Dear Hannah,

This began as a letter to you, written in transit. It seems to have evolved into something more, though I am not really sure what yet. You said last time we chatted that we had reinvented chat. I have been thinking about that, my experiences of chat, and our conversations over the last few weeks. It has been a rather lapidary process… and now as I take the questions out of the polishing drum, I think perhaps they have some shape. What I keep stumbling over is the quality and extent of reality in these various worlds. It was the earthquake the other day and the way it intruded with its sudden opportunity for a common external reference point. You thought if you looked at CNN you might be able to see news about what I had just said. "My heart went turbo: you are real," were your words. There was a way in which this confirmation that we do share a common mundane experience seemed to create more sense of intimacy. We have now acknowledged that there are ways in which we are concealing our identities, if only by limiting the nature of the truth we tell, so as to leave out critical details, or mislead through careful construction. Early on we agreed that we would not try to look too closely at these hints and half truths, that we would honor each others privacy. Now perhaps we are confronted with a question of which direction to go. There are things to be said for a variety of conclusions. I think somehow that Bader's description of the function of sexual fantasy sheds some light on all of this.

I would like to offer, for your consideration, a discussion of what I am thinking of as a Goldilocks quandary. We want the answer that is neither too hot nor too cold or too large nor too small, the one that fits "just right."

The 12 inch Boner: Not enough reality.
This is not our problem. However, it is crucial in chat relationships to realize that this is always a matter of sensibility and personal choice. Cardboard props may serve in some aspects of a chat relationship, especially if it is an especially transitory encounter and not in others, where a sense of certainty or verisimilitude will enhance the experience. But what gets enhanced? What aspect or quality of reality is important to you? The answer to this will certainly mean that, given the limited amount of information that can be exchanged in a chat between strangers, something else will be sacrificed. Perhaps the very thing that your partner finds stimulating will be what is not communicated…. in which case one does have too little.

There is another aspect to this: too much fiction. The preferred mode in chat, especially for the exploration of fantasies, is make-believe. Rather than saying that if you were here I would give you a kiss, the convention is to say that I am kissing you, to evoke that reality through words and the willing suspension of disbelief. I have noticed that we do not make much use of this mode. While I have "kissed" you good night and you put your "arms around" me the other day, we have been more apt to acknowledge the limits of our bi-locality: both here and there. Even in giving me a tour of your living room, you asked me to guess. There was a certain awkwardness in your showing me the Apocalypse, removed when we shared a web site, rather than the pure interiority of our imaginations. In thinking about it, it seems to me that we are more energized by an external reality than a co-created fictional narrative. Or perhaps there is a reason why we have avoided it. Maybe because that is the path down which carnality lies, and we are not sure if we want that … yet or at all.

What are you wearing? How much reality is enough?
Even you joked about the cliché the other evening. It points to the very nature of the reality that chatters crave. While the directions of the conversations can range from sharing the details of actual personal lives to the construction of complex scenarios in which each has a specific "role," there seems often to be this appeal to "reality." You asked me to guess the fabric on your sofa, and confirmed when I guessed correctly. It is these kinds of details that we share without thinking we are revealing "too much." And, while there clearly can be too much for some purposes, there is a kind of premium on as much as possible of the real thing. As long as we don't violate Bader's dictum to "ensure our safety." In some way safety is in the secrets of our worldly identities, now subject, rather bizarrely, to "theft."

A story told to me by a young man who called himself Willing and whom I met in a chat room illustrates the nature of these forces. He told me that because he knew the screen name of a friend of his mother's he was able to approach her anonymously in a chat room and proposition her. As he tells the story, he was 16 at the time of this event. Having seen his mother's saved chats with her friend, he knew her "true identity." They went on to engage in very intimate activities culminating in what was apparently an extensive description of her "real" orgasm. I have no idea how much to credit this story, though I will say that it was told convincingly. For the young man, it made this chat far and away the most sexually exciting and the most memorable. Though he said that he had not previously seen this woman as especially attractive, he now saw her as sexual and desirable. The less abstract and the more rooted in a common reality his correspondent was, the more exciting it was. It really makes little difference whether this tale is "true" or not. I told several people about it and they all responded the same way. "I am always afraid that will happen." Clearly had the woman known, she would have found the reality a bit too much. Had she known, safety would have vanished. For the young man, the thrill of skating on the edge of danger, made it spicier still.

"What are you wearing?" is an appeal to authenticity, to mundane reality. And I think this is true whether the answer is Oliver Saks or a camisole. We are very good at creating and sharing this kind of reality.

