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How It All Began
Until November 1998 I had only accessed occasionally my son's computer at home. He had moved away
to work and live some 18 month's previous and left his computer behind for me as he was locating close to the beach and had
better things to do than use a computer. During the 18 months he was away I used the computer only for wordprocessing. Although
my son had shown me how to connect to the net and had given me access to his account, I really saw nothing in it. Too slow,
boring I thought. When he relocated further away to a country town at the end of 1998 he took his computer with him to use
in his office. I had no computer then at home for the next 6 months and in June 1999 I decided to buy one for myself so I
could have the use again of a wordprocessor at home.
Once I purchased the computer my son, on a visit home,
connected it all up for me and also got me online. So started my adventure into surfing the net, well not quite surfing.
Two of my chat friends from Sydney = Mawmaw and uu
More chat friends from Sydney - Footrot, me, Geebear and his wife
My sweet friend Louise, chat friend from Brisbane, taken in Brisbane 2000
Also in Brisbane, Newgirl1 (from Melbourne), YapYap (from Sydney) and me
Sydney 2000 Parra Leagues Club - Mawmaw, Topaz's hubby, Louise, YapYap, Topaz, Clairebear, Footrot and Pomemax
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First Steps Into the Unknown
I tentatively connected to the internet every few days or so, whenever I had
the courage to attempt it. I didn't have a clue really what I was doing but I remembered a few things my son had shown me
and managed to find my way somehow into an overseas chat room. I found it very hard to get into any conversation in the beginning,
the people in the room all seemed to know one another, and most were from the USA with a few from England and New Zealand.
I decided this was a safe place to learn about this chat I had heard about as the people were all too far away from me to
ever want to meet up. Rarely anyone came into the room from Australia. I remember trying to create some interest in me by
talking about the Olympic Games that were to be held in Sydney in the Year 2000, but some people hadn't a clue that the Olympics
were on in Sydney and weren't interested anyway. However I persevered, went into the room every few nights for a look and
gradually got into a bit of the chat routine. This went on until September that year and I always had great difficulty accessing
the room even though it was infrequent and at night. One particular night in September, in utter frustration at not being
able to access the usual room, I decided to try a chat room in Australia and that's where the changes in my life started.
I found my way into the 50s room in BigPond and the language was alien to me, different again to overseas although
some of the chat language was the same. I wondered what lol, roflmao, gr8, cu, etc etc meant and I also wondered what planet
I had landed on. I chose a nickname I had earned at work 'megasec' meaning mega secretary of course. A few of the people in
the room said hello to me but in the main it was the same as overseas, they all seemed to know one another and chatted away
leaving me to sit and ponder what on earth they were all on about.
I managed to say a few things the first night and
was privved by some seedy characters who seemed hell bent on making my nick megasex. I didn't even know what a priv was at
that stage much less what they were on about. However I returned the next night for a second look and started to get to recognise
some of the chat language and some of the nicks. By the third night I was welcomed by more people and started to feel a bit
better about things and decided to give the room a go and gave up the overseas attempts.
I became a regular in the
50's room and created a character for megasec. It was like a stage play, acting out a part every night, being someone you
couldn't be in real life, getting away with all manner of things that you wouldn't normally do. I met a lot of nice people,
and eventually over time have met some of them for real, in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. I travelled interstate for chat
parties and enjoyed myself. It was a whole new world for me, I had moved from sitting watching tv or foxtel most nights, to
sitting in front of a computer and laughing myself silly, sometimes crying, I had found somewhere I could go safely and be
part of a group of people without having to leave my home.
I learned enough about the java chat program to work my
way around in it with ease, and then with the help of a couple of chat friends in Sydney, I had Mirc loaded and a whole new
world opened up for me again. Most of the people in the room had Mirc long before I did as I tried to load it myself and was
unsuccessful so I gave up and stuck with Java. With Mirc I found great tools to have fun with and to further the craziness
of megasec - Popups and music. Wonderful stuff, made the chatroom a totally different environment to the java room. It was
interaction supremo, something I never got from a tv set.
So into this new world I had tentatively entered I now hurtled
and when I look back on the years since 1999 I realise it took over a big hunk of my life. I seemed to revolve around it,
I made the rest of my life fit into my chat schedule. So came the repercussions and the involvements in things never conceived
in my mind.
(The picture above is me at a chat party in my honour in Brisbane in February 2001 - at an Irish Pub of course,
where else???)
To Hell and Back via a couple of Stopovers
My family started complaining, I was spending too much
time at the computer. I got into the habit of turning my mobile phone on when I was online so they could ring me if they wanted,
in an effort to stop the complaints. I was still accessible, they could call if they wanted or needed to and find me.
I
became involved in relationships with men I met in the 50s room and I fell into a certain lifestyle and I learned a lot, good
and bad, and I look upon the whole of 2000 as a steep learning curve in life for me. I learned a lot about a life I never
dreamed of, and I learned even more about me, what I was capable of and the changes in me were startling to say the least.
I decided late 2000 I'd had enough of men. I'd spent 11 years prior to 1999 seeing no-one and came out for a look at
the world and I wondered sometimes why I bothered.
I changed my nick online and tried to change my chat style too. I had a goal - I hoped I would meet someone
decent from Sydney who was single that I could have some kind of a life with, even just occasionally.
I was still hooked
on chat, spent all my available time there but I was also working on the changes I wanted to make, step by step, however small.
I started to visit the music room and downloaded lots of music for my collection. Here again I was educating myself, learning
new skills. I only had a couple of close male friends I chatted in private to, they were good friends who helped me through
some tough times just by listening.
One in particular got my mind onto other things by teaching me housekeeping on my computer and helping me fix some problems
I had with Mirc. I started publicly announcing when other men privved me so that they would learn to steer clear of me. I
did the best I could, recovering from a broken love affair that had been a disaster, to fix my life in chat up so that I was
a nicer person, someone I could be happy with.
In January 2001, late in the month, I received an email from a guy in Sydney. He told me he was 54, divorced, and
interested in my profile I had posted in one of the internet dating sites, and would like to meet me if I would like to contact
him. I read his profile and wrote to him telling him to drop in on the chat room if he wanted to talk. And so
began another disaster. If you want to read about this you will need to buy my book when it's published in 2004.
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