Sunday 29 June 2014

Do Androids Dream of Electric Cigarettes?









for jenny




Beauty and the Beast.  The French one.

Oh, the Jean Cocteau film.

Yeah. Maybe.

La Belle et La Bete.

Yeah.

You like it?

Yeah.

I suppose you are Beauty and I'm the Beast then?

:-)
 :-)
:-I  
?

I was sweating over the computer in nervous anticipation of her reply.  We'd managed to get over the awkward introduction and she had now indicated a willingness to respond, though it wasn't  exactly a free pass to smileytown.  My emoticons had so far landed on a blank screen and lay by themselves desperately hoping to be joined by a companion.  Meeting people for affairs or relationships online was not as easy as it had been in the entrance days of the internet.   That world was now bigger than ever, a sleazy modern metropolis, over-populated, horribly polluted.  The sleazy joints were the best places to pick up chicks.  Www.chickschickchicks.  That kind of shit.  So it was more difficult to get to the next stage with young women who were constantly picturing you with your hand down your pants as you typed with the other. 

Noooo, you're not a beast.

Thanks.  But how do you know that?

:-)           (she smiled..........;-)

I might be doing beastly things right now. You would never know.  You are halfway around the world.  You don't really know me.  And you don't know what I'm doing at this moment.  I could be cutting my toenails and chewing on the shrapnel right now for all you really know. :-)

I don't think you're doing that hahaaa

That's very confident of you.

But you are right.

Pardon?

I don't know who you are.  I can't see you.  This doesn't seem real right now.  You could be doing beastly things.

Yeah.

I don't think you are a beast. If you were a beast, I wouldn't be talking to you.

What does it take to be a beast? Maybe I can live up to your standards. :-)

I don't know.

Come on, describe your perfect beast. Ugly - check.  Weird - check.  haha

;-)

A fake.  A sleazeball who wants to scam you out of your money?

Maybe.

 A wretched misogynistic social mistake taking out all of his anger and frustration on unsuspecting members of the cyber community?

Hmmm.....

A filthy old man in his hovel indulging in all the sick fantasies he missed out on before the internet came along?

Eh...perhaps.  Well, I don't know.  There are many beasts online, but it's the simple things that someone might do in real life that I consider beastly.

Simple things?

Yeah.

Like what?

Like smoking.  I think people who smoke are beasts.

I remorsefully eyed my bag of tobacco, the glossy packaging glistening in the shine of the laptop screen.  I was just planning to roll another one.  I didn't know how to reply to her.  Didn't know if I should just tell her immediately that I was in fact her ideal.  Her ideal beast.  I rolled the cigarette anyway to deliberate on the next comment.  She wouldn't know.  She wouldn't be able to see this beastly act.  And my deception was safe, so the beasts would have been proud of me.

:-I  Smoking?  Yeah, it's bad.

I hate it.

Me too.

Do you smoke?

Eh, yeah. Well, I used to. 

What?????

Not anymore.  I use the e-cigarettes.

E-cigarettes?

You know, the electronic ones.  They are not real cigarettes.  Not real tobacco.  They emulate the sensation of smoking.  It's not smoke.  It's 'vapour.'

E-cigarettes?

Like E-mail.  It's not mail.  It just exists in another place.  An electronic place.

What was real anymore?  The smoking.  The beauty. The beast. We prayed in our hearts to invisible gods for it to be real.  But nothing seemed material.  Everything in a dark foggy cloud.  No.  No, a vapour.  Yes.  A vaporous mist.  Modern being is the nightmare of the solipsist.

The last love story goes like this:

So Beauty and the Beast is your favourite film?

Yeah.

Great.

You may be a beast, and I may be a beauty.  But come what may, in reality or in fantasy, we may at 
least each have this day.



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