Cybering the President

    I was in a nerdy forum, arguing that Teddy Roosevelt was America's answer to Wittgenstein, when I got a private message asking if I had ever tried cybersex; caught by surprise, I replied 'not successfully', and that launched me?after a quick 'let's go private'?into c-foreplay ('come close to the screen, don't make me wait, keep your clothes on, and watch me undress.. slowly.. first my shirt, exposing my..'). I didn't sign off, curious if the stranger could arouse me. He didn't. He e-mailed me a bawdy poem the next day, so I knew he had sought me out. I'd got 'fingered' from hostile strangers before while surfing ('I know who you are'; 'I own your picture'; 'My sole purpose is to drive you mad'), but I hadn't replied. 
     He gave good head and flawless grammar. Along with kissing my breasts and exploring my tongue with his and feeling my heart beat faster and gently moving his body into mine knowing we'd be making love for hours in all positions, he told me about himself: when he first happened upon hotchat, he'd been married so long he'd forgotten how to date. He realized that all he had to do was write what he wanted to do and make love to whomever would respond. Different women, sizes, ages, occupations, said things they never would have in person. Their excitement was enough to arouse him. And there was always someone new. He used a complex code so his identity was protected. One day he realized how meaningless and demeaning this was and dropped out. But he kept fantasizing about cybering strangers. He wanted an e-lover he could respect; so he tracked users, undetected. He knew who I was, what I liked, what I looked like, by reading my public writing. He conceived a furtive lust. He experienced butterflies in his belly when I I.M'.ed back. He gave me cybermassages ('the oil flows down your shoulders, pooling in the small of your back, your hair falls forward revealing the curve of your nape, earning a sigh from your throat') and exhalted our 'net chemistry' ('I can feel your body language, the very taste of your vibe'). I told him I had been saving my virtual virginity for the 'right' partner, but he made me feel unreasonably wanted. He argued assiduously ('Our connection is willed by the Eros of cyberheaven. When you're all words, you go deep, fast. You got me by the brains. I see what you look like mentally, with no constraints, trappings, shortcuts'), then relented ('I become animal around you') when I said lyricism didn't do it for me, and cut to the chase:
     Witman: 'Put your feet up on the desk now. Spread your legs apart.'
     Eu: 'OK. I'm lying back against my chair, legs open wide.'
     W: 'Run your hands up your thighs. Bring them to your lips. Spread your lips open for me.'
     E: 'I'm open.'
     W: 'Is it wet?'
I couldn't hold the position and type and ignore the fact that across from my genitals was the same old eye-soring Toshiba I use to make my living. I'd much rather sit in front of an open window on a balmy night where the vague chance of someone noticing me is enough to excite me. Mr. Wit's blind-leading-the-blind, snail-paced, explanatory back-and-forth was boring. Our erotic script aroused my curiosity, not my senses. I didn't get wet by typing, "I'm licking your balls." I know sex to be impulsive, prelingual, even ferocious, driven by visual and pheromonal cues and infinitesimal nerves and blood vessels throbbing beneath skin. For me sex is a black-out. I'm not averse to being pinned against a desk by someone I don't know. I did mind the lack of skin, hair, bodyheat, smell, bone, fluid. "Describe your balls," I typed in valiant effort. My fingers tapped keys: dots, 1's, and 0's, poured out in the void. "Hot and sticky," he typed, "nearly bursting." Everything read like a cliche. Even if I had been fitted with sensor gloves and goggles that could transmit my desires, the message would be untranslatable. Language is a civil compromise used as comfort for our daily panic. Because I like sex to stay beyond rational definition, I couldn't come. When I caught myself faking an orgasm over my laptop I admitted my cyberfrigidity. But I worried that, by assuming sex has to be physical, I remained narrow and retro. Was the world changing faster than I was? For the first time I had to ask myself: Am I e-repressed?
     In cybercockteased desperation, like any lover brought to the point of orgasm and denied, he picked up the pace and tried over and over from scratch. One day:
     WitMan: 'I sing the body electric. Wanna sing with me?'
     Eu: 'I'd do Whitman ("the bride unramples her white dress.."), but I find WitMan too smart-assed-cute, both cowardly and overconfident, caring and manipulative, soft and entertaining, to flow.'
     W: 'This slouchy workaholic likes to dominate. I like to create a party and to start trouble—that's how all great things are done. All fun is trouble. I like it best when the dancer becomes the dance.'
     Eu: 'Like Whitman, you're needy, overeager, undisciplined, enthusiastic, tempestuous in appetite, sisyphean in contradictions, quotidian and absurd, and yet dignified, vulnerable, good-intentioned.'
     W: 'You know me, as I too know you. If I saw you naked once, I'd remember every detail of your body for ever. My memory is photographic. I bet so is your flesh.'
     Eu: 'My flesh is my spring of eternal youth, pure liquid.'
     I'll skip the cliches. Another day:
     W: 'I'm being a bad CEO and need spanking. (I'm at work.) I can't wait to go into semi-retirement.'
     Eu: 'If you're a CEO, you must be married. Won't she spank you?'
     W: 'She can't; she's built for it herself. Her ex-lover snuffed himself. He 'committed sideways' as we said in school. Now I'm showing my age. Too old for you? I do think sometimes that God intended the whole world to be a golf course.'
     Eu: 'Where were you when JFK was shot? I was unborn. That's why I like older men.'
     W: 'I shook his hand before he died. I was so naive.'
     Eu: 'Are you gray or bold?'
     W: 'Gray thatch.'
     Eu: 'Below too?'
     W: 'Dropping my trousers. Say hi to Papi.'
     Eu: 'Hi Papi, what a big boy you are.'
W: 'When I do paperwork I fantasize you're hiding underneath the desk here, deepthroating Papi, I can't see you, while all you can see is Papi, we never get to meet, like two ships...'
     Eu: 'How deep?'
     W: 51/2", thick as my wrist, with a left swing halfway out, but you can manage it— you're an expert.
     Eu: 'You want me to swallow or go on forever, tantra-like?'
     W: 'The swallow is the true bird of paradise. No muss, no fuss.'
It was then that I became convinced I was cybersexing the President. Whatever he was doing in RL, in the cyberworld, this was Bill Clinton begging me to go down on him. And, at least online, I gave better head than Monica?because he was able to hold back the first nine or ten times with her but with me he shot his bolt in the first three minutes. Just as I did?now that I had his tired face and fallible voice and bulky body to go with the needy text. It was a new, wild freedom.