Connecting (1980-1987)

Written by Doug – the northlondonhippy

Going Online

Home computers were relatively rare in the early 1980s. I got my first Radio Shack (Tandy) TRS-80 in November 1980.

It couldn’t do much, you had to write programs in Basic, line by line from hobby magazines. And there was no easy way to save the programmes, except unreliable cassette tapes. I was still in high school. 

A couple of years later, I had my first apartment, and bought my second system, an Apple //c. That model was a cheaper, but less open, and expandable version of the classic Apple //e. It had a monochrome screen, with green text only, like the computers in the film, The Matrix. It could do a lot more than my first system, like word processing. I had a printer too, and used my new computer for writing college assignments. 

I also bought a modem. It was my first, a 1200 baud dial-up, which is super slow and worked with the Apple //c. It could take a minute for a page of text to load. Sorry, this is all a bit geeky.

There wasn’t much to connect to back then, mostly small bulletin board systems (BBS) that were locally based, and run. If you didn’t stay on local systems, the call charges could quickly add up. 

The other option was a national paid for service. CompuServe was the biggest back then. I did have a month’s free trial, but I couldn’t afford the charges after that. 

It was totally text based, no pictures, no video, and no audio, but you could get news wires, email, and quizzes. Basically it was just text based information, or entertainment. And it was a “walled garden”, meaning you could only connect, communicate with, or see things on the CompuServe system, and that included the email. If someone else subscribed to a different online service, they were completely cut off from other systems. There was no internet, or even interoperability, back in the early days. 

The big, new thing on CompuServe, or CIS as it was known, was something called the CB Simulator. If you saw it today, you would recognise it as an early type of chat room system. It was organised into channels, which worked like rooms. One channel was dedicated to “adult fun”. 

The other big thing to come out of CIS, and the CB Simulator, was “CompuSex” or “hot chatting”. There were articles in newspapers, and magazines about this new phenomenon, where random strangers were helping each other online… get off. Distance didn’t matter, you could have computer sex with anyone, anywhere. It was the future!

On that first night, I hot chatted with someone who claimed to be a girl around my age, from Hawaii. I have no idea if any of that was true, but we spent a couple of hours, typing one handed about our most explicit sexual desires, and what we would be doing to each other, if we were together. 

I wasn’t terribly experienced at this point, but I wasn’t a virgin either. What made me good at hot chatting, and what gave me such a vivid imagination, were all the Penthouse Forum letters that I had read over the years. 

I was oddly good at it. It was probably my earliest ongoing, creative writing. Take that Mrs. Smith’s 6th grade English class!

That was nearly all I did for that one month trial, I chatted to far away girls, in far away places, about our deepest desires. As a horny young guy, it was fun, but it wasn’t nearly enough. It never occurred to me to look for local people on CIS, that I could meet in real life in that first month. 

When the free trial ended, I turned to the bulletin boards. Most of the early systems were centred around hobbies, like computers, or cycling. One local BBS that I found was an adults-only hook-up site for swingers. Sex can be a hobby too.

The site was small, and only one person at a time could connect to it, so often the phone number was busy when you tried to access it. My persistence paid off, and I managed to create a profile, and have a look around.

Unsurprisingly, it was mainly single men, a very small number of couples, and no single women. Most of the men were older, like 40s or 50s older. I was 20 years old at this point, It would have been 1983.

I wasn’t registered on the system that long, when I received my first private message. It was from a couple. The writer actually said she was the female half of the couple, and she said they were looking for someone close to their ages for a threesome. 

I’d never considered a threesome with a couple. Whenever I had that particular fantasy, it was always me, and two women. I tried to keep an open mind, so I replied, and we exchanged a couple of messages. I think she could sense my reticence. She asked for my phone number. I gave it to her. 

A couple of nights later, my phone rang, and it was the female half of the couple, ringing from a pay phone. She said she had an argument with her husband, and she needed to get out for a while. Could she visit me, just to talk?

I arranged to meet her somewhere nearby, because my apartment was hard to find. She hopped in my car, and we drove back to my place. 

She was cute. She had dark brown hair, and was just wearing jeans, and a tee shirt. She was maybe a year or two older than me. 

Not long into the short journey, she told me definitively, that she wasn’t going to have sex with me that night. I can’t say I was planning on doing anything with her. I don’t know what I expected. I was going with the flow. 

