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me alone with the images I had kept to help master the moment when the fissure in my heart had first formed. But the spell had backfired, and now my protective wards were streaked with tears from the wonderful woman whose heart they broke in turn.
     
    Harvard’s tragedy telegraph operates with shameful efficiency. Though six months have passed since our broken engagement, I’m sure I have that episode to thank for Blythe’s reappearance in my life. Blake hears of my “troubles” and then thinks of me when he has some trouble of his own.
    Of course, mine have gotten even worse in the interim. Women, naturally, remain the problem.
    Men invariably prescribe a single remedy for a serious breakup: getas many bodies as possible between you and her. The underlying theory being that your anatomy will convince your pining mind that there isn’t really any “one” woman. There is only all women. And that by screwing a diverse cast of these lovelies, you’re reminded of all the scintillating possibilities life has to offer.
    Though I’ve fully adopted that course of treatment in recent months, the difficulty has been recruiting willing therapists. I don’t know what does it; maybe my eyes skitter away from theirs, maybe my manufactured smile betrays the flux of pain within. But most women can sense that there’s something a little broken with me. And the ones who can’t, well, there’s usually something very broken with them.
    This state of affairs leaves me, like the majority of my demographic, to content myself with the fire hydrant of pornography that is my cable modem. I can’t imagine what people did before the internet arrived with its grand smorgasbord of pictures, video, chat, and webcam girls. But too much netporn turns one’s mind into a Superfund site of frustrated lust. I find myself wearing out into the world the subtle but alienating caul of shame one gets from constantly wallowing in commodified filth. Another thing women can sense. Which makes me a more and more permanent citizen of this virtual Gomorrah we’ve built, the gateway to which sits innocently on our desks, pretending it’s for work.
    But on occasion, the ache of solitude simply demands real human warmth. So I’ve recently been driven to the teeming swamp of no-strings dating sites, erotic social networks, and “casual encounters” ads on Craigslist. In that arena, “real” becomes a somewhat loaded term.
    One thing the internet reveals is that the world contains multitudes of people just like you . We’ve always known that there’s this vast nation of lonely, isolated people out there, but now we’re not just watching TV anymore. We’ve started coming up with ways to reach out. Some people are looking to share their thoughts, others are looking to share . . . other things.
    Usually one finds a fellow forsaken soul who just wants a dose of companionship or a specific act performed and isn’t very particular about the details. But often enough, you’ll open the door on a lunatic or a criminal. The varieties of each are astounding.
    On the crazy side, I’ve found everything from garden-variety weepies to scary “Miss Andreas”—women trying to work out profoundman-hatred through anonymous sexual episodes. They want to hurt you, or at least scare you.
    For example, Penny_S_Evers delivers a very hot oral experience with perhaps a little too much biting. In the morning, you wake to find “AIDS” scrawled on your mirror in lipstick. Of course, we’ve all already heard that story, but it’s still enough to make you upchuck your Cheerios. I took the time to scope her medical records. She doesn’t have AIDS, just a whopper of a borderline personality disorder. There are freelance voodoo surgeons and ladies possessed by dead celebrities. I’m still not able to parse the treatment I suffered at the hands, or rather other body parts, of Ms_Ophelia.
    It all makes me curious what kind of ghastly characters the W4M dredge up.
    The