This section will be pretty short, because there’s not a lot to talk about in these areas, haha . . . I’m serious.
You’d think a girl whose mom drove her to college every day wouldn’t exactly have a hoppin’ collegiate social life. And you would be correct. I didn’t get invited to parties or date anyone for most of those years, because I was underage and for some reason, everyone was afraid of the whole “statutory rape” thing. When I turned eighteen, there was a small party on the fifth floor of the music building, because the guys could flirt openly with me and not get arrested, but even then, I was too shy to hook up with them. Not that I didn’t have the desire to. In my heart, I wanted to be with one of the classical guitarists because they were the biggest pick-up artists in the musical world. They had the quietest instruments, which meant they could play in the hallways and not get yelled at, so they sat around playing sexy classical guitar all day, and panties just DROPPED. But the few times one started circling me seriously, my professor would see us together and say, “That flamenco scam artist? He’s not good enough for you, get back to work.” And I’d skitter off back into my practice room and lock the door against a potentially glorious and rhythmically complicated seduction. Sigh.
On a basic level, I had no idea how to approach men. My general strategy was to stare at them from afar, with big Margaret Keane eyes, waiting for them to come over and save me, like a quirky indie film ingénue. Let’s be real: that character makes for good film festival fodder, but no one wants to take on that damage in real life. Manic Pixie Dream Meh, more like it.
The only guy I dated for any significant time in college was able to crack the awkward ice because of a toilet flush. In “Carmina Burana,” specifically, a piece we played in symphony together. He was a percussionist, and it’s a totally dramatic piece, overwrought in the most entertaining way. You’ll recognize the main theme from every shirtless warrior movie, but in one of the sections there’s a percussion instrument that LITERALLY sounds like a toilet flush. Every time we’d play that section, I’d look back at this cute blond percussionist with two earrings in one ear and start snickering as he played that instrument, whatever it was called officially. Unofficially, it was “that toilet flush thing.”
One day after rehearsal, he approached me in the elevator and said, “Funny about that toilet sound, huh? Do you wanna go to lunch?” I was nineteen by then, I’d figured out I didn’t have to get married after one date, and said, “Sure!”
We had a great time together because, surprise! Turned out he loved computers as much as I did. He collected Atari consoles (ALL of them, he had over fifty on shelves around his bed) and we’d go to his apartment and play Kaboom! and Tank instead of fooling around. I guess to some people that might have been weird, but I got my rocks off watching someone be amazing at Duck Hunt. Whatever.
My percussionist boyfriend graduated and went away to grad school a few semesters later, but not before he introduced me to the most amazing thing I’d ever experienced. No, not sex (I’m a lady; I don’t write about that) but something just as good: the World Wide Web.
It was just emerging as a THING in the mid-’90s. Boggles the mind, but Friendster and MySpace weren’t just punch lines to jokes at one point. One day I was trying to find a reference book for a term paper at the library, and my boyfriend said to me, “You should use the computer lab, way easier than the card system.” Of course, I thought he was an idiot. I was a library loyalist, paper was always superior, and flipping through the index cards made me feel industrious. But I went into the computer lab and, lo and behold, on the desktop of the music lab computer was a thing called a “browser icon.” I was confused.
“Mosaic? What’s that?”
I double-clicked and stared at a blank university database search page. There was a search bar in the middle with no instructions, no guide. That was it. Not user-friendly, even for a prototech native like me. I called over to the guy who worked there, “Hey. How do I use this browser thing?”
He said, “Go to AltaVista dot-com and just search for stuff.”
“Do I spell out the dot?”
“No, it’s a period. ‘www.altavista.com.’?”
“Sorry. Can you type it in for me?”
He, rolling his eyes, marched over and typed on my computer. I was about to get uppity and say, “Um, you don’t have to be condescending . . .” but as soon as I saw what appeared on the screen, I flipped out and forgot to be defensive and angry.
“OH MY GOD. I CAN SEARCH FOR ANYTHING BY TYPING IN THE BOX?”
“Um, why are you yelling?”
“Sorry, dude.”
It was like my childhood dial-up technology but better. A place with unlimited messaging, no expenses, I could type to other people with a keyboard for free about anything I wanted! This browser was . . . and then it had . . . and I could . . . what?!?!?!?