POINT-COUNTERPOINT: ONLINE-OFFLINE

NOTE: This piece contains adult themes and language. If you are easily offended, you may wish to skip it.

TO MEAT OR NOT TO MEET
Denise Nook

I want to meet as many of the cool online guys at my loft, meeting offline, you know, as I can attract. I find the offline meetings to be very rewarding and fulfilling, though sometimes a teensy bit demanding in the kitchen area. I'll tell you my special secret if you promise to keep it to yourself.

My Brit friends Jamie and Evangeline recently sent me their recipe for Spotted Dick pudding. I responded by sending them my recipe for Spotted Dick stew. It is a wonderful dish, quite pleasant to the palate. Easy to whip up on short notice. When prepared with curry, white potatoes and scallions it is simply scrumptious. Sort of like a mulatto kielbasa mulligan, only daintier with a faint muskiness. A dish to die for! I realize my tastes are a bit racy but the pungency of native blood keeps me fit. Getting the base ingredients can be a bitch, with the shortage of homeless derelicts in our hood. That is why I like so much to meet guys online.

Geeks and tourist French are best, though I've had some luck with Goths and Germans. The Ravers, any nationality for that bunch, I worry about; you never know about getting stuck with impurities. You know, I don't want to look toward a future of razorback babies. These days, with all the anthrax scares, you have to watch what you eat, particularly when you find it on the Internet. But then the Ravers are relaxed and not particular about the mess in my loft. Fairly easy to distract them before you cut them off. I usually use a mirror and a flashlight to get their attention. Industrial riffs help, but then they bounce around too much.

Old men are fine; they move slow and make for a clean cut. Retirees are a lot easier to attract and prepare than young studs, but the flesh is often gnarly. I don't really care for calamari, too rubbery. I prefer the fresher consistency of parboiled gefilte fish. For this you like to get them young and innocent. I prefer seventeen. (Then again, I don t know how much experience you've had in this area, some find the seventeens to be a bit chewy and they are hungry again in five minutes. The old-timers, on the other hand can be quite tender with a lingering oaken aftertaste.)

Last kid I had for dinner was Billy. It took me about three days of chat sessions and z-mails, you know how that is, to get him to come over to my loft. For a while there I was beginning to lose heart and I thought he would never come. Some guys are just too full of themselves!

There is only so much dirty talk this girl can handle on a keyboard. I want to stroke your monkey, and that there ego-pumping shit gets boring after a few hours. Biggest problem I have is just that they are not always as big as they let on. Exaggerate, you know! I've been pretty fucking lucky and have not yet had to stoop to a double date.

As much as the online experience is clean, no strings attached, I have to admit that the offline meeting can be a bit messy. There is always the embarrassment of small talk and waiting (and knowing just when) to use the cleaver. Then you got to dispose of the leftovers.

© Gabriel Orgrease

Gabriel Orgrease often leaves good writing in strange places for inquisitive readers to find. Carved on stones in riverbeds, scratched on the backs of matchbook covers, plastered on placards of trams, fingered in the dust of old windows, he maintains pride in a compulsive obscurity and the pursuit of an independent vision of the written arts. In addition to his column in Gator Springs Gazette, GO's work has been published in Bonfire, FRiGG, Magazine Minima, Opium, In Posse Review, Stoney Lonesome, Stile and Insolent Rudder.

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