Death Before Facebook

rich in Satanic imagery.
    Sure enough, there was a whole topic on body piercing, with a tattoo thread running through it. By the time she had read it, she knew quite a number of interesting things, but not whether the two went together (though some posters said one was a subset of the other) and not why people did them.
    One thing she knew was that people sometimes got piercings in a sort of ritual with drums and hand-holdings, perhaps not unlike the one she’d just witnessed.
    Another thing she knew was that, if you got your nipples pierced, you probably didn’t have to worry that it would interfere with breast-feeding unless you got badly infected; as a side issue (known on the TOWN as “topic drift”), she knew that a nipple has about 120 milk ducts.
    She also knew two positions for labia piercings, each grosser than the other, and she knew that, if she should ever desire such a thing, it would be okay to bring friends to hold her down, and okay to videotape the procedure. She wondered if even Miss Manners was aware of these nuances.
    Finally, she knew six different ways the penis could be pierced, including the ever-popular Prince Albert (“parallel,” the poster had gravely explained, “through the urethra”).
    She had to admit that nose rings were pretty tame when there were questions like these to be explored.
    She had found the piercing topic in the Sex conference and what the hell, she thought, why not stay there?
    An entirely unembarrassed crowd of men and women who couldn’t see each other’s faces frolicked happily on their virtual bed, merrily tackling such questions as “The Best Phone Sex I Ever Had,” “What I’d Never Do Again,” “Flirting Online,” and “Who I’d Most Like to Do It With.”
    None of the people she’d met posted here except Layne, who seemed more earnest about seeing that the gay side was presented than carefree about dirty talk in cyberspace.
    She had to admit to a fascination with “Flirting Online.” Here people described (presumably in front of the people they were talking about) what happened when you knew only what a person wanted you to know about him or her. They liked each other’s posts, they bantered publicly, they engaged in E-mail, they wrote in a chatty, friendly way, and somewhere they crossed the line into flirting. Next thing you knew they were turning out porn and slavering for each other. So they did what civilized people do at the
fin de siecle
—they made a coffee date.
    And went “Yuck” on sight.
    Or else they didn’t—maybe they liked each other fine, maybe they even fell in love for a while.
    Or maybe they never met at all. Looking through, Skip could see what appeared to be a lot of stories about “relationships” that were never consummated by a meeting F2F.
    It seemed a metaphor for the whole phenomenon of virtual communities somehow—a lot of people pretending they knew each other. And liking it a lot better that way.
    In a way,
she thought with horror,
this is my life. I don’t really know Steve Steinman at all. In a way, all we’ve got is a phone relationship. Oh, sure, we see each other every few months, but I wonder if we really know each other—if you really can in a few days here, a few days there.
    I don’t know him at all,
she thought
. Maybe he never meant to move here. Maybe he likes long-distance things because it’s so much easier to get along with somebody you don’t have to be with. To pretend she’s who you want and never see who she is.
    She logged off and went to bed.
    After Pearce’s urging, she’d decided definitely to go to Geoff’s memorial service. Feeling insecure after last night’s doubts, she called Steve before she left, time difference be damned.
    She’d awakened him, but, happily, he wasn’t mad; seemed delighted, in fact. “Skip. I was going to call you today. Listen, we really have to talk. Something great’s happening to me. I haven’t told you because I wasn’t sure it was going to work. Then when you asked the other night… I don’t know. I wasn’t ready.”
    “What?” Her heart raced. He’d said it was great, but it wasn’t, it was bad news; she felt it.
    “What’s wrong? You don’t sound right.”
    “Nothing. I just don’t have much time, that’s all.”
    “This might take some time.”
    She felt as if she knew what the medieval witches meant about the devil’s icy member. She was feeling nailed to the wall by something cold and hard, something male and