Alright, I'll go out on a limb and just admit my deep personal problem: I'm a heterofatasnugglyphobic.
I fear obese women that are attracted to me.
It's not that I prefer the waif, nor do all overweight women adversely affect me.
Heterofatasnugglyphobia only applies to overweight women who express their feelings towards me, want to slather me with hugs and kisses, and are already misty eyed because they think I don't like them.
The blunt truth: I'm just not attracted to them that way.
But, they have selective hearing and apparently miss that part.
Now, with that unfortunate admission out of the way, and hopefully behind you, my dear reader, I believe some investigation is warranted into the cause of this phobia.
And I will do my absolute best to be politically correct and sensitive to women.
Before the skirts considered the Internet to be righteous, or at least until they felt their peers wouldn't tease them mercilessly for admitting that they logged-on now and again, meeting girls on the Internet was a very risky business.
Today, teenaged pop-singers write songs about Instant Messaging, and I feel that society has moved beyond the embryonic stages of Internet acceptance.
However, a couple years ago the Internet was a different place.
There was a time when Instant Messaging was just 'chatting', either in a 'chat room', or on a MUSH.
I don't include MUDs as a possible place to chat as they didn't afford a good 'chatting' environment.
At that time, between 1992 and 1996, there were approximately three good-looking girls who used the Internet, and two of them were around to help DARPA program the first network protocols back in the sixties.
All other women fell into one or more of the following categories: overweight, rather unpleasant in appearance, or guys.
And it doesn't burn a lot of brain cells to apply a programmatic proof for that categorization: if(peers.testPopularity('Internet') == false && me.getIsPopular() == true){ me.useInternet(false); } For the popular and pretty crowd, this just means if you were popular, and your peers thought the Internet was lame, which they most certainly did, then you subscribed to that belief (sorry, force of habit leads me to assume that same crowd sports low watt bulbs) .
At first, what amazed me about the 'chat rooms' and MUSHs was the ability to prattle away with someone you never met, and with whom you would probably never meet.
It was even likely that if the time was right, the conversation may have turned a little risque.
I never considered myself a great 'chatter', just a sensible and attentive one.
And, perhaps that is the reason I currently don't use Instant Messaging, or any 'chat' system.
Given enough time, every conversation begins to twinkle with red flags.
Eventually, every sentence is a red flag, signaling me to flee to the highlands and reject all technology so I might never witness such rhetoric again.
In fact, the rhetoric was so inane and terrible it could only be compared with the likes of Lorum Ipsum.
The experience was similar to driving a car down a steep hill, knowing your breaks will fail within the first one hundred feet.
As your car careens down the street, the impulse to jam your foot into the breaks begins to overtake you.
But, every time your foot touches the pedal, your ears are filled with a metal-on-metal screeching, and a chunky throb rattling the steering wheel.
Just about every Internet conversation I've been privy to has been no different.
I'm in a car at the top of a hill, and the moment I start moving the red flags start flying up.
If I don't stop now, I may wind up in a wreck.
In one such discussion, a never-met-before, presumed-to-be-girl named Cocktail Amy asked me about my appearance.
Keep in mind that digital cameras were not heavily used at the time, so pictures were conveniently unavailable.
I gave her the skinny on my build, and then, after a pause, she responded.
Cocktail: "Wow, you're pretty tall. I'm only five feet and one inch. But, I'm full figured (flag), which guys have told me they like (flag). Let's see, I have hazel eyes, short hair, and am in good shape(flag), though a bit pudgy (flag). So, what kind of school did you go to when you grew up?"
Me: "I was a slave, I mean, I had the opportunity to attend private Catholic schools."
Cocktail: "So you're Catholic? (flag)"
Me: "I was raised that way, anyway."
Cocktail: "I'm a Wiccan.(FLAG)"
I won't bother continuing with the discourse, but I do want to explain what qualifies each remark to be flagged.
First, 'full figured'.
There are two degrees of this reference.
One refers to someone, preferably a woman, that is well-endowed and is curvy.
The second refers to someone who is heavy.
Second, assuming the reference was to a heavy build, most guys don't like that.
Yes, there may be some, but not that many.
Third, heavy people are not in good shape. Period.
Fourth, 'pudgy' qualifies the previous statements, and stands alone as its own troublesome remark.
Fifth, if they have to ask you to repeat something you just typed, then you are being tested for a response, which is the last point.
Practitioners of Pagan religions are scary.
I don't mean Non-Christian denominations, just religions that include prayers to Odin or Zeus, or are derived from Wicca.
Today, it is a lot easier because there are more digital cameras and scanners available than bad television programming.
Today, one can be lulled into a false sense of security because a scanned picture is pretty close to the real thing, right?
Today, it's a better world thanks to technology, right?
Those individuals who have taken such pictures at face value, and who have later learned a truth is a stark contrast, have probably since memorized the term "Glamour Photo."
You've seen "Glamour Photos" before, if not by that name then something similar.
Those types of photos are used for yearbooks in high school and college.
They can easily be identified by the blurred hair, blurred cheeks, faux canvas texture, gentle lighting, and an additional layer of fuzziness applied to the rest of the blurred portions.
In other words, the picture may as well be of someone else because it stopped being an accurate depiction of the original subject when the similarity dipped below fifty-percent.
I remember when a girl, Dances about Architecture, sent me a glamour shot, and in my naivete, I simply thought she was attractive, from the neck up anyway.
Even though she was a bit out of focus.
And though I had never met her in the real world, I thought, hey, this might be a good opportunity to see if this Internet-thing is good for something.
And though my proverbial car careened down the hill, red flags thrown in my face at every word she uttered, I guess I was just that much more of a fool.
Prior to her visit, she wrote me letters and started throwing the 'L' word around.
Now, no matter what kind of fool I may have been, I was certainly not falling for that.
So, I responded that I would rather we meet first, and let any potential romance blossom as it may from there.
Needless to say, the moment I saw her disembark from the airplane, I wanted to run.
Flee to the highlands and forsake all technology.
Whoever that person was certainly didn't look like her photo, and she was already to turn the boy who stood quivering in fear into a boy who quivers in fear at the sight of her while remaining under her spell.
The first few days of the visit were rather innocuous.
I endured her those first couple days by filling the schedule with typical tourist activities.
And then, on the third day, there she was, her eyes misty in want of tears, wanting just a hug.
By the time Dances about Architecture was ready leave, she had stopped throwing around the 'L' word and had instead taken to calling me a bastard, apparently because she had assumed I was attracted to her.
If she hadn't pushed herself on me, who knows?
If her rhetoric hadn't been filled with half truths, her picture just a bit more in focus, her mannerisms more congenial ... sorry, no, it never could happen.
Ever since, I've suffered from a phobia where Internet-women like her leach onto me from afar, and then turn into something far worse than I originally thought possible.
The sad fact is there is such a thing as heterofatasnugglyphobia, and since Dances about Architecture visited, I have to take relationships one day at a time.