The Joys Of Internet Foreplay

On Friday night I had the best first date I’ve had in a long time. He was cute, funny and smart, there was a natural flow of conversation and he didn’t try to share my dessert (which is grounds for immediate and eternal dismissal). All I wanted to do the whole time was reach out and touch him but I didn’t know if it was because he was so gosh darn cute or because I literally couldn’t—the boy was on the other side of the world, in Sydney, by way of Skype.

The two of us have never met in person. A mutual friend, Lorena/cupid, introduced us on Facebook, because Daniel (the boy) is moving to New York and she was helping him out with contacts over here. I’m not sure what Lorena intended when she introduced us but I still imagine her pressing our Facebook profiles against one another and making kissing noises like a small girl playing Barbie. Can anyone say, ‘you’ve got mail’?

When Daniel and I first started messaging each other on Facebook, Tweeting at each other and Skype chatting, I had the immediate instinct that when he got to New York we were going to fuck and that it was an unavoidable causal effect of us knowing each other. I’d never met him but I was drawn to him in the intrinsic way that a drunk is drawn to a cheeseburger—I wanted to have him even though he was only being served miles away.

At the start—between our witty textual Gen Y banter (I still keep thinking, oh my GOD, I am SAH Gen Y, sah much more than Tom Hanks)—I thought about him a lot, about how tall he’d be, what his voice would sound like and if his hand would fit perfectly across the small of my back. I worried that his voice would be high pitched and annoying, that he’d be a midget or that he was amputated at the wrists so that the least of my worries would be whether or not his hand could fit across the small of my back.

Nevertheless, over time I became a little bit infatuated with him, and a little bit bemused by this strange online foreplay. Knowing that he wouldn’t be in New York for months I tried to brush it off, but somehow found myself in a man drought that has lasted a full 4 weeks. But now, something wonderfully unexpected has happened–Daniel emailed me last week and told me he’d booked flights to visit New York for two weeks. In two weeks. 14 days. Ayo, technology.

So on Friday night (both miraculously sober) we had our first date. Admittedly, I talked way too much out of nervousness, but I knew I liked him because I got the feeling that he enjoyed me talking too much out of nervousness. When we hung up I wasn’t sure what was happening to me—I felt elated, smiley, and went to bed with butterflies dancing in my feet and knees and tummy and chest.

I’m still a little bit skeptical—even though there wasn’t any organized dating site involved, we still met online, and there’s a weird stigma I associate with that despite the fact that I’m pretty sure I could drink internet instead of water and still survive. But whatever; I’m excited, nervous, scared and giddy, which are all the best things about starting off with someone new. And on top of that I get that lovely sense of satisfaction that comes with a cute boy @ mentioning you on Twitter #winning.