(file this one under "trollop")

In the wee dark hours of the internet, before match.com, eharmony, or any other "soul mate delivered to your door in 30 seconds" company existed, you had to go trolling for your own e-nookie. In AOL chat rooms. For a nickel a minute. Which is cheaper than all but the most desperate hooker, yet more expensive than a subscription to Hustler. Strangely enough, it hit about the midpoint for disease risk and chance of lasting satisfaction as well.

Back in the day, chatroom dudes outnumbered chicks by about five to one, which immediately heightened the allure of any woman who could type quickly and was willing to put out. Like me.

Basically, you'd dial up, look at the room roster, and try to find something that looked interesting. You'd learn quickly which rooms to avoid. "Pet Lovers," "Gimme Gold" and "Love My Mommy" wouldn't be your cuppa unless you were into bestiality, getting peed on, or taking care of diaper-clad men in giant cribs.

Once you found something teetering on the fine line between innocuous and sleazy, you jumped in and started gabbing. Didn't matter at all what you were gabbing about, because the real action was in the Instant Messages.

If the room was sufficiently warm, you'd soon have a dozen IMs littering your screen, with a variety of offers. The tricky thing was keeping them all straight as you sorted the chaff from the seedy, making sure your replies hit the right box. You wouldn't want to send the guy who wrote "how much you waigh r u horny?" the "you sound cute" reply intended for someone a bit more articulate.

Imagining that every guy looked like either Bono or Harrison Ford made the experience much more enjoyable. When you'd narrowed your choices down (to 1-5, depending on your typing speed), you could go into a private chat and commence "cybering." Cybersex basically meant coughing up a bunch of Penthouse Letters crap you read in college. And you would be amazed at just how easy guys are to please.

And just like in real life, the ladies could fake it. If it got boring, you could just say you were typing with one hand, hit one key repeatedly to signify blissful completion, and your dude du noir would get up to grab a towel with a big smile on his face, thinking his work here was through.