I Got the Hots for Your Icon

by J MacDonald

She was a doll. A spunky, young punkette. Hot and slim, with a pink-undercut head of hair, and a "come on" look in her eye. She smiled a tight-lipped, sexy smile and you could see just enough of her bare shoulders to make it look pornographic. She was the sexiest little icon he'd ever seen. Her name was "Pandora".

He was a deep, black hole and his name was "Yello".

It all started when he joined the forum. It started as a game.

He hadn't noticed her right away. Then he saw her icon, and noticed the way she felt what she wrote. She was blatantly honest in her posts, a real hard ass, but caring and open-minded at the same time.

He made a few witty comments on stuff she'd posted, and managed to get her attention. He was deliberately androgynous in his words.

This newbie intrigued her. Yello had written something about a "Black Hole Son". She hadn't quite followed that, but she liked the sound of it, so she took the cue and sent a pm.

It was their first private message.

She asked a question. Looking for an answer.

"Hey Yello. What do you mean Black Hole Son? I didn't get that. Are you talking about the song or what?"

The reply didn't take long to arrive. "Hi Pan. Tricky question there. I'll have to give you the long answer on that."

"Nope."

"Oh funny, har-har, I'm in stitches. My humorous is killing me. You wouldn't like to expand on that I suppose?"

The next pm contained a search page of Google links to astronomy web sites.

She smiled, and started clicking on the links.

.

After their first encounter they ignored each other for the next few days. Then Yello flared up, answering one of her public posts in what looked like a vicious, personal attack.

She was astonished. "What is your problem asshole? I don't even know you. Go get a life you creep."

Pandora ‘s fingers flew across the keyboard, rattling out a furious reply. She was just about to punch down on the "Enter" key to send her scathing answer when she hesitated. Wait, she'd overreacted before. She read through the message carefully again. Oh yes. She could see it now. It was very clever. A double sense here, an ambiguous phrase there. Playing with her, baiting her, putting her to the test.

Funny fucker. She deleted all of the gratuitous abuse she'd just typed, and replaced it with a blunt, "Fuck you."

.

They ignored each other for another couple of days. Interacting with the rest of the forum junkies, but avoiding each other, with a skill that would have got them into the commandos at a moment's notice.

Then the pm arrived.

"Was that a question or an answer?"

She was waiting for this. "Good question."

Yello sent her a smile—":-)"

Then dropped the bomb.

"I got the hots for your icon."

She blushed as she read it despite herself. She was about to reply when a big doubt hit her. Yello had always seemed totally sexless. She still didn't know if this newbie was a guy or a girl. The way Yello wrote sounded a bit like a guy would write, but with sincere feelings and effeminate traits that most guys wouldn't come anywhere near understanding. She just didn't know. She took the time to search through all the posts she could find.

He'd never let it slip once. He was good. Or maybe it was just his style. She was taking it for granted that he was a guy again; she had to know. Her mind raced off on its own tangent, her imaginary flirt moving in a myriad of intricate combinations.

Very slowly and deliberately she typed.

"You a gal or a guy? Or do you want to keep me guessing about that too?"

"Good question. Does it really matter? Only for reproductive purposes I suppose. ;-)"

Christ, he's already on about sex. She was assuming he was a he again. "For the reproduction of which species? You a guy or a gal, or some other kinda animal?"

He really had her hooked. This playing hard-to-get stuff was lethal.

"What do you think?"

"Well, at the moment I'm guessing, guy, gal, animal, creep, wanker, in that order."

"I'll go with the guy."

.

They flirted for days, weeks. There were times when they didn't even notice the other people online. Some folks thought they'd left. They exchanged e-mail addresses but still chatted on the forum using pms. There was something so intimate and naughty about that. Like they were flirting behind other people's backs.

They often listened to music while exchanging messages, swapping musical tastes and author's names too. Both had something in common, and learnt something new.

It was a strange sort of sexy feeling. Sexy but not sexual. He turned her on with words. She turned him on making him wait for the punch to come back and hit him. Touching him up with expectation. She read over the things he'd written time and time again. If love could be made with words, this was how it would have been written.

They never said, "I love you" or used explicit sexual language. Just hints and two-way entendre. Thrusts and parries. Their imagination running wild.

It wasn't what they said, but the way they said it.

Each private, intimate message sparked off an electro-chemical reaction, transforming pheromones into electric vibes and sending them down the line, to blaze in all their naked glory on the screen. Electric blue gems typed into one end of an electronic link, immediately exploding into the eyes of the other. Etched into emotion by burning white light.

They were so near, so far, yet there was nothing remote or detached about it. It was like they'd been sitting opposite each other at the same table for months. They revelled in frustration, unable to perform the simplest of gestures, reach out and touch. So they touched with their words.

What had started as a game had become a wonderful obsession.

She'd dream of his words at night. The things he had said, and the things he would say. The words from the dark son of infinity. Poems from the void.

She could almost feel him thinking of her. Imagining what he might be thinking. Seeking inspiration for her questions. Anticipating his answers, which were always perfect.

They just clicked.

But it was getting serious. It was time to exchange images.

Pandora had been dreading this moment. It was always such a letdown. He'd be some 50-kg, 16-year-old school kid with freckles and thick glasses, or a muscle-bound lady-killer who wore more perfume than she did. It was always like that. Sometimes she hated the Internet. Especially when it got real.

They arranged the exchange. She held her breath as she sent her e-mail with the image file attached. It was a nice, but honest, photo of hers. She didn't want him to get any surprises if they decided to meet, thinking she looked like some retouched, Photoshop model.

His file arrived. God, he was gorgeous. Not gorgeous in a beefcake sort of way. His eyes were deep and dark. His profound, anguished stare saying, "There's something special in here." She was already in love with his online identity, the person he was inside. The passion that came out in what he wrote. She couldn't resist the way he felt things so deeply, while others would simply brush them aside.

She had sort of hoped he would be ugly. It would have given her one last chance to back out, but no. He was lovely and spellbinding, and his image was like a tombstone on any hopes she'd had of letting it go.

She couldn't wait for his reply.

She waited. And waited. And waited.

After a few days she sent him a pm. He replied, but it just wasn't the same. He was cold, toning it down from cyber-sexy to cyber-friendly. It only took him a few days to lose interest in her completely.

They'd never even met, but still he'd managed to break her heart.

She had hoped that he would be different. Hoped that he would see past her beauty. Past the scars left by the flames.

He had sounded like a really special guy, unique. But they were all the same. You could tell by the icon they used.

Copyright © J. MacDonald 2005