The Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday 17 September 2005

I don't have to restrain myself from saying anything either, the way my awfully pearshaped brother looks doesn't seem to bother me any more.
I have a connection with someone, one-upping the 18-year-old virgin without having to say a word. Amy and I, that's something deep. No barriers, sharing everything.
Then again, online, how open you are is directly related to how big the ocean is between you.
It's modern long-distance luv, staying online until the early hours of the morning talking to someone who, fear-monger Naomi Robson insists, may not be the one in all the photos she's sent.
And all the while, I'm wishing it's modern teenage love, discussing the greater things over Big Macs, with all the eye-humping and half-smiling.
But I have to settle for what I have: late nights and tedious abbrevi8ionz.
Cross-legged on my bed at 11 in the evening, I'm waiting for that faithful bing to tell me Amy's arrived.
I ask myself if it's worth it.
I feel like Carrie Bradshaw, staring down at my Apple, minus the cigarette, and whopper nose, questioning the nature of my relationship. Except I'm doing it in a manly, spit-in-the-bucket kind of way. None of that whiney Sarah Jessica Parker bull.
Does she feel the way I do?
Is it really the kind of -? Bing.
Nothing else is important now. She's binged.
In the bottomless pit of trash that is the internet, with all the SweetAmericanPie69's and the 70minus1-w-ME's, I've found myself an *Amzie89*. Something special.
Smart, funny, Amy's perfect. Worth waiting up for. She's –
Introducing me to some other guy she's met? Another guy she's met ... online? Her digital knees, it seems, are spread quite far.
His name is Rick, 17, from California. A surfer. And I've waited, cross-legged, on my bed well past 11 for this. To meet Rick, 17, from California. The surfer.
She says she's happi. He lives closa. She's sorri ...
Without hesitation, I click the