Of Naka

Thanks Naka.

I was young back then, and I had a whole world at my fingertips, the world of the internet. It was "new" to me, back then. We had chat. Video uploads were rare - seeing someones picture - VERY rare, people simply didn't have webcams, computers were still somewhat expensive (but the prices were going down) this was the era of AOL, and YAHOOOOOooooo. Tripod and geocities, and MYSPACE were the bling bling all that of webpages and such. And, there was mIRC.

Ah yes, mIRC the chat program that let you connect with people online, easy download, fast install, easy to use. Simple. Connect to a server, and join a room, and away you chat. It was fun. It was new, and I lost myself to it.

I had learned how email worked, and learned how mIRC worked. I was super into Sailor Moon, and my first search online (in fact my first thing I did online) was to use search.com to look for Sailor Moon, not knowing if anyone but me cared about it... well - people did! Lots of pages! Anyway, thanks to this love of anime I connected with people via email and learned about mIRC and wound up in a chatroom called #sailormoon - see on mIRC # is the prefix for the room's name. We didn't have hashtags yet. :P

Anyway, I was looking for love and romance back then, and I fell for someone named Princess Mercury, and even sort of dated her, or at least wrote to her. In the end, that was not to be, but there was Naka. She was always just there for me, and fun to talk to. We would play in her room #NakaFroce (there was a #Negaforce room and that is where the idea came from) we hung out in there and did fancy color words, and chatted about things and it was a whole world.

We just - clicked. But, she had told me, she was only into girls, and was "young" how young? I never really was told, but I was 16, so she couldn't be much younger and have the ability to type like she did right? So it was we had adventures and friends come and go. New programs with more fancy graphics came out. A new sort of chatroom that let you dress up your avatar and go to rooms with lots of people to chat about random things, and a side chess room that had a "lock" on it so you could talk one on one with someone. This of course, one presumes was used for cyber.

Oh we had cyber everything not just sex back then - you had cyber moms and dads and daughters and family, it was a different time and a whole universe it and of itself.

Naka knew how I felt about her, and would remind me she was only into girls. This is when I came up with.... a plan.

See I had established other nicknames, and other personality's that I would sign in as and "play" as - because I viewed mIRC as a playroom of sorts, we were talking about real things, but we also were doing silly things like Sailor Moon attacks at each other, so it was real, but it wasn't real. Anyone could claim anything, anyone could be anything. Asking for A/S/L was standard, getting a pic was rare but asked for to try to verify someone was who they said. 

Anyway, so I had a girl version of me online - but "she" had not been around for awhile, yet Naka knew of that persona, and from her view, that person was as real as I was. To some degree, she was, since she was me and I am real, but I am not a girl.

But, somewhere in my minds eye I saw that, maybe if I could get Naka to love her - then she could love me, somehow. It made no sense, but I wanted to be in love so much, to love and be loved, it was my quest.

So, it was that I as a girl "Diggy" logged in to interact with Naka. Naka wanted to play the more complex chat room rather then dull old mIRC - so Diggy followed, and new things way to fast - (because I knew them) but I made the excuse that me (the male me) had told her some things.. and that seemed to make sense. We talked of love, and of course well - we (cough) talked of the cyber sort of talk. 

Then, one day. Naka said "I have to tell you something, but it will ruin us..."

"No it will not!" I swore.

Naka: "No, it will... you will never forgive me, I have to tell you my secret before we meat and it will destroy this ..."

"Nothing you could say will change how I feel!" I vowed.

Naka: "This will... its why I've never shown my pic or anything..."

Uh oh. No, could it be? Was... no please no. Don't say THAT.

"Tell me." I said.

Naka "I'm a man."

Oh.

Bleep.

Bleep me.

But in that moment,  I didn't care, we would make it work, somehow. So I told Naka who I was, the whole truth and the illusion was ended, the reality was broken, "I can't be your lover" he said, his name was Steve.

And he was much, much older then I was. 

So he liked young girls. Oh.

Bleep.

So, well I fell in love with someone who wasn't. I fell for someone who didn't exist. I loved an illusion. I was hurt. I had lied, they had lied.

Yet still, I recall Naka telling me how she had got her name from this game where at the end credits it said simply "Thanks Naka." and that was a cool name to have.

Naka, in Japanese means "Within" or "Inside" or "Together"

Yume no naka futari de ita yo ne Hoshitachi ni mamorarete

... so, I learned to be careful online for you do not know who is who, or even maybe who you are. For that, I must say:

Thanks Naka.