Part One: How I Met The Girl

i.

"We've gotta stop meeting like this," I say, all danger-stranger, adjusting my hoodie's hood (my disguise) and slipping into the warm interior of her Altima. She's parked by the fire hydrant on Manhattan and 106th, and my apartment (which she's never been to) is down the street. It's 3 A.M.

"I can't believe I'm here," she says. "You know, my resolution, or whatever—"

I remove my hood and touch this real-life version of a digital photograph, this real live person: "I can."

But I can't, too. Because, you know, I met her on the internet.

ii.

I think I made my first internet friend in 1994--he thought I was an 18-year old bikini model, I thought he was an 18-year old football player. We were probably both 13 (I certainly was), victims of un-model-worthy pre-pubescent terribleness, and outfitted with complex orthodontics. His name was DCope. Mine was, I admit, R Pop Tart. "R" was for Raspberry. It was my favorite flavor.

I never would have dreamed of meeting up in real life, but things were different, then. It was all horror stories of criminals in hotel rooms, disappointing meet-ups in airports, shorties who claimed to be tall, men who claimed to be women. Now, it works — now, it's valid — which is why we're all here, after all, because--

Now, 13 years later, it's become so remarkably valid that it's 3 A.M and I'm drunkity-drunk-drunk and I've lost control of my mind, my limbs and possibly my heart and I'm in a parked car in a no-parking zone with a girl I met on the internet who doesn't even have a photo on her MySpace profile. Or her blog. In fact, I once believed that there was not a single photograph of her anywhere on the entire internet, but silly rabbit, I just wasn't looking hard enough. There are always 50 ways to find your lover.

iii.

A national survey conducted in January by Harris Interactive revealed that "gays and lesbians are online much more than their heterosexual counterparts" and "more GLB individuals use social networks Friendster and Myspace per week compared to online heterosexuals." Thus, we have come to OurChart, looking for:

1. Lisabang.

2. Artsy photos of Kate Moening in her bra. To download. For one's desktop. Hypothetically.

3. Each other. Because it's not so easy, actually, out there in the "real world," which is why we are, increasingly, perceiving this virtual one to be quite real. On social networking sites: there you are. There are your friends with their inside jokes and assertions of your hotness, and your favorite books, and there you are in your bikini. There's your blog. There is YOU, INC., and so we've learned to close-read, like in middle school, except now we know how to mine profiles and blogs and comments for gold, i.e., the "real." The live performance of the internet script. Words and pictures swirling together like the transporter in Star Trek and what lands is similar but in 4-D, and sometimes also stunning. And beautiful.

As the internet gained in popularity, I still didn't think of it as a legitimate place to meet other people. Something about virtual networking always made me think of greasy tech geeks in basements popping each other's pimples or Trekkies with Dungeons and Dragons clubs. But then I remembered that I was totally a Dungeonmaster, and I fucking love Star Trek, and so, maybe there was something to this after all.

iv.

"I'm crazy about this girl!!!" I tell Jason, who we call "Dr. MySpace" for his keen ability to detect fakies — I often turn to him when I'm messaged by a girl who's profile is suspiciously heavy on up-the-skirt views of her apparently multifarious panty collection and suspiciously light on photos of her face. I use all those exclamation points, too, because that's how I feel. I feel like too much punctuation.

"Aw, look at you," he wrote back. "But since you live in the same city, not meeting is silly. And a little weird."

"No, it makes sense, in context."

"Probably not."

"Yes it does! She's doing this no-girls till her 30th birthday thing," I replied. "To like, get stuff done, clear her mind, etc. Even Haviland respects it!"

"You're mind-fucking yourself," he asserted. "I'm all for wooing with words, but in the same town, you must meet."

By the way, I met Jason on MySpace. He lives in L.A. We've co-authored a teleplay and shared the most intimate details of our sex and dating lives—he knows more about the girls I've dated than many of my real-life friends — but, in fact, we've never actually met.

v.

Her story, live and in person: "I told you, anti-promotion."

"You have no music on your MUSIC MySpace profile. You delete all your comments almost immediately, you have no photo of yourself but several of various artistic works and a screenshot of your sitemeter, you have no description---I had absolutely no reason to think you were anything but completely 100% sketchy!"

We're both cracking up. I like her more and more every time she laughs like that, which means I like her a lot. She grabs my neck and makes me look her in the eye: Oh! This is real. This began in cyberspace but this is real. Because, virtual is the new real.

vi.

Tara e-mailed to say she liked my blog. I've since traced our correspondence to uncover what made it different from the ones that never launched into the dangerous expanse of real life. After all, I get a lot of e-mails like this, which I totally heart, but I'm somehow not outside at 3 A.M. in an Altima with any of the others. Maybe it was a cyber-spark, which, like something corny, like the name of Paris Hilton's virtual dog or something ... I mean, maybe there's something to be said for just hitting it off in virtual space. That we've figured out enough about how people interact out here to be getting much better at picking the right ones.

vii.

Because she had no photo (which I generally find suspicious, though I've recently discovered that it's not, always, especially for homos).

Heather and I analyzed her blog entries for traces of physical appearance.

"Look!" I say, like I've discovered an oasis of facial features on a desert of invisible women, "See how she says everyone at the lesbian bar is attractive? But like — she talks about it in a way that's like—"

"Like, she's one of them."

"Exactly."

Later, I spot a winner: "She says all her psycho exes have been shorties cause they're under 5'7 and she's not dating anyone under 5'7 ever again, so she's definitely tall."

"Oh my god, and you're 5'10!" Heather exclaims.

"We're soulmates," I agree. "Def."

"Obvs."

I don't remember when I decided to harness the web's power and track down an image to put with the words. I knew it would matter. It matters so much, and everyone who says it doesn't is full of shit, which is why I needed it. And so I image-googled her, and it was much easier than I expected. I saw it and felt like the realest real you can get - I'm talking sci-fi real, Star Trek real, I'm talking teleporting real, cyber-spark real, that she was locking my face with her eyes: she didn't look at all like I'd expected, but she simultaneously looked perfect.

viii.

Who's to say how things line up out here: why we see our future wife at one party and then another when things could've turned out so differently, that we both ended up outside the same bar that night and chatted, that we had that mix-up with the stuff at the grocery store and started talking - then went home together, that she was there to see her friend like I was to see mine - so who's to say, really, how things happen in here, too? This virtual sphere? We make choices, we've got instincts.

And when it calls at 3 A.M., a time when you don't accept any guests not critically injured, you run out to meet it. You put your boots on, and your hoodie, and your stealth-black pants, and then tumble out into the night. You dance across the street, the car dances smoke in the air, you open the passenger door and slip inside. She tells you she can't believe she's there and you say,

I can.