What follows is a year's worth of transcripts between a bunch of fucked up people who have nothing better to do than have fucked up relationships with other fucked up people online. Thing is, these people are real, in the sense that assuming an online identity and selectively sharing yourself can be said to be real. But I guess that's what we all do anyway.

 

Some of the online identities of the characters in the message logs have been renamed. Some haven't. But they all share a common reality: the anonymous chat rooms & messenger services of the internet, where meaning is measured on words and truth lies somewhere between our ability to express ourselves and our ability to interpret the expressions of others.

 

 

" If I knew you for a thousand years

I could not know your dreams or fears

 

Yet, if you laughed just once, or even cried

I would live those years within your eyes

 

And if I knew your dreams and shared your fears

I could love you for a thousand years

 

For there is no joy in hearts a-masked

And questions have no answers if left unasked... "

 

Jaded Angel wrote this. She also wrote almost half of everything you'll read here. So although this is a story strung together from message logs between a handful of people who could just as easily have been you or me, Jaded Angel was always in the eye of creation.

 

 

This then is her story.

 

 

Emoticons are iconic representations of the most common emotions. They are usually depicted as yellow cartoon faces and have a keystroke sequence assigned to them for ease of use. They have a life because it's so much easier to use an emoticon when you're typing an emotional response in real time. They are also nondescript enough to hide the vulnerability implicit in the expression of emotion.

 

Spelling has been partially corrected, if only to achieve uniformity. No one really bothers to correct typographical errors online. Some typos are a source of amusement, and as such have been left as originally misspelled where they appear.

 

punctuation just gets in the way of the flow of things when you are messaging so most sentences end up looking like this one without even a full stop on the end

 

The heading of each transcript indicates who is talking to whom, and whoever's name appears first initiates the dialog. It gets confusing as to who is saying what, but I don't think that really matters. We are all Jaded Angels, after all...

 

Actually, this was all too confusing to proof-read, so I added little coloured dots to denote the sex of the speaker. A year or so after I stitched this together, I realized that the colour of the dots sometimes changes in the most unexpected ways...

 

Key:

 

lol = laughs out loud

ppl = people

ffs = for fuck's sake

 

 

• and..?

• i hate situations. more so where emotions are involved

• i can see why internet chatting is so popular

 
• oh and why is that

 

• its not real

• ah. well then I cant be real

• for all i know you could be a 60 year old warthog farmer with 3 knees

• I would not like you less if you were

• yes, but it's safe. it's not real

• then we should not speak

 

 

• are you having a situation?

• yes with Lancelot... most of the shit I get myself into is because I don't want to hurt people

• wanna talk about it ?

• and I thought by staying away and not having any physical contact this would be achieved but it doesn't work.... so what is real you tell me

 
• you have hurt Lancelot by denying him contact with you because he has built up an emotional expectation through a chat medium like this one and now he has confronted you with his emotions?

• my opening line with Lancelot was I would never meet him, and it was only with that understanding that I would continue

• flirt with him?

• he's young. that does things

• yes

• its my fault . why is it always about a fuck ?

• it's always about the sex you can't have, darling

• ffs! so you saying I should just fuck him ?

• not at all. what i'm saying is... the exquisite friction comes from the not knowing, the strange, the mysterious blah blah. here's the story, so far... older woman, eloquent, artistic, talented, and above all else, knowledgeable in the ways of the world, corresponds with young virile boy eager to test his blade up against the wit of this seemingly fabulous creature... who also seems a little tragic, locked up in her castle in seclusion from the world. add an inattentive husband, a self-professed desire to be free from the walls, even if only for a short while, and you have a tempestuous love affair just waiting for Barbara Cartland's lawyers to eagerly paw over. stop me if i'm stepping out of line here

• no continue

• the guy has no choice, Angel. what does he do? ignore what is probably the most challenging thing that will ever happen to his manhood in his lifetime. & it's a lifetime that's probably been filled with 16yo schoolgirls with wet macaroni for ambition up until now. it's not your fault. its not even karma. its just... well, like a bad episode of the Bold & the Beautiful. (joke, ok). he'd be less of a man if he didn't try. and maybe he'll even learn something far more valuable than how to satisfy goddess-like older women if...

• well you have it summed up with the exception of that is pretty much every relationship I have had. and they weren't with "boys." problem is my reality is more bizarre than anything Barbara could pen. there isn't much more I can cut out of my life tho

• some people aren't meant to interact

• for every good intention I have it always fucks up, I wish I knew why. the only common denominator is me... the toxin that pollutes and taints

 
• and what were your original intentions with Lancelot?

 
• it not just him. he asked more, begged. he wanted to talk because of some comments I made in channel and because I suppose of things he had heard. and it was not a sexual thing to begin with. but ... i am a very sexual creature and...

