"A tedious brief scene - very tragical mirth."
This site is slowly coming together. Expect instability as I am growing the underlying code. The pennyjar blog is live, and so are the text and poetry sections. Anything that exists of the rest is currently only at the old site.
I got an email last night from a girl named Lori. I don't know her, she said, but she found my profile on a friend's American Online by searching for the small town her friend and I apparently both live near. She doesn't have instant messenger herself because her computer is "kinda old." She has made a home page, though, even if "it's not very good."
I always enjoy seeing other people's web pages. Her site is based on a template I recognize, but it's really not bad. She offers an animated smiley face as a picture of herself. "Jus' kiddin'," she says. A later photo reveals her to be a pretty, tall, lightly tan girl with platinum blonde hair. I learned that she recently turned eighteen and had a great party, that she enjoys cooking, that she likes to walk her dog, Sasha, and that she'll happily eat at any restaurant from Applebee's to McDonald's.
Lori's online photo album is simple. Mostly it contains pictures of her. There is also one of her dog, one of her car. One photo is pixelated from bad resizing. I click the link to her "glamour shots" and travel to a list of first names on a different site (it uses another template I recognize). I have to check the email to remember that her name is Lori.
Some friends in high school had glamour shots done. They came to homeroom showing off proofs of flirtatious and elegant poses. Shots featured their own best formal wear or unusual gowns from the studio. Lori and her photographer have a different style. When I click the link for Lori, she greets me with something beyond a flirt, peeling off dresses or shorts or wearing none at all. Her undergarments are hardly Victorian. A couple shots feature the same summer dress she wore at her eighteenth birthday party.
I am stunned. I click a few of the preview images. I cannot believe I am seeing what appears before me. Nice girls don't pose like this. Not girls who email me personally. Not girls my age with "not very good" homepages. I've received my share of junk porn email, but till this moment, bare skin never had personality.
This wasn't what I was looking for. I didn't know. I am too stunned to think clearly.
It was my fault for clicking on the preview images. The second glances were my fault. The split seconds I spent learning that some of the other names led to similar "glamour shots" were my fault. I should have hit the back button at the first sign. I should have known better. I should have checked the homepage of these photographers to learn that they "appreciate the female form" and "lovely young women who are not ashamed of their bodies" before it was too late.
Was it my fault? A rape victim believes it's her fault. She feels dirty, and she is afraid. She thinks maybe she asked for it. She thinks maybe she wanted it. I feel violated. I feel raped. I have now seen more of Lori than I intended to see of any woman until my wedding night. Much more than I have seen of my girlfriend of two years. I have never written a word to Lori, but I am forced into a sexual relationship after no more than an introduction.
I did not consent.