We got back to my place, and I sparked up a joint, which we passed back, and forth as we chatted. She talked a lot about her marriage, and how unhappy she was, but she said they were determined to make it work, because of their baby. 

After a while, she moved closer to me, and kissed me. She said, just because we’re not going to have sex, doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun. I was in no position to disagree. 

We started making out, and it got intense. She started touching me in my special place. She offered me a BJ. She didn’t have to ask me twice. She kept her clothing on. 

After we were done, she said she had to return home, I drove her back to her car, and that was it. I didn’t hear from her again, but her husband phoned me a couple of nights later. 

He was friendly. He asked me if I enjoyed meeting his wife, and if I had a good time. He asked if I was up for a threesome. He also asked if he could blow me too, and he offered to visit me on his own that night. 

I declined. I told him I didn’t swing that way. He pushed it, he said I owed him since he let me fool around with his wife. He told me had sent her to see me the previous night, and it was all his idea. 

I was starting to put the pieces together. She was the bait, and he was trying to reel me in. Or did she pre-screen my peen? Ewww. Whatever. I knew I was in way over my head. 

I said thanks, made my excuses, and got off the phone. I didn’t hear from them again. 

If you think I learned my lesson about the swingers BBS system, you’d be wrong. Another couple’s account contacted me, but this time it was different. They weren’t looking for a threesome, the wife was looking for a lover on her own. I was one of the few men on the site that was close to her age. That’s why she contacted me. 

I remember her name, I remember her. I liked her. She told me her husband had gone off sex completely since she had her son, and she was very frustrated. 

They talked about wife swapping, but her husband wasn’t into the idea, he wanted a threesome with another guy. And she wasn’t interested in that. So they were at an impasse. 

They had signed up to the BBS, but they never did anything, so my new friend took it upon herself to use the account, to see if she could find some fun on her own. Most of the single guys on there were a lot older, I was closer to her age. She was only a couple of years older than me. 

We met, and we liked each other. We had a really good time together, sexually. It was actually the best time I’d ever had with anyone, up to that point. We met a second time, and it was even better. 

I knew she couldn’t be my girlfriend, what with having a husband, and a kid, and all, but I thought it might become a regular thing. I was living in fantasy land. And then she asked me a question, that reintroduced some reality. 

She asked if she could bring her young son with her on her next visit, because she couldn’t find anyone to watch him. She said he would be fine on his own, in his baby buggy, or whatever it is you transport babies around in, while we had our fun in the other room.

And that’s when the guilt hit me. I didn’t care how young, or well behaved her son was, I didn’t want to be the cause of him needing therapy one day. I didn’t want to give him some memory he’d have to bury away. I didn’t want to be in this situation, so I got out of it during that phone call. I ended it right there. 

To be honest, I wish I met her under different circumstances. I really liked her. She got married too young, so did the first woman I met. None of them were emotionally, or intellectually, prepared to be in a normal, adult relationship. And for that matter, it was the same for those creepy cheating guys I worked with around the same time.

I didn’t seem to know anyone around my age who was married, and happy about it. Or faithful. All of this left an impression, and a few scars. 

I Never Thought It Would Happen to Me

I was working in a different office in 1984, and a new work buddy of mine came to stay with me for a long weekend of debauchery at the Jersey Shore. I think it might have been Memorial Day. 

The plan was to hit the bars along the shore, and chase girls. The bars were heaving, but we were having terrible luck with the ladies. 

At one point, we were in a dodgy bar in Long Branch, and it was getting late. I was making eye contact with a really pretty girl on the other side of the bar, and was getting ready to make my approach, when her biker boyfriend came up behind her. When she stood up, I saw that she was around 8 or 9 months pregnant. He had on a Pagan jacket, which means if he turned up a minute or two later, I might have ended up stomped by the whole gang. It was that kind of night. 

We struck out everywhere, but I was in a never-say-die mood, so we kept going. We bounced between Asbury, and Long Branch, we drove along the ocean. 

I spotted a hitchhiker. She had long blonde hair, and a cocktail in her hand. I fucking love New Jersey!

I pulled over, and asked her where she was going? She said, “Wherever you are, baby”, and she climbed into the back seat. We went back to my place.

She was all over me as soon as we got to my mine, and we went into the bedroom. My friend watched TV on the sofa. 

