Dial-Up Dandy

I took a break from working on my dark novel, Requiem. I've got ideas for at least two new characters, and the meshing of my own experiences, mixed with fiction, is melding nicely. In a way, this is my 'stripper novel'. It's been much easier to write about the stripper lifestyle since leaving the industry, perhaps since I'm no longer battling the frustration and anxiety about being involved in it. 

I check my phone- someone has tweeted me back, both of us comparing how much writing procrastination/Twitter stalking we're guilty of. We agree that we need to put Twitter down.
 
It makes me think back on the earlier Internet days. When I was still living with my mom, using a mind-numbingly slow dial-up connection. Yahoo chat rooms were my thing back then- do they still exist? There was one or two that I would frequent on a daily basis, and there would be a lot of the same people always in them. I was way younger than everyone in them, and I always wondered about their lives, if they still managed to crank out a worthy existence while obviously glued to their computer seat (yes, this was before worldwide mobile phone usage, and apps). 
After a few weeks, these little chat rooms would start to feel comfortable and fun, and I would get enthusiastically greeted upon "entering". I miss those chat rooms. 
At the foolish and horny age of eighteen, I even had a one-night stand with a much older chat room user that I had been chatting with for several months & had developed a very flirtatious (as in naughty web-cam back & forths) relationship with. Looking back at how very, very, bad that situation could have turned out, I would bitch slap the fuck out of my 18-year old self. Lucky for me, he was the same funny, intelligent, ballroom dance instructor that I had been chatting too, and we had a great night together. (My 18-year old self wasn't completely driven by hormones- I did have a jack knife in my purse, which I kept right by the bed. 'Cuz even she understood to a degree that you never know.) 
Oh, and DID I catch shit when I got home!! (Someone forgot to let her best friend know that she had told her mom that she was spending the night, and that that friend should cover for said girl in case unsuspecting mother called the friend's house.) 
 Busted.