Eccentric Flower:199809/showing intelligence and meeting it

sixteen september ninety eight eleven a m

Showing Intelligence (and meeting it)

In about half an hour I am going to have lunch with a gentleman whom I consider a friend, but have never met. I'm a little nervous, just like I was nervous when meeting Mary Anne.

Meeting Mary Anne was the first time that I've met someone in the flesh whom I've corresponded with a great deal - met one of my "online friends" as I say. This will be the second. Five, six, years ago, neither would have happened.

I had a rock-solid policy of not meeting online people face-to-face. I had what I thought were sound reasons. Nonetheless I am happy to let that policy slowly deteriorate. I'm still wary, but the camel's nose is in the tent now, and one of these days I hope to get out to the Seattle area to meet Jane and Anita, and I know that on one of my regular visits to Louisiana I will have to swing into Texas and meet Aussie.

(Dianne, I hate to say it, but I don't think I'll be able to afford to go to Australia any time soon. First class to Australia is running around $12,000 a head - I know, some friends are flying there at Christmas and they priced it - and I am not getting on a plane that long without flying first class; I'd be a double amputee when I arrived.)

Where was I? Oh, yes. One of the reasons that my policy has changed is because the vast number of my friends are online friends and I'm tired of not seeing any of them, not hearing any of their voices. It's that "shadows on the wall of the cave" thing again, except that I got tagged for intellectual elitism the last time I used that reference - grrrr.

(Wasn't EVERYBODY forced at gunpoint to read the allegory of the cave in high school? Heck, it even shows up in a They Might Be Giants song. Of course, reviewers deride them as a "look how clever we are" band, which is the same charge that gets thrown at me. So, let me see - any time I make a literary or classical reference, or use a word like "deride," I'm showing off? Got it.

Can you tell I'm still harboring a little resentment?)

Back to, um, what was it I was talking about?

The most important reason, though, why I now want to meet these people, where before I had been known to occasionally stop talking to someone when they suggested we meet face-to-face, is that I am no longer actively concealing the truth behind Columbine. Before, a lot of people who wanted to meet me were under the impression that I was a sexy female. Where they got "sexy," I don't know. I have always downplayed the attractiveness element in my online descriptions of myself - my desc on SPR and FurToonia goes so far as to use the word "emaciated," hardly a sexy picture.

My SO thinks it's because intelligence is sexy. Maybe so, but it's also elitist to show any. Apparently.

Sorry. I had a long argument about this online last night, which is why it's fresh in my head.

Anyway, I'm nervous about meeting this gent. Although he knows the truth about me, and is married, and has a completely non-lustful set of motivations, it comes down to intelligence again - as with most people who like me, he likes me for my mind. That's what's scary, and ultimately it's the only reason still intact for not meeting online friends in person.

Online, all you see is my brain. That's my best side. I worry that, while the spirit is willing, the flesh will inevitably turn out to be something of a disappointment.

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