Or, Pixellated lust (love? Maybe so…)
Note: This post was written in 2008 and I was in a different place mentally and emotionally. The recovery I’ve been through from 2022 on has changed my views on a lot of things, and I can critique myself effectively. I’ll do that in a modernized version of this post which I will link when it is complete. Please take my lack of recovery into account when you read this.
Celibacy
So there I was, lying on the floor of our place in Watchung. I wasn’t completely friendless at the onset of my breakup with Tiffany. There was someone online – someone who I had met on the MUD that Tiffany and I ran. Her name was Insloan. She was from Upper Michigan originally but lived in Chicago. Insloan was a research librarian and going for her doctorate of library science (or maybe a Masters – Tiffany would remember but she’s not on IM to check with). She worked at a large university in Chicago – you’d know the name if I said it.
Insloan was friendly with Tiffany – like a real friend, and had a lot of class. Meaning, that even after we broke up she wouldn’t do more than just talk to me. I knew Insloan was attracted to me. I was right – as we will see later. She didn’t feel right about a relationship given her friendship with Tiffany and that was that.
Insloan, a Description
To be fair, Insloan was not the most intellectual person I have ever corresponded with, but she was bright enough that she was interesting. She could make me smile and laugh quite readily and was always writing or presenting poetry to me. She was not untalented. Unfortunately, I destroyed all of the material I had from her lest Darlene find it. I actually had it in a zipfile which I renamed to something innocuous on my system and promptly forgot what I renamed it to. Idiot.
She was a kind and lovable person to me. Insloan never tried to hurt feelings. Even when she was sad she had a kind word for me.
That said, we spent every day talking. She’d seek me out when I got into work and when I was at home, staying up to a reasonable hour and then going to bed at the same time. She’d send me poems. I’d send her back poems. Then we started exchanging stories. My stories got more and more personal. I wrote fantasy tales about having her in the stacks at the research library she worked at, leading her into a wall of books, pushing her face down to a cart and having her grasp the edge as I lifted her skirt, ripping aside whatever remained in my way and taking her from behind. The mask was growing quite thin by then.
Something Other Than Doing Her
A lot of our conversations did not center on sex, though. One of my favorites was talking about her youth in Upper Michigan and her recounting about how it was to lie on the ground outside at night in the autumn and look up in the cool, clear sky at the stars. I remember saying that I’d like to do that with her, and she responded that she didn’t think it was possible. Later we proved that anything was possible.
Insloan also sent me a lot of music that I enjoy to this day. She turned me on to Aimee Mann and something called Lovage. I have posted a few Aimee Mann tunes in my music section – they are all from Insloan ultimately. Pretty, sad songs, very much like her.
She’d instruct me to light a candle and think of her at night while stroking. I sent her some flowers. She took a bath, broke the petals up into it, and masturbated, then wrote me a distinctly hot story about it. Insloan was a lot of fun that way. There was about nothing she wouldn’t do. She just wouldn’t do it with me without some kind of plausible deniability. 😉
She was a goth also – a lot of dark hair and slinky dresses. Not a huge fan of piercings but she kept it to a minimum anyway. She was distinctly yummy. Also had two different colored eyes, which was more than a little weird.
Some Negatives
Oh, and she had a live-in boyfriend, that probably was a problem at the time too, though she wasn’t very happy with him, that much was clear. Paid her about zero attention except to criticize her – usual 20ish guy stuff. She also had some intimacy issues like Tiffany, but she claimed they were more severe. From what I could see, she was tender enough for me, but online/phone is a bad way to tell this.
Some other guy named Joao on the MUD was also courting her, and she’d divide her time a bit. This was a severe no-no for me. Not big on sharing. So, basically, though she was immensely attractive, she was half out of the running before we even began.
Getting up to date with my personal/financial situation, I’d gotten a job with IBM running a data center with 7 employees and 300 servers in December 2000. I worked that job until I was let go at the end of November 2001. The whole data center moved to Research Triangle , NC from West Orange, NJ and I had no interest in moving with it. So I was out of work for about a month and a half.
I did an interview in Chicago because I was not uninterested in moving near Insloan, but that didn’t pan out. So we’re approaching New Year’s 2002 and I had no job but was collecting unemployment at least. Mostly out of work because I was being choosy, not because of lack of jobs. IBM offered me a slot in Armonk which I turned down because I didn’t want to move/travel to Armonk, whatever the money.
Divorce! Yay!
My divorce went final in June 2001 (yay). Around the same moment, my ex-wife was evicted from the house by the sheriff’s office upon foreclosure of the mortgage. I was happy that I had wrested the damn thing away from her. I used underhanded tactics to do it, but I play for keeps, and she was trying to fuck around with me the whole way. Made myself poor and ended up with $150/wk child support and paying for the kids’ medical insurance. The support had been increased up to $200/wk or so by the time it was over in the early 2010s. The support was still nothing compared to the $2300/mo she was originally looking for. I made sure she paid dearly for her treatment of me.
Vicki had moved in with a guy named Bob. I affectionately call him Minime after the character in Austin Powers 2. She was aiming for the same look – and got someone who was shorter, fatter and a lot less aggressive than I am. That said, initially she appeared happy with him and Mary does not figure into our tale again until 2004. That’s why I say affectionately; he got her off my ass at least.
It ended with Insloan shortly before New Year’s 2001/02. If I say why, it would spoil the next tale, but it wasn’t a final end, as around Labor Day 2003, Insloan shall return. Just take it as given that it was sad. Insloan saw me moving off, knew she could do something about it but couldn’t bring herself to at that time. I spoke to her a bit for a few more months, while she cavorted with Joao, then she disappeared for a long time. I was sad, but I had other things consuming my time.
Next: Darlene enters the building…
Initially, I intended to mingle Insloan and Darlene together. The two women were intimately connected at first. I found that it was a disservice to both of them to mingle. So now they will be separate.
