lucy, the evil, heartless bitch: part one

previously on LtEHB:
prologue
drinking game

I mentioned a little bit of the background on the online support group I used to be involved with here. I met S in the chatroom that people from the group used. I’ve written before about how obsessed I became with IRC. I actually didn’t ever talk to S much in that semester of serious IRC addiction, though. In fact, he didn’t talk much at all. When the second semester of 2001 started, I decided I would only go on IRC on the weekends, when I could sleep in after staying up too late. When I told people in the chatrooms I frequented that I wouldn’t be around so much S was obviously disappointed. I thought that was a little odd, given that I hadn’t specifically interacted with him much, but I was also kind of flattered that anybody would care.
For the first half of the semester, I stuck to my plan and cut down on my time online. It also helped that a number of my favourite people had stopped chatting. When the 9/11 attacks happened, though, I immediately logged on to check that the Americans I knew were okay and stayed online for as much of that day and the following few as possible. After that, it was easy to get sucked back into being on IRC a lot more. To avoid the sleep deprivation, I stuck to IRCing during the day when I had gaps between lectures.
There were two chatrooms I talked in: the main one (#main) and a smaller invitation-only one (#sub) started by F (for Fruitloop), the psychotic former friend referred to in the IRC post above. There were always people in #main, but everyone but me in #sub was American, so at some point they would all go to bed. Except for S.
S and I would be the only two left in #sub and I would feel kind of awkward. I’m pretty uncomfortable in one-on-one situations at any time, because I don’t like all the conversational pressure focussed on me. I would actually be wanting to leave #sub, but it seemed far too rude. Especially since half the time, S would have left #main, due to the arrival of someone he hated. In a chatroom, I could usually cope with not wanting to talk by just pretending I was busy in other windows, so I would try not to feel too guilty for being silent in #sub when S was only there. It felt incredibly awkward, though, to be chatting in #main when S could see that I was still paying attention to IRC, and just ignoring him in #sub. I tried to convince myself that if he wanted to talk, he could start a conversation, but I still felt guilty.
Finally, one day I decided to try to have a conversation with him. I kept asking lots of questions and eventually he opened up a bit and talked about his shyness and I found I could tell him about how I felt. He showed me a website he’d made that was actually pretty entertaining and I ended up enjoying the conversation. The next day when we were left alone again, I felt uncomfortable, because now there was the additional pressure of having talked once to make it more awkward to go back to the silence, so we talked again and again I enjoyed it. I still felt like I was making more of an effort to keep the conversation going, I think, but I was still enjoying it. I think partially, I was just enjoying the fact that I was able to keep a conversation going, though. I feel very manipulative now, thinking about this…
After a couple of days of chatting just after everyone else had left (we were too self-conscious to talk in front of everyone, maybe? Or maybe he didn’t want to join in the communal conversation more than he was used to? For some reason, we didn’t talk in front of everyone) we started private messaging while other people were still around. Actually, I’m not sure I remember the chronology here. At some point, I had exams, so I wasn’t going on IRC at all for a week or two. S was disappointed again, so I said he could email me if he wanted, and he did. I’m not sure if that was why we started private messaging, or if we were doing that before we started emailing.
From that point, we spent all our time online talking in our own private chatroom. I don’t really remember what we talked about. Often, it would be just pointing to cool websites or things we’d seen online. Teasing each other about differences between Commonwealthland and the US probably took up over 50% of our conversation, too. I’ll admit that there were plenty of times while we were talking that I was fairly bored with these repetitive parts of our conversation, but it was still a novel experience to feel comfortable talking and having someone interested specifically in talking to me, even if the actual conversation wasn’t anything very fascinating.
I was known for using an awful lot of smiley faces on IRC in those days. Practically everything I said would be softened with a “don’t yell/laugh at me for saying something you don’t like/agree with” smiley. S on the other hand, refused to use any smiley faces at all. He also claimed not to smile much IRL, so I would tease him about that and try to get him to smile.
Now I’m getting really uncomfortable writing about this, so you’ll probably notice more disclaimers and attempts to justify my behaviour…
So, with all the teasing about smiling and stuff, I was acting kind of flirty. Probably it was mainly because I could and that was really a novel experience. Actually, at the same time I was also sometimes chatting similarly with the friend I’ve been talking to on msn more recently, so if he had been as interested in me and as persistent as S, maybe I’d be in Canada right now.

Okay, I have to go into lab to feed my cells and I’m getting kind of stuck here, so I think this is the end of part 1. I’ll continue when I get home again.

next episode:
part two