KOI ANNUNTA/YH

Sex and candy for Valentine's Day

When the Internet was first created, it was likely intended as more than the most ambitious flesh market since the days of Caligula. Programmers may be horny, what with the suggestive language of "hard drive" and "floppy disks" and so on, but the only play they ever seem to get is when they share a round of Descent. I can only imagine that UNIX describes both an operating system and the kind of people who use it.

Nevertheless, in the democratic forum of the Internet, their creation now includes sites on John McCain and the Vatican alongside such colorful collations as (forgive me, mother) "House of Bondage" and "Celeb Sex Pussy Pics."

Sadly, despite the existence of various "rings" that group such information together in an easy-to-use format, there is no MySimon.com that will find the best sort of pornography for your tastes.

Cyber-porn is big business, but it remains a confusing labyrinth of foot fetish info services and none-too-clever puns using the word "cum."

For this Valentine's Day, I aim to fix that.

I spend nearly every February 14th alone in my room. I get a bottle of Wild Turkey, a box of chocolates, rent a copy of Love Story, and gorge myself on cheap sentimentality and wax-flavored candies. Afterwards, I usually take Jean Anouilh's advice literally.

If you are like me, you realize the vast potential for antisocial sexual gratification offered by the Internet. With so much porn, so little time, and Valentine's Day close on our heels, the Herald Online, offers you an account of one man's perilous journey through the ins and outs of love, lust, and desire on the Internet.

As a disclaimer, I intend this only as a sociological study; I personally despise pornography, and consider it wrong to exploit other people solely for their bodies, no matter how desperate I may feel.

Largely in consideration of time constraints and the queasy conservatives on the editorial board, I have included sites geared towards the heterosexual male looking for run-of-the-mill nudie pics, though the examples offered here will probably support your own particular fetish with only slight alterations.

Looking for Lust

So does the name of your maternal grandmother, your favorite monosaccharide, and most Soviet dissidents.

Porn has become so prevalent on the 'Net that everyday words like "animal" and "plastic" turn up a few suggestive links, particularly in porn breadbaskets like Yahoo.

Surprisingly, "breast" brings up almost exclusively sites for mammograms and augmentation—though you can get a lot of mileage out of pictures of saline implants, let me tell you.

I tried all the major search engines with the words "free porn" to see what came up. Lycos came in first, with 458,795 hits, Yahoo's web page search listed 375,694 matches, while Webcrawler listed a measly 6,200.

Excite didn't give any specific count, though it did offer lots of pictures of naked women, right on the search engine, before I had even clicked anything.

I also decided to give Uncle Walt a shot at Disney's sanitized Go.com, and came up with a whopping 176,249 matches.

Just for fun, I activated the GOGuardian™, a cyber-nanny that supposedly locks kids out of fun that's just for mom and dad. The feature worked pretty well, denying the existence of anything on the Internet associated with "sex" and "pussy."

It did, however, slip on the kid-friendly word "naughty," which yielded lots of unfortunate listings, including www.naughtynancys.com (featuring a wide assortment of "butt plugs") and the lyrics to a song called "Scotty Be Naughty," which are so salacious I refrain from printing them for fear of angry letters.

Porn Free

Sex isn't sad until you have to pay for it—at least, for more than a trial membership. A good place to start off, in theory, is a free password web-site. You might try www.passworduniverse.com , which features a number of options that didn't work for me, no matter how many I tried.

I also tried www.pornwave.com, which, claiming free pornography, offered me such enticing choices as "Totally Teens," "Adult Dreams," "Young Wives," "FAT Girls," and "Foot Fetish."

I decided to be dangerous. I went for "Foot Fetish." This offered me a picture of a respectable young woman with tantalizing tootsies and an assortment of options from "Dirty Feet" to "Toe Sucking" to "Trampling."

Unfortunately, this was not to be. As I prepared for hours of pulse-pounding Prada perusing, a screen came up asking for a credit card, assuring me that I would not be billed—yet. Yeah, right.

I tried my search again and came up with www.pornno.com (it pays to spell badly in porn country), a site that offered me a list of popular porn sites. Again, I chose to go for the fetish: www.superchicken.com.

"Super Chicken" turned out to be pretty legit, with a picture of a fowl who has better abs than anyone I know and the kind of winking adult cutesiness that I haven't seen since phallus-faced Joe Camel.

Again, he offered me a bunch of choices. Again, I clicked. And slowly, I found myself lost in a porn vortex.

Here is the truth about porn sites: once they have you in their clutches, they're harder to get rid of than syphilis.

My computer screen was suddenly filled with hundreds of different sites; every time I tried to click off each remarkably suggestive picture (tongues, cleavage, genitalia—you get the idea), another site would pop up, like those Russian dolls that contain hundreds of other, identical Russian dolls.

I found sites that offered "more than just glamour bondage" and "an army of nubile young girls." My personal favorite was "House of the Rising Cum," which featured a genteel young lady for whom the cum had risen and was overflowing to the extent that national flood relief would not be out of the question.

Each time I tried to click on "Free Taste," though, a menu asked me for my credit card.

This is like offering you a free sample at a supermarket and then putting a clamp on your tongue. Each time I refused.

And each time, I sank further into the abyss.

Tit for Chat

After several bad experiences on AOL, the Shangri-La of tawdry on-line encounters, I was a little wary.

