Cyrus asked if I recognized him. My answer was no. “But what if you did?” he said. I fumbled with the CD and the boombox.
“I would castrate him,” Joy said, chopping her hand through the air. “Then I would stuff—”
“Thou shalt not castrate!” Cyrus cut her off as the singsong melody of an antique pump organ drifted into the room. The track was “Jubilee Anthem” by the Eleja Choir of the African Methodist persuasion. Sounding childlike, blissfully naïve, the tune was their traditional shout-out at the end of services. Cyrus interrupted the music to nudge us to get moving on our covert ops. Closing the sex-offender web site, Joy shot her fingers like a pistol at the screen then turned up the corners of her lips and requested liquid refreshment. Cyrus hightailed it to the kitchen.
Joy ran the show. I did whatever she told me to do while Cyrus manned the music, snack and beverage services. Around four in the morning, we’d finished most of the job. The last order of business was to draft an email update for community members with directions on access and a word of caution to use common sense when inviting new users (“if we wish to continue to benefit from our connects on this site”). To give Joy a break, I volunteered to take care of this final task after some well-deserved shuteye.
An unforeseen upshot of piggybacking onto the First Church site was a huge bump in web traffic. The Reverend attributed this to the reception of his PACC initiative. He wasn’t entirely off. Once I’d set up the e-banking service, the contributions poured in. I don’t doubt that donors agreed with the Reverend’s agenda, but I think maybe they also felt overblessed and needed to unburden themselves, hoping to bypass the eye of the needle, skate through the hallowed gates, no questions asked, when the call home came down.
Perhaps they also desired the titles we’d set up for charitable giving: Good Citizen ($500), Community Pillar ($750), Angel of Democracy ($1k), American Hero ($2k-$5k), Christian Crusader (>$5k). We had these small testaments to goodwill and righteousness printed on license plate frames, which advertised First Church’s web address “to gently steer lost souls back on the path,” the Reverend said. Our cost was next to nothing thanks to the auto dealer who sold Good Charlotte her Suburban. One of my jobs at this time was to mail the appropriate thank yous, per the Reverend’s instructions, as he e-tracked the PACC coffers.
A rockstar now on the Born Again circuit, the First Church pastor drew the attention of local policy-makers, not only at city hall and the corporate-sponsored thinktanks but also at Bliss U, a hotbed for extreme legislation, Cyrus said. I respected the Reverend for his selfless devotion. He could have solicited donations for a capital campaign to support the parish’s expansion to a larger facility, a proposal he’d been mulling since adding a second service on Sundays to meet popular demand. But he opted instead to channel his fundraising toward what he called “the greater public good.” I intended to match his commitment to service in my own way.
EIGHTEEN
After mass-emailing fallenangels I posted a note to dream2live4evR. When I hadn’t heard from her by mid-afternoon, I was worried. We must have done something wrong with our work the night before. I called Joy, Cyrus and Bebe for suggestions, but all I got was voicemail. I didn’t leave any messages. I would deal with this on my own.
I tried to dig into the web site’s storage to get Remedios’ outside email, but I was denied. Joy had encrypted the software to prevent anyone but the users themselves from accessing their personal info. Identity safeguard of the highest level. Joy the generous genius. I would beg her to teach me some of her tricks. In time, she would.
With no word from Remedios, I fired off a note to the Vocabularist. I was still seeing her at the time. Whenever one of us wanted to get together, we’d contact each other through the web site. No cell numbers, no emails. She believed such a “closed-loop communications protocol,” as she put it, would streamline our connects, “limit obfuscation by diminishing the technological variables.” Fine by me, I’d said. That was before the law forced us to shut down the system and reboot in alien space. At present, not a single fallenangel appeared online. I stared at the desolate screen, feeling helpless among the ruins of a ravaged community.
