Page 6 of Nearly Roadkill
TOOBE ENTRY
You can give yourself any name you want online. Then you can set up “rooms”: little virtual places where people chat about whatever. Or you can go into some room called Love of Christ with the screen name of SatanDear, and then you might have a little trouble. That’s why it’s fun to come back five minutes later as ChristOnACrutch or something….
Anyway, one time Scratch chose a name that had “bere” in it cuz it’s Irish, but people took it as a misspelled “bear.” So in the pagan room they thought it meant that Scratch’s totem was a bear. In the Love My Beastie room, they thought that Scratch was being a teddy bear. In the gay room, the men thought it meant ze was a gay, hairy guy.
Winc sez I have no blinders on, like they left them off at the baby factory. Scratch sez I have no idea what’s taboo or not, and I’m mostly just curious, curious, curious. I don’t know what Scratch looks like in the real world, I only know hir online. I used to care what sex ze is, but now I talk to hir without thinking about that.
Scratch can get into these loops where it’s hard to get hir out. Ze starts spiraling down some helix that I can’t follow all the time. But one loop was pretty cool:
To:Toobe
From:Scratch
Subj:Online
I just got off the phone with my brother and he doesn’t get why people spend so much money to talk to strangers or have more email than they can handle. Stumped me for a minute, but then I got a theory. Ready for another one, ol’ pal?
It used to be you could talk to people on the street. You could chat about the weather or the news and then you’d go your separate ways. But you might have to worry that they’re psycho or they’re gonna ask you for something, or that they’ll think *you’re* weird. So we’ve shut ourselves down. We size somebody up in a second and we cross the street, either literally or figuratively. We judge people by how they look, of course, but it’s a complex assessment—in a flash!—based on so many little things that it takes up too large a portion of your brain.
The thing is, people still want to connect. You know when people do good deeds spontaneously, like keeping a whale alive when it’s washed ashore or helping somebody out during a fire or something? They all feel so fucking good, and they can’t quite explain it.
So in cyberspace, they’re talking to people again! They don’t have to worry that somebody’s gonna pull a gun if they say the wrong thing. And even if someone *is* acting like a shithead, nobody has to “see” each other again. And for women! Whoa! Suddenly they can tell assholes to fuck off without getting killed, or be really sexy in a way they would never be normally and just enjoy it in safety.
Which leads me to another theory, which is why so many men pose as women online. It’s like cyber-crossdressing. They give up the male role for a while, for the sheer relief of giving it up. Or pretend they’re lesbians. What cracks me up is that they’reprobably doing it with other guys pretending to be women too! I got off the track. But do you know what I mean?
—S.
Before I met Scratch online, I wouldn’t have been thinking about this kind of stuff. But now, yeah, I know what ze means.
Here’s more about the wordhir: I found out in English class that the English language used to have gender assigned to nouns, just like German and most other romance languages have. We still have some of that leftover, like ships are “she,” and Mother Nature is “she,” and of course, everything else is “he.” And in Chaucer, there’s the wordhir. That’s how they used to say the possessive when they didn’t know the gender of the noun, or it was a neutral noun. Way back then! So it would be “The person sat down at hir computer and began to type.” (It was pronounced “here” sort of, with an English accent so who really knows. Ancient English is as dead as ancient Greek.) That’s why S&W use a word that they didn’t even make up!
Scratch and Winc don’t really know this yet, but they keep running into each other online, no matter who they’re being at the time. They’ll be in a room called Fooling Around and maybe Scratch has chosen for hir persona a big strapping hunk of a sexist pig, and sure enough Winc will have chosen tiny damsel in distress, and they’ll play it out, and then one of them will recognize the other’s “style” or something and they’ll crack up. Then one of them will say, “I know you’re a woman now,” and the other one will ask “How do you know?” and off they go again.
I’m a chronicler, I guess. And I’m a guy. I call myself “Toobe” (pronounced tube) cuz it sounds cool, and it’s a lot better than my real name.
They really challenge people about this, which I never thought of before. So here’s an example of Scratch messing with some poor dude who thinks ze’s a girl.
Forwarded Chat Log:
Scratch--->TOOBE
AWESOME:You a guy or a girl?
Scratch:Does it matter?
AWESOME:I’m pretty loose about most things, but I don’t fuck dudes.
Scratch:Ah, that’s a shame, hon. You’d probably enjoy it if you loosened up. That’s OK, I’m not anything tonight.
AWESOME:I take it you enjoy watching guys together. No, I don’t think I would enjoy it, and yes, I am pretty loose.
Scratch:I enjoy lots of things, like guys who can be receptive, as it were. :)
That little :) symbol is a smile (turn it on its side and you’ll see). I don’t use them, way too cute for me. Scratch doesn’t usually, either, but I guess ze was “in character.”
AWESOME:I can be very receptive to certain things. But I enjoy it more when I do the giving.
Scratch:Ain’t that sweet. And rare…
