Blast from the past!

[muckefuck]

Those of you who remember what the job market was like in 1992 will feel a little sympathy for me knowing that I graduated from college in that year. It was a heady summer, filled with new freedoms and discoveries and, at the same time, the crushing responsibility of finding a place to live and a job I could support myself on.

One of my main recreation outlets was coming to the campus computer centre to play on the Internet. Surfing had barely been invented in those days and even e-mail was still a new discovery for me. I remember the exact moment when a whole new (big hairy homo) world opened up: I was scrolling through a list of available mailing lists and newsletters and would've blipped right past the Bears Mailing List if a few key words--like "gay" and "hairy"--hadn't caught my eye. After all, I assumed anything with "Bears" in the title must refer to the local football team.

Was I in for a surprise!

Before the end of the day, I'd filled out an application and heard back from Steve Dyer (who suggested that the term for someone like me, skinny and smooth but into big hairy guys, might be a "wanna-bear"). To my surprise, he edited the information I sent him and posted an introduction to the list. By the next day, I'd heard from several list members with whom I subsequently struck up correspondences.

One of these was a New England Germanist with the moniker "eurobaer". We told each other jokes and stories and flirted a bit--I even wrote a parody of EAV's "Buerli" for him! He sent me photos from a trip to SF. He only called me up once that summer, but got our machine; I still remember the gentle, friendly timbre of his voice and every word of the message. Unfortunately, long-distance wasn't really in my budget at the time and I never called him back.

Eventually, I met Nuphy through the BML and we got involved in the local bear club together. The BML changed administrators, became unwieldy and unfriendly; sometime in the mid-90's, I stopped reading it. One of my other BML friends (a recent SF transplant) and I became very close and we still keep in touch, but the others slowly dropped away. Foppe, Rock Hard Jack, Mickey--I sometimes wonder what's become of them, but I'm not sure how to track them down (or what I would say if I found them).

And then Eurobaer. I think I heard that he had found himself a partner, but I knew little of the details. How could I have guessed it was none other than editor of The Bear book, nashobabear? Or that, one day, stumbling across Les on LiveJournal would lead me to pictures of my old buddy? Does he remember those days? What difference a little of his friendship made in the life of an awkward, insecure, lonely, geeky young man?

Only one way to find out!

Comments

[pleinweb.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. There is something about having been around during those early days of email and internet that makes this kind of story very touching. It was so different back in the day of Gopher and Spider.

[go-wade-in.livejournal.com]

four years later, in 1996, i remember going to AOL's M4M chatroom for the first time. it was much easier than telneting to hotwired.com and using their text-based chat interface.