Confessions of Cyber-Nun

It's been over two years now since I've had sex. Which means, essentially, I have cobwebs up there. I believe my virginity has, in fact, re-grown.

Oh, I'm sorry. Was that too much information? Look, if you wanna to hang with the PalPal, you gotta suck it up sometimes.

Anyway, at this point, I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to be a cyber-nun for the rest of my life. This is different from a she-geek in that geekettes are always in high demand due to the male/female imbalance inherent in geekdom. A cyber-nun, on the other hand, is a woman who, due either to excessive baggage, issues, or health reasons, feels safer -- and is therefore more attractive -- in the anonymous online world.

Or, put bluntly, she-geeks have sex and cyber-nuns don't. Instead, like traditional nuns, we focus that energy inward, but instead of turning it to faith we turn to things like fanfiction, or MMO's, or... writing blogs. The computer becomes our altar. Checking our email is a sacrament. The toys of Legolas and Morpheus atop our monitors? Icons of worship. Our liturgy is quoting from any one of a dozen geekdoms.

No doubt some of you -- and God bless you, truly -- will write in and say, "No, Palette, we find you beautiful and smart and witty and sexy and we'd shag you right now if we could." And don't get me wrong, I truly do treasure those sentiments. But if you ever saw me, the real me, for just a second... you'd see why it would NOT work. And then there'd be several awkward moments, and we'd both feel horrible because I'd feel rejected and you'd feel superficial. So just... trust me on this, 'k?

A very select few reading this blog have seen my face and lived to tell the tale. No doubt several of you will chime in with "You have nothing to feel bad about, you look fine." At which point I say, "Most of you knew me in person before you met me online. Those who only know me from online have built up this fantasy of me as some Charisma 20 sex goddess (an illusion for which I really have only myself to blame, truth be told), and unless I was a supermodel I'd have absolutely no way of meeting that expectation."

The closest I come to a supermodel is "er".

Yes, I'm rather depressed today, but I think it's a highly realistic depression. I'm slowly coming to terms with the notion that I will be romantically alone for the rest of my life, and that I will die without having known the joys of raising my own children. Instead, I'll have an extensive collection of online friends who will never have met me, and wouldn't even know where to send flowers in the event of my death. Which doesn't make them any less real, any less valid, or any less my friends; but they, like so many things in my life, are pure abstraction and not concrete.

If I could have one selfish wish, I would wish that I could be the person you think I am. She's a much nicer, prettier, and overall better person than I could ever hope to be.

Sorry about the emo whining, folks. I needed to get that out of my system. And now, like a sorbet to cleanse your palate (pun intended), I leave you with this picture of a hot latex fetish nun: