@lter Ego (6)

To use the vernacular, I was well chuffed with what I'd so far achieved as Bastian Dash.

More than chuffed!

Will you be on again?

I hope we can chat again soon

So how about emailing me?

Such were the frequent requests for his attention.

Quite a difference from me wouldn't you say?

And I think that was the one fly in the ointment. Even in my triumph, every time I switched off the PC I knew that my escape had been purely temporary. I still went to bed as me. I still got up and dressed and caught the train from Nebfleet Station and went to work at Archer Publishing, as me. I still chatted to my "real life" friends as me. Bastian Dash existed only for a couple of hours or so most nights on a cursor key. Thus I needed to take the next step.

But what kind of step was that?

What greater metamorphoses were there left for me?

Well, if you really think about it there were still a couple more things I could try...

'Twas the season to be jolly, peace on Earth and goodwill to all men jingled all the way across Ye Olde London Town. As I opened the first doors of my advent calendar (come on, tell me you don't still get one too and I won't believe you) I was still playing at Bastian Dash online. And for the last few days BD had been chatting to a particularly sassy American who called herself ManhattanGal...

It would be fair to say however that I didn't find ManhattanGal.

Rather, she found me.

Admittedly I'd seen her username before and had even been a little drawn to it. There's this unmistakably glitzy image I get with the idea of Manhattan (though I've never actually been to NYC to buy that lousy t-shirt) so I was probably working my way towards messaging her anyway. But then, one late November night, I suddenly received this:

ManhattanGal: So what is it exactly that's so dashing about you then huh?

Whoa! Well that was straight to the jugular wasn't it? It took me/BD a minute or so to frame a reply:

BastianDash: You mean you don't know lol?

ManhattanGal: Are you British?

BastianDash: So you've not gathered that either then?

ManhattanGal: Oh so you're a wiseass too right?

BastianDash: My arse, like the rest of me, is very smart if that's what you mean

ManhattanGal: Hah! I guess that means you dress pretty well huh?

BastianDash: I try madam

ManhattanGal: Oh yeah? Like what labels do you wear?

Bastian Dash: I don't wear labels madam I wear clothes lol

ManhattanGal: LOL... so I gotta real British wiseass here huh?

And that's how I met Tammy, as I later came to know her. Not that I really was a fashion icon by the way, well not before anyway. But I felt attack merited attack back; and it was this, I think, that lit a spark between us.

Tammy was thirty-three, divorced, a lifelong New Yorker and sales manager for an international paper broker. When I asked her what this actually entailed, she explained how she set up supplies between various paper manufacturers and mass end-users like publishing companies and the like. Of course this meant she was extremely interested to learn I was in media myself. I remained careful though not reveal who I worked for despite her clever probing. It was obvious she was also snooping for a business opportunity since her company, I later discovered, had a UK office too.

Her fast-talking, almost aggressive interrogative style had pretty much given it away that she was in sales long before she told me. This actually made it even more interesting to chat to her as Tammy was the first other out and out salesperson I'd met online. And I'm sure you can imagine just how snappy the banter can get once two salespeople start chatting, especially if one of them happens to be a ballsy Yank.

Well after our initial sharp lunges and swift parries we fell into a slightly more settled melee. She was very up front with her questions (how old was I, what did I do, how long had I done it, where did I live, why did I live there) and extremely rapid with her replies, so that in the end I had to cut short the other chats I was having just to keep up.

Tammy was also quick to ask if I was single and much faster on the button with the, "So what do you like to do for fun?" stuff as well. She wasn't into movies herself, she told me. In fact she hadn't watched a movie in five years, although she did enjoy a good book. Instead her particular vice, as you might have guessed from her opening moves, appeared to be clothes. She was very much into "labels" and went into great detail with me about some of her latest purchases. But what was my style, she'd next enquired.

Well now, I/BD had never faced such direct inquisition about his "style" before. However although I found myself up against something of a wall on this issue, I was quite attracted by her directness at the same time. Therefore I took a risk and breathed more life into the illusion I'd created over these last few weeks just to keep up the momentum, elaborating on my hints to Tammy that Bastian Dash was indeed a dapper chappie. In fact I presented him in very much the classic sense; nicely cut suits, Italian ties etc. which was met by her approving observation of, "Well I like a well dressed guy."

Actually this semi-deception came quite naturally since this was the image I'd always pictured as BD anyway.

"He's gotta have the right shoes though," she'd gone on to say, "You can tell a lot of things by a guy's shoes."

Quite predictably this line of questioning soon led her to being the first of us to ask what the other looked like too. I made my usual answer and it was met by an "ok" followed by a "cool". I don't think she was bowled over. Instead I think it was more a case of I made the cut, so to speak.

However I did reciprocate with, "And may I ask the lady a similar question or does she care only to describe her clothes?"

It took a second longer than normal for her to reply to that. I think the sheer gall must have knocked her slightly off kilter. She soon came back swinging however with a very detailed description.

Tammy was your all American shapely blonde, blue-eyed gal, not too tall, not too short. Though she had a lot more to add than that:

ManhattanGal: In fact I've been told I look like Melanie Griffith

BastianDash: Not an unfavourable comparison

ManhattanGal: This happens to me a lot. I was in a store last week and these two women were just staring at me and I could hear one of them saying 'I'm sure it's her. Let's go ask ...'

BastianDash: And did they?

ManhattanGal: Nah they were too chicken

BastianDash: So what would you have said if they had?

ManhattanGal: Well I'd have told them I was her dumbarse! Geez you Brits!

Actually that last comment was a bit facetious. Tammy had by then revealed she'd been to London a couple of times before on brief visits her company's UK office and had had quite a lot of fun in "...what you guys call the West End" on each occasion too; and it was only later I realised how portentious that revelation had been.

Meanwhile her questions continued to come at me like a rifle battery. True Tabitha and others had wanted to know all about BD too, but no one had everquizzed me on here with such vigour. And while Tabitha's enquiries had been somewhat doe-eyed, Tammy's felt more like a Gestapo grilling. Indeed I began to sense that with every answer I gave she was ticking off a box on a sheet.

We actually conversed for well over an hour before she told me she had to sign off because she had to attend a meeting. She then matter-of-factly thanked me for the chat, and that was that.

Kind of shellshocked, I went to bed. Lying there I went over my encounter with Tammy wondering why she'd seemed so "targeted" in the way she spoke with me and why she'd bothered to keep up the conversation for so long? I mean there hadn't been the usual, "I hope to speak to you again" when we'd said goodnight after all, something I'd now almost come to take for granted. And I have to admit its non-occurrence had ruffled my pride a little bit.

Perhaps success had gone to my head too quickly...