Three Years

After a long eclipse of desire for physical or emotional intimacy I wanted to meet people. For casual carnality or something better. This was several years ago and the limitations of instant messaging and short online profiles were quickly chafing (and still are).

I was ignorant of the web but Time-Warner said I had five megabytes of space to use as I wished. So I fired up Microsoft Front Page and wrote a few pages sharing my:

• Social ineptness
• Relationship history
• Quality and quantity of penis
• Inclinations and entertainments
• And stuff

Eventually I created a Blogger account. Despite the fame of the platform - then still owned by Pyra Labs - I thought it, as the computer scientists would put it - just sucked. So I moved over to Live Journal.

It was a boring little journal. But I did write about my online search for guys. I remember my first comment.

Without mentioning name or venue I wrote about a guy I thought a hypocrite. He claimed to be looking for all that good gooey, lovey-dovey stuff. But his approach to me was a bald and banal hit up for NSA action. He felt I’d exposed him to ridicule. Only a sorcerer could’ve discovered whom I’d written about.

Eventually I met Charles. Seeming good luck that proved to be doom wrapped in glitter.

Rapture took me away from the web for a few months. I might never have returned but a friend wrote me asking me to return and - I think his words were - “tell some stories.”

I started blogging about life with Charles and my mad passion for androgyny. As Charles’ extreme bipolar state and increasing drug addictions proceeded to warp me in mind and body writing became ever more important.

Frustrated by the limitations - the lack of control offered by my tools - I learned basic CSS (the stuff that controls most current web pages’ appearance) and simple HTML. And feeling a need to own and control my words I bought my first domain and installed Movable Type 2.61. Eventually I even made myself start writing in MS Word.

One blog led to five. What started as a few personal pages evolved into pansexualsodomite.com and Proairetic.com, together they have about seventeen hundred entries (they’ve often gone neglected). One on computer stuff and web technology I eventually zapped. It wasn’t worth reading. Now I own about fifty or sixty domains, not all of which have content (yet).

More crucially, over time I’ve slowly managed to approximate in words my sense of myself. This is like an asymptotic curve on a graph. You come ever closer to a boundary condition without ever touching it. I overwrite to the point of being purple, digress, can rarely talk about anything without an anecdote. Yeah, that is Richard.

Within the segment of the blogosphere of female tops and male bottoms this last year has seemed almost miraculous. It is hard to remember what it was like back when there seemed to be only Myles and Aspirant.

About three years ago I created this site as a means of talking to my then lover. That goal was never actually achieved. But I did talk to myself at length. Reading some of what I’ve written to myself is embarrassing at times. But I’ve learned from myself. So the enterprise is justified.

And I’ve met you. A tiny sliver out of the thousands who have visited. The few readers worth having.