No, I don’t know his last name.  See That Night In Mexico 

I changed jobs.  Three weeks after I left, a former co-worker showed up at my door about 9:30 pm on a weeknight.  I asked him in.  He confessed he had the hots for me and I took him to bed.  Never saw him again.  And was fine with that.  I don’t remember anything about that night other than the look on his face when I answered the door and that he’s on my list.

After that, I sunk myself into my job, and didn’t come out again for 8 years.

This was my first internet romance.  It was the very early days, before the World Wide Web!  My sister got me a free desktop computer, an Amiga, and a 300 baud modem in 1993.  She taught me about UNIX commands, rmail, ntalk and USENET newsgroups.   Men outnumbered women 20:1 in those days.  I had to choose a gender neutral user ID because if you looked female, men pounced with the now famous “wanna fuck” as their opening salvo.  In early 1994, I started talking to a college student from Canada who was about 15 years my junior.  We met on a rec.sport usenet group and argued about the sport via email.  I invited him to Boston to see an exhibition.  

After my invitation, he started calling me and it got hotter and hotter.  I had my first orgasm lying on my bed with him talking to me on the phone.  So I dubbed him the “O man.”  He flew in and I met him at Logan.  He was exactly who he said he was!  We held hands on the bus and the subway.  We had not exchanged photos or talked about our looks.  I had always been with tall men and was a surprised how short and small he was, but it didn’t matter.  He was very good in bed, though I don’t remember anything about it now.  We had a lovely weekend together.  I remember kissing him good-bye at the gate (this was when you could be with someone right up to the moment before they boarded). I walked up the concourse… and was hit by this premonition that I would never see him again.  I raced back down the wide hallway and caught him just as he was handing his ticket to the agent.  He stepped out of line, hugged me, and kept kissing me until the agent tapped him on the shoulder.  He smiled and headed off down the gangway.  

When he asked me why I enjoyed his visit, I wrote a mushy 200-line poem about how wonderful he made me feel.  Sadly, it was lost in a computer crash.  He was a very nice guy, but I realized relatively quickly that we had no romantic future.  I hoped to stay friends and we kept emailing.  It was only then that I discovered he was a major depressive and suicidal.  I learned a lot about his illness and tried to help but he pushed me away.  He stopped writing and I let it slide.  I emailed him about once a year and kept up with him through grad school in the U.S. but can’t find him now.  Probably just as well. 

It was an exciting time on the net.  I was talking to three other guys that summer.  

• Another sports fan, this one from New Jersey, that I never met.  
• A local guy – we had a great time at a Red Sox game but didn’t click.  
• And the third I married and lived happily ever after.  *cough*