This is a Naked lady

The very first issue of Wired magazine included an article about why sex, tech and new media play so nicely together. And while some things have changed radically in the past 14 years — no more $12-an-hour Compuserve porn — the basics have not: we’re still lusty, we’re still somewhat ashamed of our behavior but doing it anyway, we’re still seeking novelty and pleasure and power and understanding and sometimes even just a simple quick climax with no intention of self-discovery or advancing the range of human sexuality.




Back in the dawn of online when a service called The Source was stillin flower, a woman I once knew used to log on as "This is a nakedlady." She wasn’t naked of course, except in the minds of hundreds ofyoung and not-so-young males who also logged on to The Source. Nightafter night, they sent her unremitting text streams of detailed wetdreams, hoping to engage her in online exchanges known as "hot chat" -
a way of engaging in a mutual fantasy typically found only through1-900 telephone services. In return, "The Naked Lady" egged on herdigital admirers with leading questions larded with copious amounts ofdouble entendre.


When I first asked her about this, she initially put it down to "justfooling around on the wires."


"It’s just a hobby," she said. "Maybe I’ll get some dates out of it.
Some of these guys have very creative and interesting fantasy lives."


At the start, The Naked Lady was a rather mousy person - the type whofavored gray clothing of a conservative cut - and was the paragon ofshy and retiring womanhood. Seeing her on the street, you’d neverthink that her online persona was one that excited the libidos ofdozens of men every night.


But as her months of online flirtations progressed, a strangetransformation came over her: She became (through the dint of herblazing typing speed) the kind of person that could keep a dozen ormore online sessions of hot chat going at a time. She got a trendyhaircut. Her clothing tastes went from Peck and Peck to tight skirtsslit up the thigh. She began regaling me with descriptions of herexpanding lingerie collection. Her speech became bawdier, her jokesnaughtier. In short, she was becoming her online personality - lewd,
bawdy, sexy, a man-eater.