TALK commands and PINE and meeting people on rec.music.industrial. IE3? Mosaic was a revelation.

The Internet was so small back then that one girl I met was known by friends I had back home, even though they were 2000 miles away. We'll call her Amber. That was back when sending photos involved a stamp. The more things change, the more they stay the same - the photos were of a younger, thinner girl and the creature that showed up at the airport was... not that. I still have the photos.

Then as now it's super easy to maintain an online relationship with a person you can't stand to share a room with; when everything has to be typed, there's a lot more room for benefit of the doubt.

Amber made me miss Molson Indy Vancouver. Then I overslept before I got her to the airport (she slept in another room, thankyouverymuch) and I put a $700 plane ticket on my credit card just to get her the hell away. Oddly enough, I ended up hanging out with one of her friends online (Becky?), and then ended up dating her friend's friend (Candace?). Twice.

LinkedIn just asked me last week if I knew Candace, even though we haven't talked since 2005. I know one of my wife's friends delivered her baby here in Los Angeles (her name isn't actually Candace, it's distinctive as fuck because her mother literally made it up). Becky I talk to from time to time. We were going to be in a band together. She moved up to Seattle to be with me and Candace, and the whole ugly thing exploded. Amber? Amber showed up at a concert I mixed. She'd moved to Seattle, too. The scene was still alive, 10 years later.

Funny thing is those pictures? of Amber? From 1994? They're in a photo album next to... let's call her Zena. A legit penpal that I met six months earlier, before any of us had heard of email.

I've got Zena's photo, and I've got Amber's photo. Zena I can't even remember her name. Amber I could probably find a phone number for in two minutes on Facebook.

That's the Internet.