Memoirs of a Lit. Girl V

Earlier parts may be found here:

Introduction

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

One thing that surprised me when I landed in Lit Chat was how primitive it could be. In some ways it was redolent of being teleported from real life back into the primordial soup. At some times of the day the place was a kind of sexual Jurassic Park. As a newbie I mainly kept my head down - after all who was I to challenge the established order of things? Mainly I watched the in-room debate (here I use the term in its loosest sense) , although one of the things that quickly irritated me were some of the inane, in-room messages that masqueraded as invitations:

‘Nasty 18 year old anal subbie slut, looking for sum1 for cam2cam or MSN. No limits.’

Leaving aside that someone who recognises ‘no limits’ must be scary in anyone’s book and that sex chat is by necessity a sordid activity – after all you wouldn’t want your mother to know you patronise Lit, I’d always considered that even the even most unseemly activity could be leavened by an element of humour or style.

In the end the temptation became too much and it wasn’t long before I felt constrained to join in. Moderately shy with strangers it took me a while to pluck up courage, but I soon took to gently mocking some of the in-room offerings with a few tongue-in-cheek invites of my own:

‘87 years old Lesbian with MSN, Yahoo, wi-Fi, video-conferencing, satellite, cam2cam, stuffed mongoose and broken cuckoo clock looking for explicit chats about origami, or unprotected vacuum cleaner sex.’

To begin with all my comments induced were a deathly silence. It soon became clear nobody knew what to make of me

In part my asides were a way of saying: ‘look girls chat doesn’t have to be so primitive and utilitarian, it can also be fun. After all, as the rich have known for donkey’s years an element of style always makes the most sordid activity seem so much more acceptable. After a while however, my inducements began to prompt a few laughs and eventually encouraged a few of the younger ones to join in.

Although unplanned, my silly asides also acted as a filtering system and became a way of meeting like-minded people or at least those with a sense of humour and an IQ in excess of 50. It was however a high risk strategy, as unbeknown to me then, long-term it would create growing resentment amongst those who either liked the old way of doing things, or alternatively believed that Lit Chat was their own particular fiefdom.

Young chatters, frequently brow-beaten by the Bi-Room’s inner ascendency, quickly joined in to enjoy the opportunities for a subtle piss take. It was rather akin to taking on the establishment. Those more familiar with the way Lit was to become will perhaps find it hard to understand how stolid, dour and lumpen Chat used to be. However, for many over thirty years of age my humour simply created a sense of resentment. It was the classic young versus old tension. At the time I was unaware of what was happening, but from day one it was clear that there were those who felt I should only speak when spoken too. Especially the group I was to christen the ‘Lit Prefects.’

Back then, only two years out of university I still saw myself as one of the ‘youngsters.’ Perversely this occasionally also attracted the odd Grande Horizontale who would demurely enquire with a flutter of their fan whether I would like to RP their dominant daughter or some other family member. It wasn’t long before I learnt to avoid anyone who mentioned their family in their profile. Family and age issues were and remain an anathema to me and I was to find out that my criticism of them as time went by was also going to make me many enemies.

In a way such family/age PMs were even worse than cretinous enquiries such as ‘R u wet?’ (OK I capitalised and added the question mark). To which the answer was ‘I never got out without a gamp dahling,’ or the even more cretinous ‘asl’ to which the answer always was ‘87, hermaphrodite, 23 8N; 82 23W (that’s the latitude and longitude of Havana if you are wondering)

Perhaps even more puzzling (at least to me) were the highly specific/geographic requests.

‘Any ex-cheerleader moms with a diaper fetish in from PA?’

Ok I added the ‘?’ again, it’s an unconditioned reflex. Of course here the possibilities for rejoinders were limitless:

Any demure and desperate dasyphyllous dykes in from Dubrovnik today?

Anyone from Mozambique who wants to talk dirty?

Anyone from Kazakhstan who wants to discuss the use of Legendre polynomials in String Theory PM me!

(oddly enough it was possible to get hoist by my own petard and I recall one occasion in the then lounge getting embroiled with a guy in a protracted discussion on Quantum Mechanics.)

Or my favourite:

Any women in today from Brazil with an armadillo fetish?

Soon the PMs began to flood in. Not so much as precursors to people wanting to get jiggy, but simply to chat and giggle about the way we were taking on the bi-room establishment. Within a couple of weeks I had a small coterie of friends who surprisingly were mainly comprised of American undergrads majoring in English Literature or the Humanities.

There was also another dimension I’d overlooked. Perhaps in my naivety…. and chat wise I was very naïve when I came to lit, I had taken the ‘Chat’ aspect far too literally. Nevertheless it didn’t take me long to realise that ‘Chat’ was a euphemism for something quite different. Not that it constituted a problem for me, nor would I wish to be seen as judgemental but primarily I had come to Lit to chat not to type avec ma main dans ma petite culotte .

Unwittingly however my lack of ‘availability’ was inciting interest and resentment in equal measure. Sublimely oblivious to it all I focussed on the joys of anti-establishmentism unaware of what was happening in my wake. (to be continued)