I never thought it would happen to me, but… This was my Penthouse Forum letter moment. Random hot sex, with a random hot chick.  Completely consensual, no hypocrisy, no infidelity, and it was completely meaningless. It felt like a win. 

When we were finished, we went back to the living room, and she asked my friend if he wanted a go. He declined. I didn’t say it was classy. Then I drove her home, it wasn’t too far. We didn’t even know each other’s names.

Hobroken

I moved to Hoboken in north Jersey in the summer of 1985, as I was attending New York University, after commuting from the shore for a semester. It is a mile-square city, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, between the Lincoln, and Holland Tunnels. It was a great place to live. 

When I moved I also upgraded my computer again, to my third system. It was an Atari 1040ST, and it had a colour screen. Yes, the same Atari that makes video game consoles. They made decent desktops back in the day, too. And I had a 2400 baud modem for it. Still slow, but only half as slow as my previous 1200 baud model. 

I think they dropped their prices, because around this time, I properly subscribed to CompuServe (CIS), which was still the biggest online system. Later, I would sign up for a cheaper, competing system, called PeopleLink.

Back then, the open internet wasn’t easily available, all you could really use were private, paid-for closed systems, like CompuServe. There were others, but CIS was the big daddy.

I had two experiences early-on via CIS, that were wild, and I’m going to tell you about both of them. I was taken advantage of by a couple of older women. And I liked it. 

I got chatting to a woman in her late 30s from Brooklyn late one night, and things got intense quite quickly. 

She told me she was a big girl. Like really big, but she was also voraciously horny. She was into threesomes, she was into random hook ups too. And she hadn’t been with anyone in a while. She offered to jump in her car, drive across Manhattan, and through the Holland Tunnel, all the way to my front door. How could I refuse?

The agreement was this: I would be wearing nothing but a bathrobe when she arrived. As soon as she walked through my door, I was meant to not say a word, and just lead her into my bedroom, and then ravage her. I could handle that. 

She arrived, and I buzzed her in. She didn’t exaggerate, she was big, but she was also really sexy. She had thick, very long curly, dark hair, and glasses. Think sexy, and confident, like Lizzo, only white. 

I brought her into the bedroom, and gave her a passionate kiss. She said, “Oh, you’re good.” She was about to find out. 

Oral sex shouldn’t be a controversial subject, but like most things sexual, people are weird about it. I’m not. I dig oral sex, both ways. No shame, there’s nothing more enjoyable than taking a trip on the downtown train, or having someone return the favour. 

I gave my big, new friend more orgasms than she could count. 

She took good care of me too. Over and over. We went at it for hours, before she left. 

My experience with the big girl was wild. There were maybe two hours between our initial online contact, and our real world contact. It felt like the future!

Hey, I’m going to stop briefly to mention condoms. I haven’t brought them up until now, but I’ve always used them. 

AIDS was a big thing in the 80s, but before AIDS, there was another social disease that stayed with you for life that I was also trying to avoid. No, not herpes. Fatherhood. Just because I don’t spell it out, doesn’t mean I didn’t use condoms. I did. 

Do you remember the film, Logan’s Run? It’s a really cool, classic sci-fi film, that’s more than a bit ageist. Aside from the dystopian story, there are two things that stood out to me when I first saw it in the cinema as a kid in 1976.

The first is a silly one, but I’m going to share it anyway. There’s a scene in the film when actress Jenny Agutter changes her clothing, and you catch a glimpse of her side boob. It was the first nudity I’d ever seen on-screen. I can still remember it. I’m sure I’m not the only former teenage boy with this very vivid memory.

As a further aside, at one point I lived in the same neighbourhood of London as Ms. Agutter. This is more than 25 years ago, but I passed her on the street, more than once. I never spoke to her. It would have been weird if I did. 

The other element I recalled from the film, is a throwaway moment, and plot device. At one point the main character, played by the actor, Michael York, is looking for a sexual partner, and browsing the availability of people. 

The “browsing” was done via some device that facilitated random people, materialising inside his flat, via some sort of Star Trek type transporter device. 

The main character, “Logan”, checked out people of both genders as they popped into his flat. He would then push the “next” button, and someone new would physically appear. He did this until he found someone he liked. It was like swiping left, or right, only on real life people. And he “swiped right” Jenny Agutter. I think that’s how they meet in the film. I haven’t seen it in a long time. 