A solitary signal rose from the ashes. User name: sultrysuccubus. Her jpegs: black, white and red. Black hair, eyes, fingernails. White skin I could almost see through. Red strapless gown, tankini, camisole. Lips, red like blood oranges. Her tease: “I’m the girl who brushes up against you in the nightclub, who pulls down her stunna shades to eye you walking past, who stares you down OFF LIMITS once she gets your attention. I’m the girl in the fuck-me pumps, fishnets, leather, satin dress so tight you know there’s only my peachy ass underneath. I’m the girl who shakes her head and giggles with her girlfriends when you offer me a drink. I’m the girl who’s always thirsty. But never for you, always for your best friend, your neighbor, your boss. But oh, if I were yours . . . I’d feel you up in the corner of the club, stab my nipples to your chest in the frothy hot tub. I’d lick your earlobes and your neck, press your hand between my thighs. I’d look you in the eye as you come in my mouth, shatter glass with my cries when I come against your tongue. I’d bend down low when you take me from behind, suck you in as far as you can go. Where would you like to go, baby? Let me take you there.”
Her write-up didn’t say much else about who she was, what she wanted. There was no real connect. But I would not abandon her to miserable isolation.
I clicked her little dove to open the chat window. We talked on the eerie emptiness of existence, neither of us easy with our sole-survivor status. We feared for the future of fallenangels.
I said we should meet offline, at a café near the lake or anywhere we could blend in with others who were breathing. “We can share the sound of our voices,” I wrote, “hold hands, remember what it means to be alive.”
She balked. She had to work late, she said, but she’d take a break with me right now on webcam, if I liked. She sent me a link to a site outside the fallenangels network. I was confused and told her so. “I can’t make thing work here,” she wrote. “But you want see me, yes?”
She explained how the link she’d given me was for “special free access to webcam fun. Enter promo code: 69luv. Follow directions on screen.” I said I’d check it out, asked her not to disappear. She wrote: “I right here baby. I wait for you. Hurry. You need see me.”
I passed through multiple screens on this other site, signing up with fake vitals until I hit the final prompt: credit card request. Switching back to fallenangels, I asked her what happened to free. “No problems,” she wrote. “This age verification. Adult service. You want adult service, yes?” This was when I called her out.
I said I understood if this is what she did for work, but she didn’t belong in our community. “Fallenangels is spamscamfree,” I wrote. “We’d like to keep it that way. I’m flagging you for deportation. You’re not even the girl in the pics.”
She wrote: “Putang ina mo. Malibog ka rin namn eh.” I laughed at her with a series of LOLs. Then she whaled on me some more: “Bahala kang umalan nyan.” I said I wished I knew what she was saying, so I could repay the kindness. Then I told her I loved her. She delivered a parting shot, “Gago ka tang ina mo,” and logged off. I was alone once again in our e-ghost town.
More amused than annoyed, I saved her remarks and searched the web for translations. The language was Tagalog. I’d never met anyone from the Philippines, unless you count Shannon’s fractional Pinay roots. All I know about the country is how the U.S. raped and massacred the islanders at the turn of the last century and now the nation’s a tourism partner. Here are the decoded insults: “Motherfucker,” “You’re also a pervert,” “Your penis is a warty pig,” and “Stupid bitch motherfucker,” which may also be “Your mother is a stupid bitch, you fuck” or “Stupid bitch, your mother fucks.” While accuracy in online translation is a crapshoot, I basically got the gist.
I realize the digital domain is a place where some folks play
identity games. That’s all good until innocents get hurt, as network TV has warned us with its sensational exposés on addiction, cyberstalking, sexual assault and murder “on the New Media Frontier.” The same anonymity that encouraged Cyrus to found fallenangels emboldens others to be ruder, meaner, uglier online than they would dare be face to face. As my son grows up, I fear without my guidance he’ll fall prey to such behavior, or worst case, adopt it as his own. We can’t let this happen, brother.
While I get it that sultrysuccubus’ trashtalking wasn’t personal—she didn’t know me—I couldn’t bear the idea of these slights against mom. Is that a Latino thing, bro? Of course, all boys want to keep their mamis from harm. I never had to protect ours from your father, and no one where we ever lived would mess with her either, but now this little fake-ass webcam muthafucker thinks she (or he!) can talk shit about our mom?!
