attention that I was getting online. Why should I have to spend the next two weeks alone? I looked over some of the contacts I'd gotten recently and one caught my eye. "Timon" was blonde, cute, and very new to town. Why hadn't I responded to him when he first contacted me? Probably because I was already being torn in too many directions. Well, it had only been a little over a week - Maybe he was still interested?

So I wrote "Timon" a note and apologized for it taking so long to get back to him. He responded and I was pleased to find out that he was definitely still interested. Being so new to town, he really hadn't had the opportunity to meet many people yet. We went ahead and moved to Instant Messenger and started chatting. He was a really interesting guy. A fresh transplant from New York and worked in the emergency medical field. No, he wasn't a doctor, but he had a lot of interesting stories to share. Unlike some people who go on and on about their jobs, his stories were really captivating. It didn't take long to progress to the phone.

What was I doing? I knew exactly what I was doing, but I wasn't completely proud of myself for it. "Aladdin" wasn't exactly waiting in the wings for me and I didn't want to wait around for him, either. Up to this point I had, for the most part, concentrated on one person at a time, even if I was communicating with others simultaneously. I didn't want drama, I didn't want commitments, I just wanted to meet people and have fun. Should I tell "Timon" this up front? I decided that it was better to get a feel for the kind of person he is before I went there.

So it was the night before I was driving to Pennsylvania. I had decided to burn several audiobooks to CD for the drive back, as my mother was staying the night over that night and driving up with me the next day. It was rather boring and tedious work, and I called "Timon" to chat. He knew I was leaving town the next day and started implying that he'd like to see me before I left. Well, it was already late, and I still had a lot of CDs to burn. I couldn't go out, and wasn't it a little late to be getting together? No, he insisted, he was just as much of a night owl as I was.

I mentioned that I was going to run out of CDs and have to run up to the 24 hr. Wal-Mart and buy some more. "Timon" offered to give me some blank CDs he had that he wasn't going to use. Uh, wait a minute? The Wal-Mart was just up the road from me, and he lived 20 miles away - he wanted to drive all the way over here to avoid me having to run to Wal-Mart in the middle of the night? Having some company while I burned all these CDs was certainly an attractive prospect to me. And my mom WAS sleeping in the room down the hall. What the hell? I invited him over. He saved lives for a living, how dangerous could he be?

For a while, we just sat at my computer and talked, keeping our voices low so as not to wake up Mom. It sort of felt like we were in high school again, sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night. At one point, I noticed that he was leaning far over while he was talking, and I looked him square in the eyes and said, "You really want to kiss me right now, don't you?" He said he was thinking about it. So I kissed him. And he was sweet and gentle, and our kissing eventually found ourselves entangled on the floor. Instinct took over and I didn't even feel like trying to argue with my morals. I tip-toed down the hall to my bedroom to get a condom, and tip-toed back, closing and locking the door. There was a fun and dangerous quality about what we were doing, with my mother sleeping in the guest room, and it was fun. It WAS like high school, with the door locked, having to keep quiet, and trying to avoid the rug burns. The urgency and the fear of being caught was exciting, and exhilarating, and it made the sex a lot of fun.

Mom actually DID wake up (fortunately!) after we were finished and I was back to burning CDs. She was a little tickled over the fact that "Timon" was there, as we had been on the phone when she had gone to bed. It was some ridiculous hour when "Timon" finally went home. He knew that I'd be on the road all day, which was a Thursday, and would be on the road all day driving home that Monday. We'll see if he calls... Anyone care to take any bets?