The device in the film reminded me of a much higher tech version of finding people on CIS, and BBS’s. In the future, they would just materialise in your bedroom, ready to rock and roll. 

The second woman I met was even older than the first. She said she was divorced, and 42 years old. That’s a 20-year difference, for you math fans out there. 

After we chatted on CIS, she came over the next evening, with a plan to spend the night, so she could drink. She was petite, and had a short, bob-style hair cut, light brown coloured. 

She’d eaten before she arrived, so we got down to the drinking, and smoking. She was a chain smoker, and I wasn’t a slouch in that department back then either, and we had a couple of joints too. 

She was sexually aggressive, and not shy about it. She wrapped herself around me, and started kissing me hard. She kept telling me, “more tongue, more tongue!” That made me feel a bit inexperienced. Compared to her, I definitely was a beginner. But what I lacked in experience, I more than made up for with enthusiasm. 

She warned me her period might be about to start, but said it wasn’t anything to worry about. What did I know about periods? Very little. 

We adjourned to the bedroom. We made angry monkey love all night, in every way you can imagine. And maybe a few ways you can’t. 

The next morning, we said our goodbyes, and I went to change the sheets. Her period had started all right, and it finished too. All of it finished overnight, after our marathon romp. My bed looked like a murder scene. Nobody warned me about this. I told you I didn’t know much about periods. 

PeopleLink

The other system I was using was called PeopleLink. It was strictly a platform for chatting, and it had more of air of respectability about it than the free-for-all that was CIS’s CB Simulator. The online community there was more respectful, and behaved more in line with real life norms.

I hadn’t lived in Hoboken that long, and didn’t really know anyone in the area, beyond the other students on my course. And most of them were scattered all over the tri-state area. So I went to a PeopleLink meet-up event in Manhattan. 

Some of the people I met at the event, I had been chatting to online, respectfully, for a while. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t flirting, there was, but it wasn’t as explicit, or in your face as it was on CIS. 

There were other people I met that night, that I hadn’t chatted to before, but would go onto chat with later on. One guy I met at that event, would go on to change my life.

In the end, I met four women that night, that I would see again. 

The first one had nothing to do with PeopleLink, but her sister was a user, and one of the organisers of the event. She was really pretty, and probably about 10 years older than me. That was more of an issue for her, I was cool with it. 

I was kinda cute back then, but I wouldn’t say I was particularly good looking. I had very long curly brown hair, and a short trimmed beard. I dressed in jeans, tees, and I would have been wearing a tweed blazer at an event like that. Plus a pair of cool boots. 

I don’t remember this woman’s name, but I remember liking her, a lot. We had a little intoxicated snog towards the very end of the PeopleLink event, and I got her number. 

We went out, twice. The first time was dinner, and drinks, and some more kissing. Our second date was a live taping of a network sitcom, at a big studio in Manhattan. The TV show was Kate and Allie, and the tickets were via someone I knew at NYU. 

After the recording, we went for a drink, and she dumped me. She couldn’t get over the age-difference thing. So it goes. 

I stayed in touch with the three other women I met that night. My online chats with one of them progressed to being somewhat hot, and heavy, and we arranged for her to come over, and spend the night with me. 

She was in her early 30s I think, and didn’t mind my age at all. She was looking for something serious, and while I can’t say that was my priority, I was open to the possibility if it happened. 

She confessed to me she was a virgin, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t do “stuff”. She was waiting for “the right one”, before going all the way. Fair enough. Whatever, I’m cool. 

We were not compatible. Sexually. I’m just going to leave it at that. The night was weird, and she wasn’t for me. 

On to number three. This one should have been a Penthouse Forum letter. The set up will certainly put you in mind of one. Or a porn film. Then it all goes really wrong. 

The third woman was a flight attendant, or stewardess, as we called them in the olden days. She lived in the midwest, but travelled all the time, and was frequently around NYC. She could also “deadhead” to Newark Airport, pretty much any time, so the long distance wasn’t an issue. And she could be based anywhere for her job, so if we really hit it off…

She arranged a deadhead flight to spend a weekend with me, and I was going to pick her up at the airport in my car. It was only a 20-30 minute drive from my place in Hoboken.

I was really looking forward to seeing her again. She was really cute, and more than a bit sexy. Who wouldn’t want a stewardess girlfriend? It would be like living in a sitcom. Imagine the high jinks!