Which one is you? How much reality is too much?
Anything that risks your sense of safety is too much not just because we can no longer ensure our pleasure. Even though the combination of stalker hacker or hacker stalker is certainly rare enough as to constitute one of those exceptions that proves the rule, there is no reason to take foolish risks with strangers.

Ironically, perhaps, as long as someone feels safe, you can pretend, in chat, to do things that would be quite risky in real life. Not only that, these scenarios may, given the circumstances, be exactly what is desired. People are often surprised that there are both men and women who seek to be "raped." Taking Bader's ideas, however, it becomes clear how this operates. It's not, of course, rape at all. The woman is always free to anonymously vanish at any time. She need not acquiesce to anything, even if she stays… free to ignore directions of the narrative, though perhaps at times too polite to say so at first. So, safety ensured, the fantasy of coercion or force, while a rather blunt instrument, undoes the beliefs and feelings that interfere with someone's difficulty in engaging in sex. If she or he "has to" have sex... then pleasure becomes acceptable.

The real risks people worry about are not those that would result in actual physical danger, but of everyday social embarrassment. The mortification that we can imagine Willing's partner experiencing is the actual fear. Anytime we send an image over the internet that is a true visage, there is, for most of us, that nagging concern that either the person to whom we are sending it will either recognize us, or disseminate it in such a way that someone else will, and know that this was a part of a transaction that began in an adult chat room. We fear being the object of water cooler gossip, knowing that to protest the innocence of our participation would fall on deaf ears. Worse, it would likely sustain an image in the minds of our acquaintances of us: one hand on the mouse, the other in our pants. Whatever takes place, these are private acts in which the keys to our pleasure are revealed. Out of context, even the most high minded of chats may feel tawdry or simply ridiculous.

Much is made of the fact that so many women in chat rooms are built like models and have green eyes, not to mention the rather deformed sexual equipment sported by most males. Yet, how much reality do we want to ensure our pleasure. Perhaps the desired answer to "what are you wearing?" is handcuffs, despite the impossibility of typing with such bracelets on. I mean, we do what we can to hide the pimples in the physical world, well, we sure as heck can do it better here, right? So, maybe my hair is just dyed blonde.. or I am thinking of doing that.. and getting in shape and losing weight. How much reality should I be saddled with? Can't I just wander the world for one night as a hunk? Yes, it may indicate that I am insecure about the desirability of our true selves. And which indicates that it is a way of ensuring another kind of safety, in this case safety from ridicule and rejection. And it ensures our pleasure.. and maybe contributes to the pleasure of the other.

Each time we ship off a pixeled version of our true visage to someone we worry, will they know us? and will they think we are funny looking? I have been told many sad stories by women who were told that they were fat or ugly. For many the pleasure is ensured by the sense of being desirable and desired. We know that the desire is, in part, manufactured. The interlocutor is a stranger, twisted up in our minds to be the object of desire… and the desiring lover.

Finally there is the reality of familiarity. When I was in college, one of my classmates did a study on what she called "incest taboos" in her co-ed housing. There was something about living together in the mundane world that discouraged romance and encouraged more sibling-like and academic relationships. Perhaps it is this level of reality that has developed between us. We flirt, but I find myself feeling that to succumb to sexual interactions risks our friendship, our flirtations, perhaps.

Which Real World shall we reside in?
Yet I am not sure that I want to move things into the mundane world either. The other day, I said that you romanticized me and you responded, "I hope so." There is something wonderful about the rarified quality of our interactions that I fear to tamper with as well. Too much mundane and perhaps that magic will evaporate. I grew up as a great believer in magic. I remember being devastated when I had to accept that faeries and magic, as I had conceived of them from books, was not going to upset classical physics anytime soon. For a long time I kept firm to the notion that if I just believed hard enough. Fortunately, I am no lost boy. Yet, there is a part of me that still yearns to wander the misty meadows of my imagination in that way. Our conversations have been like that for me.

Surely, my pleasure and my safety have been ensured. And, to a great extent, the beliefs and feelings that interfere with the experience of pleasure have been removed. What I don't really know yet, is what shape of reality, with what details, are "just right" for us.

How all of this will strike you, I have no idea. Perhaps it is, in itself, a chunk of undesired reality. Certainly it reveals more about my mindset, my prejudices and the shape of my soul than of anything else. Perhaps you will read it and think, if not say, "What unattractive ideas!" As I say, this began as a letter and, as I was writing it, morphed into something else. Perhaps it is simply a meditation on the nature of the reality we share

So, what do you think?

Your firm friend,

Annie