• AND you are intelligent enough to recognise your own patterns. they repeat

 
• do you think I'm a predator ?

• ain't ate me yet

• i am not a beautiful woman but I am intensely sexual the way I speak. yes, admittedly I do use that at times to get what I need but I don't use it for... fuck why am I telling you this? you remember what I said about what makes me sad about XXX? I am not just a fuck. having contact with people here all that other shit doesn't come into the equation. when you speak to me I know you're looking at the words ... fuck this sounds conceited ... but it is not how I see myself at all. somewhere along the line I suppose I am my own poison... I wish I knew what it was so this is not really about Lancelot at all. or the others. it's about everything and nothing.

• its about being lonely. and you seem perfectly aware of what you are doing to yourself. um... we all suffer from that

 
• its about excess that only servers to increase the emptiness. it's about middle ground

• you can't blame yourself for expressing the whirligig emotions that make you a passionate creature. (or the passions that make you an emotional whirligig) any more than Lancelot can help responding to them. because then you wouldn't be half as much fun to talk to. now stop your snivelling and put on your favourite yellow emoticon mask...

 
• i'm good at snivelling

 

 

 

• i need some light entertainment - it's been a hell day

 
• why was your day bad ?

 
• don't really need a shoulder to emote on. and besides, you're a perfectly charming stranger. why would i even think of speaking of anything besides pleasant fripperies with you?

 
• so, wanna frip? wait a sec i'm going to go and find the Jaded one

 
• such a tragic name. choose it herself, did she?

 
• actually no she has little imagination, it was given to her by one of her shags. oh bite me

 
• will too. but will i be able to stop? don't think so
 
• promise ?

 
• oh, i'll promise anything in the heat of the moment. best time for promises. that's when you mean them

 
• ha ha yes. you did say eating me like an almond appealed *lol*

 
• oh, you're already half gone. you just don't know it yet

 
• really?

• why? do you find this scenario so hard to swallow?

 
• now swallowing has never been a problem

 
• how rude. is it just us or is everyone like this?

 
• there is no finer distraction

 
• you're so oral

 
• i'm so banal

 
 

 

• this reminds me of those old bw film slow mo re-union scenes

 
• except I would trip and fall (accidentally of course) so you could catch me.... and I could cop a sneak feel *lol*

• so that's why they always fall!

• you know that's a question they ask you when you're undergoing psychiatric therapy don't you?

 
• huh? whether you would surreptitiously rub the crotch of a man who caught you on the boardwalk? how off is that! who thought of these questions?

• no what you would do if someone you were attracted to tripped and fell close enough for you to react in response to it.
 

...
 

...
 

Thurs 01 June (02:44:03 AM - 03:58:04 AM)

- Karma:Suture & Jaded Angel

 

• you like limericks ??
 

• there was a young redhead vannie vrystaat / who gave her vibrator a kickstart / every time she was lonely / and rode it like a goddam pony / til her orgasms ripped her apart

• not v good at this

• hahah

• that one just sucked, in fact. you try

• i think the threat of mustard gas and mortars were insirational

• wtf?

• inspirational..
there once was a perfect "catch " with her crimson talons would snatch, any man that walked by , giving her the eye till he layed his ......... no no no this is all too bad *loolol*

• you fading huh

• finish it for me

• there was a bonny young lass / who thought mustard was a gas / she got her inspiration / from chronic inhalation / til she developed a nasty rash
• *lol*

• here once was a perfect "catch " with her crimson talons would latch, onto any man that walked by , giving her the eye till he layed his .... in her snatch ?
and laid *lol*

• ...till she finally met her match: a perfect gigolo was he, with suave smile and bended knee; he'd expose his tanned sixpack, in exchange for her baring her stack, until

• she discovered he was a she.

• *lol*

• unperturbed the young valkyrie / lay back with crook'd knee / round the neck of the imposter, urging her to lick faster, as she moaned in ecstacy
oops stop me now

• *lol*
 

Thurs 13 July 2005 - Jaded Angel & Karma:Suture

 

• when is your birthday ?

• 10 august

• do you celebrate it ?

• never

• what's your reason ?

• too old. like to forget. besides, ppl always choose the worst gifts. embarrassing

• that's the good part about not knowing people

• nah, its predictable. they get you what they want. but a cheaper version

• you think so ?

• give me a gift. now. see, what did you immediately think of ?

• I thought about what I cherish most
 

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Jaded Angel flew out of her box in November 2005. She met with Karma:Suture, and in time, the others, in real time. Whether it was any different from living in her box, or the hyper-real lives she glimpsed through the window of her pc monitor only she knows. Why don't you MSN her & find out...
 

jadedangel@hotmail.com