"I think it speaks well of my life that I don't spend the whole day on AOL, Erick Flanagan," Ruby says pointedly as she passes the butternut squash risotto across the table to Nita.

I suppose this is true, but it makes me wonder. Just how many hours can you spend on AOL before your life is poorly regarded? What's the cut-off point? Twenty minutes a day? A whole hour, downloaded mail included? And does this include all five IDs, or would each one be spoken badly of on its own?

Ruby is my much-older cousin, removed by a couple of light years of experience and smarts. She's a therapist and a lesbian who is joined at the hip with her partner Nita in a way that often makes people want to ask her the secret of true love. She's a great cook, bad at answering her e-mail, but good at giving me a hard time about my life whenever she gets a chance. Kind of like the big sister I never had. And maybe never wanted.

"I don't spend that much time on there," I mumble into my wine glass, and I wonder if anyone ever admits it when they do.

I spent six hours in a chat room called YoungManSeeksHotOlderWomen on Tuesday night, Ruby, I consider telling her, but don't. I met at least two women that I expect to get to know better through email, eventually meet, respect and then fuck. It speaks well of my life, I think, Ruby, that I stay out of trouble in sleazy bars late at night nowadays and instead sit in my boxers at my keyboard by candlelight and explore my strange sexuality through words with women so wet you think you can smell them through the screen. It's true, Ruby, that I often keep a window open into the chat room called ColoradoMen4Men, but I'm honest with all the women, and, ok, it's true that I eat a dinner of peanut-butter crackers or your delicious leftovers right there at my desk most nights, and, yes, it's true that I have five different IDs and that's a little schizoid, but at least I use one of them to be good and correspond with relatives like you, Ruby. And, yes, it's true that although I'm only 24 years old and pretty inexperienced with women, I'm meeting another woman more than ten years older than me later tonight at midnight at the Oxford Hotel, a woman who I only know as Isis, and Isis is going to be blindfolded when I enter her room and will never even see my face as we play out our scripted fantasy of the stranger in the night who gives her exactly the kind of kinky sex she's craving.

"Pass the squash," is all I actually say. I'm going to need plenty of energy tonight.

"Right, sweetie, you're never online." Ruby laughs. "I tried to call you a million times the other night and got nothing but a busy signal. I'd like to think you were on the phone to Boston with your mom, but I know better."

I gotta get a second phone line.

It's true that I may not call my own mother much, but I got her online to help keep her busy in her retirement. One day I met her on AOL, user ID FLANAGAN24 of course—the well-behaved one—to show her a "chat room." I even taught her how to make a private room to talk with her grandkids when she wants to. I gave her instructions and told her what to type. It took a while, then she arrived in the private room I'd made and typed "That's strange, Erick, all the rooms I see are blue." I told her how to adjust the color on her monitor but she didn't seem to understand what I was saying. Then halfway through the conversation I realized what she meant. Blue as in obscene, profane, indecent. In her old-fashioned way she was trying to say she was shocked by the sexual room names that I'd led her past on AOL.

Blue rooms. That's where I spend my time, the bluer the better. I can't help it—I get an intense high from connecting sexually through my words and thoughts. Girls wouldn't look at me twice when I was in high school; most guys wouldn't either, come to think of it. I was a lonely, weird, confused kid with only one friend. I didn't know how to reach out to anyone else, and I guess now I'm making up for lost time.

Most of the women I chat with live far away. Most of them, I never meet. They may not even be who and what they say they are. It doesn't matter to me, though I do try to take care not to run into people like Ruby, or God help me, my mother. There ought to be a neon sign when you log on that says "Everybody is here for different reasons, and that's cool." Some women I just like to talk to, some I try to avoid after awhile and some I connect with so hard and so fast that there's no question that my future is... rising. There's only one thing they all have in common. We all talk about sex within the first five minutes. Where else on earth can you do this?

The first woman I met face-to-face from AOL was named Cassady, Cassady from Chicago, and she was fascinated by my sexual tales from the first moment right up until that night I met her in Vail and tried to fulfill her fantasy—that I would fuck her exactly as though she were a man.

To purchase all five parts of this serial story, in a handsomely formatted PDF file, suitable for printing, click below.