I still don’t know why it upsets me but it does. Back then, I tagged the profile, and once Joy showed me how, I erased it with a few administrative keystrokes.
_________
By early evening I was anxious. No fallenangels love notes. No texts, no voicemails. I called Cyrus and once more endured his outgoing message: a boy-girl duet of “The Long Black Veil,” an a capella takeoff of the Dave Matthews/Emilylou Harris takeoff of the Johnny Cash classic. It must have been him and Emmalee. He was out with her right then I knew it. Or they were tangled up in his sheets. She made him unavailable. I had a problem with this.
Still no signs of life on fallenangels. This would change in a few hours when those coming home early from disappointing dates or coffee with friends (who drinks coffee at night?) rushed to their keypads for the promise of an e-connect. My personal note would touch their hearts, I’m sure of it, as they read about the rebirth of the web site, which they may have feared was lost forever. Then they would sign in on the downlow through the First Church portal, look to see who’s online and rejoice in the knowledge that others like themselves had returned to the roost. In the meantime, I ordered pizza and browsed the profiles for fresh potentials.
_________
CondeeCandee was the one fallenangel I chose based on looks alone: healthy curves, dark chocolate skin, easy smile, blackbarred eyes. I would rise every morning like the sun if I had the honor of waking up beside this diehard Baptist, business owner and single mom of three teenage girls. Her write-up didn’t let on exactly what she wanted from an intimate encounter, what I could do for her beyond playing her male double: “youthful middle-aged professional, single dad, man of faith, race unimportant.” For her, I would dye my hair auburn, touch of gray around the temples to meet her maturity prereq.
It wasn’t until our third or fourth online chat that she finally fessed up: “I’m wild about toys. Oh my, they’re the only thing that satisfies my natural urges. My ex-husband couldn’t handle it. He said I was a blasphemer, a sinner and a whore. None of which is truth. So I left him with no regrets. But in the years since we split, I’ve found it challenging to meet a man of substance who isn’t afraid of a strong black woman. All you men are so good at wining and dining, waving around your plastic money, but when you get to the bedroom and I break out my special friends, y’all get prudish as a mother hen. I need a MAN open to loving a WOMAN the way she wants—the way I know I like it—without being insecure about your masculinity or making me feel bad for wanting to feel good. I assure you, I am a classy God-fearing lady. My Lord and Savior has no quarrel with me or my libido. So how about it, Mr. Fallenangel? Shall we give this a go?”
Another user I was drawn to called herself watch_me_now. Looks-wise, she could have been Good Charlotte twenty years back. All big hair, teeth and breasts, she was made for the camera. And she knew it. Her jpegs were done-up in a pro shop, every shot with its own pose, outfit, makeup, lighting. Her eyes were model-hungry, her story the same: “I need an attractive, charismatic, successful man with whom to turn heads. When we walk into a room, we’ll make the guys drool and the dolls swoon. When we promenade in the mall, shopkeepers will shower us with complimentary gifts. Bouncers will beg us to cross their velvet cords, and when we move on the dance floor the walls will sweat. Maitre d’s will give us window seats, bartenders free champagne. DJs will dedicate whole sets to us. We’ll be a paparazzi wet dream. If you’ll be my Dixie chicken, I’ll be your Tennessee lamb.”
I created the profile WildWideEyes to match watch_me_now’s. We would both be twenty-seven years old, divorced, kidless, hip yet professional, sexy, outgoing, looking to be looked at, determined to have it our way every night on the town. I snapped some self-portraits in one of my new suits, rocking the open collar and snakeskin belt with a buckle you can hang on to. I slicked back my hair, digitally darkened it for now. By request, I would be her Latin lover.
After I dropped her an invite to salsa dance (don’t laugh, bro: I did a few lessons with the ex back when) I watched as pinpoints of light like celestial wings flashed up on the screen. The fallenangels were coming home to the nest. More boys than girls, though. It occurred to me, once Joy taught me the secret, I could play God and banish the bad seeds from the garden, delete their user accounts for being, in webmaster jargon, complete assholes. I saw this as a thinning of the herd, necessary for community health. From what I’d gathered from the girls I’d met, these so-called men of the Dirty South were lacking both goods and delivery.