But with the promising pictures of luscious ladies waiting to fulfill my every desire, I decided to go for broke. All right, I thought, it's time for Mr. Magic Fingers to bust a move.

Internet Porn Chat Rule #1: Don't pretend to be a woman if you're not—it's not good etiquette, and you're probably not nearly as good an actor as you think.

I decided to go for some "Lesbian Lust" and masqueraded as " pinkmeat," which seemed appropriate at the time. Upon entering the chat room, though, I found a really dull conversation in progress, to wit:

Roy*: . Do you know Kooskia? . It's outside Oklahoma City?
VALHALLA:. Yeah, I think I've been there.
Roy: . It's a really nice place.. I grew up there.

This conversation needed sharpening up, quick. Everyone likes the funny guy at parties, right? I jumped right in.

pinkmeat: . I've been in Kooskia. I got crabs there.

A long silence.

Roy: . We had a house there. On Main Street.

This was terrible! Two guys chatting about their upbringing in "Lesbian Lust" and nary a lustful lesbian in site.

Just as I began to lose hope, a woman showed up—I think. You never know on the Internet, which is probably just as well.

Ready4U: . I'm ready for some excitement. Are there any women here?

Now was my chance! I carefully prepared to dazzle this woman with my feminine graces and sympathy.

pinkmeat: . Yeah! And I've got a dildo made out of cactus needles!
VALHALLA: . It's pretty sad when a man pretends he's a woman, pinkmeat.

Exposed, disappointed, I fled from the room, dragging my sorry pseudonym behind me.

Internet Porn Chat Rule #2: Don't pretend to be rich, handsome, suave, or interesting if you're not. Despite their apparent vapidity, porn people can see right through it.

Assuming another pseudonym and the subtle mask of another fantasy individual—bigspender—I tried the "Dirty Chat" room.

bigspender: . Hey, girls! I'm a stockbroker and I make six digits, live on Park Avenue, and drive a Range Rover. . I look like Tom Cruise, except I'm 6' tall. .
BIGMAMMA: . Big fucking deal..

Clearly, this was not working. I decided to give it one more shot.

Internet Porn Chat Rule #3: You will not be more successful in a chat room than you are in real life.

In my ignorance, I ignored this cardinal rule, and decided to be Mr. Sensitive, despite my new porn-friendly name. I tried "Dirty Talk" again.

mrbigmeat: . Does anyone want to talk about their feelings?

No one responded. I laid it all on the line:

mrbigmeat: . I remember when my dog Spot died. . I cried for a week. . Who wants to screw me?.
Barbiedoll:. That's a pretty good line, Mr. Big. .

Despite my wit, Barbiedoll would not submit to the apotheosis of chat room culture—the "private room." She said she was waiting for her friend, but she referred me to another girl comrade, Nakedandready, who was nearly done with some guy named 2Hard.

I opened my own room. I got ready to score. Then, my system crashed.

Love for Sale

Eric Clapton and Marilyn Monroe chime in as well with help for the lust-lorn.

I left the site a new man with a new mission: I only wanted love, not some cheap cyber-fling. Almost instantly, I found a number of on-line dating services.

AOL sponsors the well-run, widely-used www.love.com, a love factory that lets you sort by all sorts of preferences, including shared interests and geographical locations.

I found a few honeys in New Haven and left my phone number.

I also tried some other places, just in case nothing panned out. The Reverend Sun Myung Moon offers a site that guarantees a love match, provided you agree to live according to the principles of his cult, at www.matchingservice.org/singles.htm.

I also found xseeksy.com, a trendy Gen X site that let me write my personals ad as a mad lib.

"I am a [SARCASTIC] man. I spend most nights [CRYING]. My family is [ARGGH]. My best friend is [MY DOG]." What woman could resist?

Perhaps best of all, though, I came across www.onetruelove.net, offering "Beautiful Russian, Ukraine, Belarus, & European Women" for the asking, as well as services to send these beauties flowers and candy, and special phone rates to East Europe.

By clicking on "Women's photos," I was offered a menu of customizable options—height, weight, eye color, number of children. My Ford dealership doesn't give me this kind of selection. I decided to go for a full-figured lady who could speak English.

With a single click, my screen was filled by hundreds of smiling faces from Sevastopol, each of them named Irina.

Irina #1 was a "jurist" who liked "men with sense of humor and kind"; Irina #2 was a "college professor" who liked "English" and "man who desires children."

Irina #87 was an "economist" who wanted "to support [her] man." I was smitten.

I composed a long, heart-felt letter to Irina where I asked her to "knit up two lonely hearts in the plentiful babushka of your bosom."

Tears fell on the keyboard.

I hit "send."

My system crashed.

Epilogue

No one at the dating services has answered my personal ads. Irina #87 is already involved with an accountant from Akron. And lots of people gave me nasty looks while I did my research for this article in Connecticut Hall.

Kate Moran did let me give her a foot massage, but her socks were soggy.

Nevertheless, I still hold out hope.

The Internet will revolutionize human relations. We will meet, marry, and renew our vows for a global community on-line. Fine-tuned dating services will find us our perfect mates, reducing divorce rates and forging long-lasting relationships.

Our children will live in a world where true love is only a click away.

In the meantime, we'll have to make do with www.teenshows.com

*Cyber-names changed to protect the innocent.

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