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In 1993 I bought a computer, vowing to shake off my obsession with MTV VJ Kennedy. Instead, I was corrupted by the Internet.

Before I knew it, I was dabbling in amateur pornography. Those AOL girls always wanted your home number so they could launch long-distance phone sex.

She had muscular dystrophy. She'd divorced, re-married, then re-divorced her abusive, drug-using husband. She received disability payments, but various factors had kept her from starting up a social life. She told me cybersex gave her her first orgasm in two years...

And for referring to The Monkees as existential heroes, a woman in Kansas City sent me a nude photo of herself. Soon I was immersed in all forms of cyber-pornography...

What's amazing is how quickly it all happened.

December 25- Purchase computer.

December 27 - Start computer. Spend seven hours playing Computer Chess.

January 2 - Spend three hours in the children's game area of Prodigy. The witch makes me hot...

"Do you want to let the witch eat you (Yes or No)?"

Okay, I admit it. I have this thing about witches. I've got witch fantasies. And quite frankly, I feel like Prodigy was pandering. "The witch says she wants to eat you," it said. "Do you want to stay and let the witch eat you?"

"Yes or no."

And suggestive images were everywhere. I downloaded a picture of Lorena Bobbitt from Prodigy's news area, and found instructions on how to convert it into wallpaper for the Windows desktop. Then it progressed. By February, I had 36 GIFs converted into wallpaper, including 24 of pregnant women in obscene poses. Ultimately I used them to replace the images in the U.S. Presidents screen-saver I'd downloaded from AOL -- associating sounds like "You've got mail" with kissing pregant lesbians....

Finally I decided on-line services weren't worth $3.00 an hour. Logging onto AOL, I downloaded one last picture of Kennedy from their MTV area, then posted an annoying message about "The Real World" and cancelled the account. I'd discovered the local BB S scene. They had this cool thing called "FidoNet"...

The Prodigy era was over. And good riddance, too.

April 11 - Prodigy exhorts its readers to share their thoughts on the death of Kurt Cobain. It's only $3.00 an hour.

April 11 - Prodigy users post that they've contacted Kurt Cobain by Ouija board, and he is in hell.

April 11 - Prodigy user posts, "If I had fans like you, I'd kill myself too."

April 11 - I go to Prodigy's news photo archive and download a picture of Kurt Cobain's corpse. I make it into wallpaper...

Besides, the lure of on-line pornography was increasing... and the AOL woman from Kansas City was paying a visit to San Francisco.

She weighed 280 pounds. For the picture she'd sent me, she'd photographed herself face-down on a bed, so that only her ass was showing... She'd met ten men on-line. I was the first one that went all the way. (Or, at least, the second.)

We said a poignant goodbye at the airport, playing Tetris on her laptop in the cocktail lounge...

Part II