The write-up by ticktockclock was a perfect example of such female frustration. It reminded me of happyhappy’s inability to find a guy with the stomach to meet her needs. She wrote: “Let’s try this again. Once more with feeling! Man wanted NOW for four-month commitment. The plan is to fuckfuckfuck so I can have my way with your little swimmers. If we get a hit, you do me several times a week until my tits drip. You’ll be my lapdog. Then we step it up, whatever you can take, until we terminate our project with a road trip to Raleigh. You drive.
“The problem is, I can only be satisfied when my uterus is a food factory. Honestly, if I don’t find someone soon to help me out, I may shoot up the church parking lot! I know I’m a freak, but this is God’s way. My daddy said God told him to give me a son and I should be glad he wanted me because nobody else would. Church said I got what I deserved and should feel blessed to be with child. That was my first time. Crazy, it’s also when I finally felt right, until midway through when I dropped a bomb in the school lavatory. After running away, I realized how I missed my condition, like my body at last had lined up with my soul and I was alive for the first time in my life.
“I need this feeling again. It’s been far too long. Who’s man enough to make me come?”
I could do this. Shannon said I was a specialist in resurrections. I’ve always had great respect for women with tender nipples, swollen breasts, a belly with an appetite and emotions that fuel such a figure.
I was closest with the ex just before she miscarried. I made her feel cherished, beautiful, servicing her every need: chili-cheese dogs in the middle of the night, cunnilingus until lockjaw. She welcomed my attention. “I love you,” she’d say. I was a good husband. “You’ll be a great father,” she said. “The opposite of yours.” (She meant yours, bro.) We were a real family. Just the two (and a third?) of us.
My partner, my wife, lover, my life . . . she accepted everything I could give and returned my kindness by being happy, truly happy, content, as a direct result of my affection. She knew me—and loved me—wouldn’t dismiss my being there for her as smothering, tell me I was nothing, give me up to God’s way, not until later.
Giving up is not giving. I could do this. I could ease ticktockclock’s worried mind, help this poor girl live again. Anyhow, who am I to judge another’s right to life? Our nation exalts the virtues of killing in the name of God, gold and homeland. Why not self-preservation? One could argue such willfulness is an act of courage, self-sacrifice, a kindness. I could do this.
NINETEEN
“Our community is in a state of emergency!” The Reverend had worked up a sweat. “We a
re suffering from what used to be called moral transgression. It’s much more serious than a lapse in judgment simply redeemed, a little white lie hiding beneath the sofa like a field mouse you bat out the door with a broom. We’re talking a national epidemic of ethical illiteracy, an obliteration of moral values. From the home to the mall, the classroom to the ballot box, our community is suffering from wholesale identity theft. The perpetrators are every one of you in this house of worship, where you go through the motions of living in Christ but fail to bring Him into your everyday way of being.”
Since the Reverend had begun to conspire with local power brokers on his PACC agenda, his sermons had taken on the air of an indictment. While services were still standing room only, it was tough getting snapshots of rapturous parishioners for PRAISE JESUS. Shamed before God and man, they looked wretched with guilt. I did what I could, adjusting the color, brightness and contrast of the jpegs to rosy their appearance, but my efforts were in vain.
“Let’s look at the children,” he said, “the barometer of community health.” He shuffled some papers at the lectern as if searching for the damning document, which he soon waved in the air. “The facts speak an abominable truth: sex! violence! greed! sloth! lying! cheating! stealing! These are the values young people hold dear.” The adolescents in the congregation hung their heads. The Reverend carped at how among First World nations, the United States boasts the highest rates of teen pregnancy, abortion, sexually transmitted disease, drug addiction, alcoholism and suicide. He let this last note ring out in the heavy silence, wiped his brow with a gold-stitched kerchief, told us how it’s said God is in the details, his voice nearly a whisper. “But I say to you today, good neighbors and friends, God is not in these details.” His tone shifted. “That is the problem.”
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