Sometimes my internet shenanigans remind me of the poem from Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Perhaps I’m not as old as Father Williams, but I feel like him:

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head–
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

I, too, am old, at least in internet years. I remember when going online to find BDSM partners was considered unusual, instead of the perfectly routine, sensible, obviously-normal way to proceed that everyone considers it now. Heck, any kind of internet dating used to be considered eccentric and hazardous! When I first met my Nymph online, her sisters discouraged her from meeting me. They argued that I was probably a serial killer, who kept his internet victims in the basement in trash bags. We’ve been together for 15 happy years now and she’s yet to see the inside of a garbage bag. (Full disclosure: I have never had a basement. Also, her sisters are total nutters who watch way too many serial killer shows on cable television.)

I make no secret on social media of the fact that I live in a rural area — what I call “red state heck.” People here are conservative; they mostly don’t want or need to know the details of what I do for a living. In casual conversation, I’m “self-employed” and I do “online marketing stuff.” But I’m not the least bit ashamed of this work; which means a few men (it’s usually men) who have turned our conversations to online business or internet porn or kink have become aware of more details.

One fellow in particular comes to mind. A recent widower whose wife died under tragic circumstances, raising a bunch of kids alone, working two jobs and several side hustles. Really nice guy. Porn aficionado. I first became aware that he had some kinky interests when we were discussing his side hustles. When he figured out that I did online marketing with an adult focus, he began to pick my brain about kinky dungeon furniture — specifically, the marketing thereof. Somehow, he had become aware that this stuff could sell for large-dollar sums, and he was thinking of crafting some as one of his side gigs.

We fell out of contact. I don’t know if he ever got into that line of business. But I do often wonder how much lovingly-crafted dungeon furniture he and his wife had in their basement when she passed away. I know he was in desperate want of another wife to help him raise his children; perhaps he was willing to “settle” for vanilla, considering. He never asked my advice on finding a kinky wife, or even just a kinky date, in rural red state heck. But if he had, I’d have given him the only possible answer: go online, pay the membership fees at the kinky dating sites that can reliably turn up matches in your area. It beats the hell out of going to church in your little town and wishing real hard for a miracle!