The Internets - Round 2: the BIG discovery

Around 1995, I moved into a house with a few other guys. We had internet in the house. Of course, it was dial-up, because I think that's all that anyone had. Around that same time I got a new computer. Prior to this time, I only had access to email via my work. And as far as I can recall, I had never used a web browser. The internet was a bit confusing to me, even though I was an engineering type. I just wasn't familiar with what it could do, or what was there to be found. For all I knew, there may not have been much there at all. And compared to today, of course, there was probably a tiny fraction of a percent of the content one can now find.

It didn't take long before I learned a little bit about the internet, though. And one of the first things we all discovered was the concept of a search engine. In those days, the big ones, I think, that people used were Lycos, Infoseek, and Yahoo. I don't remember ever using MSN, or Google until much later. There were other ones, like Alta-Vista and Dogpile too. I had no real preference, though I played around with them all.

Recall, as I am sure all of you reading this do, that prior to the internet, there was a time where most of us might have believed we were the only ones in the world with a smoking fetish. Because it is not something people usually discussed openly, except in the context of relationships. And it's not common enough that you run into each other, or that you know about it when you do. So, somehow or other, I did a search. I have no idea what I searched for. I am not sure if I called it a fetish, or what. But I probably searched for something like "smoking girl" or "smoking woman". And there were search results. And these consisted of a few things. There were a handful of websites with pictures (think: Kohary's Cove, Smoking from All Sides, and eventually Coherent Light) and there were links to some newsgroups (think: alt.sex.fetish.smoking and alt.smoking.glamour).

Suddenly, my entire concept of the fetish changed. Almost in the same fashion as if we were to suddenly start receiving signals back from the transmissions that SETI sends to outer space, I came to the massive realization: "I am not alone".

Remember that? Well, if you're maybe 30 or older, you remember that sensation. If you're younger than 30, then maybe the internet was already so evolved by the time you did your first Google search, that you fully expected to find hits, since by now, everyone knows that anything you could possibly look for will be found on the information superhighway.

So, I spent a lot of time looking. Reading. Masturbating. Absorbing the enormity of the fact that there was now something specific out there, designed for people like me, other than my own imagination, or the odd movie here or there that had really good smoking in it. Of course, along those lines, sites such as LH's Smoking from All Sides provided us with a handy-dandy guide to that knowledge we had all lusted after our entire lives: a) which movies had the good smoking in them? b) which actresses were the best smokers? c) which of these actresses were "IRL" smokers? (the latter, a point that holds an oddly important value for fetishists, because for some reason it makes a difference if they're IRL, or if they are just faking it for the movie).

I spent a lot of time on there. Reading the fictional fetish stories. Looking at what pictures could be found. The internet was not yet at a point where video was supported in any practical way. But I would comb through everything I could possibly comb through. And go back again and again to the things that were good. The availability of this stuff really made me become deeply indulgent, because it was like someone raining dollar bills on me in the street. I wonder, did the discovery, and the realization that I was not alone have a greater net positive effect than the potential negative that was associated with having found what was, in essence, my own special form of pornography? Prior to that point in time, and other than things that are smoking fetish related, I have never been a porno person. Strange as that may sound. It does nothing for me. I don't like to watch people having sex. And I definitely do not like anything in the realm of hardcore, or trashy, or artificially enhanced. That turns out to be true with respect to the fetish, as well. If it's got sex, or really plastic looking porny women, with teased hair, ridiculous amounts of makeup and massive breasts, and absurd artificial nails, then even the sexiest smoking style in the world would not interest me.

I remember that I was not yet aware of the concept of a "cache" on the internet. I am sure that there were times where one of my housemates borrowed my computer, and who knows what they came across when they were using the internet. Nobody ever said anything to me. So maybe they came across nothing. Maybe I am just paranoid. I am definitely paranoid, I can tell you that much.