I picked her up outside the terminal, I didn’t need to park up. She was extraordinarily drunk when I found her. She wasn’t quite to the point of falling down, but she was close. 

Turned out, the crew she flew with were friends of hers, and they  plied her with drinks during the entire trip for her ‘dirty weekend with her new man’. She gave me a really sloppy, lingering kiss. I told you it was like a sitcom.

We set off for my place, it wasn’t a long trip at all. At some point on the Pulaski Skyway, she asked me to pull over. There’s no shoulder on the Skyway. It’s an elevated highway, so there was no “pulling over”. 

Then she asked, “how do you roll down the (electric) window?”, but before I could answer, she threw up all over the inside of the passenger car door. 

Yep, she blew cookies. She chundered. You can choose your own euphemism, if you like.

We’d been together less than 20 minutes, and the mood was pretty much ruined. Though, on the plus side, it certainly sobered her up quickly. She couldn’t have been more apologetic if she tried. Or embarrassed. It was not the ideal way to start our long, sexy weekend.

When we got to my place, she had a shower, and brushed her teeth, while I attempted some damage control on the inside of my Toyota. 

When I got back upstairs, she was ready for more alcohol, and I could certainly use a drink at this point too. We shared a joint, and cuddled up on my sofa. And then she told me she was a virgin, but we could still do “stuff”.

At this point, virginity was becoming a running theme. I’ve run across so many women over the years, who prized their virginity, but still found ways to be sexually active. 

Call me old fashioned, that really always seemed to me like some serious hair splitting. It was real morality jiggery-pokery, and I struggled to understand how they made the math work in their heads.

We started fooling around on the sofa, and it didn’t take too long before we moved to the bedroom, to do more “stuff”. 

She had told me she liked whippets. They are little canisters of nitrous oxide, that you used to fill a balloon, and then you would inhale the gas, and get a very pleasant, and short-lived high. They’re fun in the bedroom, and for the most part fairly mild, and safe. You used to be able to get them in any head-shop in NYC, and they were cheap. 

And that’s how we spent the weekend. We drank, we smoked, we inhaled nitrous, and ordered takeaways. Hoboken had loads of great restaurants that delivered. I’m pretty sure we went into Manhattan and hung around too. And on the Sunday night, I brought her back to Newark Airport, and that was the last time I saw her. 

I had tried to clean the car as best I could, but it was still smelling funky on Sunday night. I had to get it professionally cleaned in the end. I never felt the same way about that car after that, and I ended up selling it around 6 months later to a guy I worked with at MTV. Sorry, Steve!

Now, for the final woman from the collection of four I gathered at that one PeopleLink meet-up. She was 15 years older than me, and we were together for around 6 months. I’m pretty sure I was her midlife crisis. 

I can remember her first name, but for the life of me, I can’t recall her surname.  I wish I could, I’d search for her online, and see what happened to her. She’d be 75 years old now. Yikes!

She had three kids, all daughters. The oldest was only a few years younger than me, and was at the time engaged to an aspiring airline pilot. She hated me. 

The youngest daughter was under 10. She could have been 6, she could have been 9, I don’t recall. She hated me, too.

The middle daughter was 16, or 17, and I’m fairly certain that she had a little crush on me. All of it was awkward. 

My older-woman GF worked in high finance, and had been involved with putting together the financing for some major Hollywood blockbusters. She drove a Maserati, and lived in a big house in a posh NJ town. She was often in the city. The first time I saw her after the event in Manhattan where we met was at my place. 

We had stayed in touch via PeopleLink, and we chatted occasionally. I wasn’t sure if she was into me, or if she was just friendly, until she suggested she drop by to visit me the next time she was in the neighbourhood. She ended up staying for a couple of days. Her intentions towards me were pretty clear by then. 

It was a real relationship. We even met each other’s parents. Technically, my time with her, counts as the third longest relationship I’ve ever had in my life. 

At the time, I was barely employed by MTV, and only attending some of my classes, before dropping out completely. I was hardly a prize boyfriend, but I don’t think anyone would have described me as her “toy boy” either. 

After around 6 months, she came to her senses, and dumped me. I didn’t take it well, but I didn’t put up a fight either. I never saw her again. 

If you think I was prolific with a computer, and modem, keep reading. In Part Three – All Good Things, I find even more ways to meet random strangers

(All words © Copyright 2023 – Doug – the northlondonhippy. All rights reserved)