Before the Blog: How We Met

Shrike and I met on a lesbian message board on November 8, 1997. At the time, I was doing a lot of online "research," trying to sort out exactly what it meant that I'd recently done some "experimenting" and was pretty sure I'd liked it.

That night, I stumbled upon the gay/lesbian message boards on Excite.com and read through several of them. After reading all of the posts in one called "The Shark's Den," I decided they sounded like a nice, friendly crowd, so I worked up the nerve to post.

This, incidentally, was the night that I started using the name "Whozat." Very concerned about anonymity, but not real long on originality, I first tried registering under the username "Who," but it was taken, so I tried "Whozat," and the rest, as they say, is history.

That first post said

"I've been reading your messages and thought I'd introduce myself. I'm 29, female and questioning."

That was all, but that was a lot more than I'd revealed to anyone else up until that point.

The next day I somehow managed to find The Shark's Den again and saw that there was one response to my message, from someone who called herself "Shrike." It said

"Whozat - questioning what exactly? As you see, I am too."

Encouraged by this, I read Shrike's bio and then told her to,

"Sit back, make yourself a cup of coffee, it's a long story,"

and proceeded to spill my guts, telling her (and anyone else reading the board, of course) about everything from crushes on friends in junior high to my recent drunken "experiments" with a friend.

When Shrike's reply included the line,

". . any time you want to get together for a drink. . ."

I wondered if this woman might be flirting with me, but decided that it was ok with me if she was.

We continued to get to know each other in "The Den" and on other message boards, and a couple of weeks later, I decided to forward Shrike an email that she had received from a friend.

The gist of the email was,

"Somewhere, someone is thinking about you. . . cares about you. . . wants to be with you. . .etc. . . ."

I worried that it might be a bit too forward, but sent it anyway. It would be the first of many, many emails.

By the Thanksgiving holiday, we were emailing regularly, and we spent most of that weekend doing what we came to refer to as "e-chatting," both online at the same time, sending multiple messages back and forth, over and over. (We'd yet to "discover" realtime chat.)

I can't remember exactly when she first starting thinking of Shrike as more than a friend, but I know that on December 1, I called a friend in Canada, to wish her "happy birthday," and when she mentioned that plane tickets weren't that expensive and that I should go visit her, my first thought was, "BlueState is near Canada, isn't it? Maybe I could meet Shrike at the same time!"

Of course, I had no idea what part of BlueState Shrike lived in, or how far it was from my friend's city (several hours, as it turns out), but that didn't stop me from mentioning the idea to Shrike, or from playing out the possibilities of such a meeting over and over in my head. Let's just say that those possibilities were definitely of more than friendship.

So, we started trying to figure out how to meet up while I was in Canada. I suggested getting together and going out to a gay bar there - because I figured drinking and dancing would help with my "plans."

I didn't find out until much later that Shrike thought I wanted to go to a bar together so we could dance with other women! Luckily, Shrike shared these concerns with another online friend who did her best to reassure her that she was the only one that I was interested in dancing with.
Over the next few weeks, we continued to email, and, in retrospect, we were definitely flirting. On Christmas day, Shrike sent Whozat an email "confessing her love," and, obviously, I replied in kind.

Once we'd both admitted how we felt, things progressed quickly, and we started discussing scrapping the whole Canada plan, in favor of Shrike flying down to Texas in March, when I was on Spring Break.

In January, I realized that she had a couple of four day weekends coming up - one the next week, and one in February. I told Shrike about them, and suggested they not wait until March to meet. Obviously the next weekend was out of the question, but within a week or so, Shrike had a bought plane ticket for Valentine's weekend, and we started counting the days.

Shrike arrived in Texas the evening of February 12. I had to drive about two hours to pick her up at the airport, ran into traffic on the way, and arrived about five minutes before her plane landed. Needless to say, I was a wreck.

We had exchanged photos, so I was looking for someone who looked like the photo, "but my hair is longer and straighter now." Shrike had also described what she'd be wearing as "a blue turtleneck and a maroon southwestern shirt."

So, I stood in the airport, scanning the deplaning passengers for a short blonde, with mid-length hair, wearing a maroon shirt. About the time it looked like everyone was off the plane, I heard someone call her name from behind, turned, and of course, it was Shrike - looking nothing like the photo she'd sent.

She had neglected to mention that her hair was also a lot less blond now, absolutely straight and halfway down her back - not to mention that I had totally missed the whole "southwestern" concept, and was looking for a solid maroon shirt, not one with a print.

It seems every time we meet someone new and tell them the story of how we met, Shrike says, "And she didn't recognize me at the airport!" I will never live that down! Of course, if you ask Shrike, you'll find out that everyone we show that picture to says it looks just like her and that they would've recognized her. Oh well, I knows who she is now, so that's really all that matters.

After a very long drive back to my house, hanging out at the house a while, looking at photos of each other's families and posting on the message board together, we went out to the local gay bar.

We were incredibly nervous there, and I felt like everyone (whom she'd been telling about Shrike for months, of course!) was staring at us, so I suggested we go upstairs, where we could be alone, and play pool.

Months later, we heard a joke:

What's a four letter word for lesbian foreplay?
P-O-O-L

Well, if there weren't some truth to it, it wouldn't be funny, now would it?

Needless to say, by the end of the weekend - hell, by the end of the night - we both knew that what we'd been feeling over the past few months was real. Unfortunately, our four days together ended much too soon, and Shrike had to return to BlueState. Within a couple of weeks, she had made the decision to move to Texas.

It took a little time for her to get arrangements made for the move, so we had another visit before then. This time I flew to BigCity2HoursFromRedburg and we spent Easter weekend together there.

On May 10, the day before my 30th birthday, Shrike arrived back in Texas. We lived there together for about a year, but it was very difficult for Shrike, being so far from her family, especially her nephew, who was less than a year old when she moved.

Over the course of the next few months, we made the decision that when school was out in the spring (Whozat was teaching at the time,) we would move to BlueState.

Of course, there was the small matter of explaining all this cross-country travel to our friends and family. . . .