Some of the most essential lessons that I learned about online community I learned on the telephone back in 1987, when someone I barely knew slipped me a number scribbled on the back of a matchbook cover.
"Call that number," he said, with an air of mystery. "It's weird, but you'll like it. It's very addictive."
The number belonged to an elaborate party line hosted by someone who called himself "Johnny Normal." Unlike some party lines, this one wasn't just a roaring free-for-all that sparked up where two wires chafed in the bowels of the phone network. Whoever Johnny Normal was, he had the technical skills of a hacker, and the instincts of a natural online-conference host. He knew how to throw a lively party in the ether.
Sometimes you'd call up and find yourself in a "room" with eight people. At other times, callers were hooked up into pairs, like a series of blind dates. Most days, you could rap for hours, but at other times, Johnny would clock his system to dump all the callers every 20 minutes - or once a minute, whipping the dialog into a breathless succession of dada bursts. By tweaking the parameters of the virtual environment, Johnny tuned the brain jazz played there.
The line didn't cost anything, and it was buzzing day and night. There was speculation that Johnny was a 12-stepper who had created the system as a 24-hour virtual AA meeting, and it had taken on a life of its own.
It was addictive, for many of the same reasons the Net is. Revealing conversations would come to life between strangers who would never have dared to speak to one another on the bus. Differences of age or race didn't seem to weigh as much when you were on the line. In the early morning, you'd find yourself swapping stories with chatty young Latinas checking in before school. By midmorning, the housewives had taken over, holding court for the day, discussing the most intimate aspects of their marriages, while adding running commentary to the soaps.
Sometimes, the person you were talking to would suddenly start babbling in business-speak, as the boss walked by their desk.
It was as if the line tapped into a groundswell of desire to share one's secrets that was barely contained by social barriers in the "real" world. Divisions in the community only flared into hostility late at night, when both teenagers and gay men vied for the space as a cruising ground.
Like any yeasty community, the line was a jargon factory. Those who listened but didn't talk - lurkers - were called "muffins." "Are there any muffins out there?" would be followed by an answering chorus of tone-dial bleeps. You learned to play the system: You could deflect unwanted intimacy by asking if anyone was "muffining," and bleeping in yourself.
The exploits of well-known regulars was fodder for fervid gossip, which the Latinas called chismes calientes. "Oooh - do you have any chismes?" they'd ask.
Almost everyone was known by a nickname - "Fido," "Miss Muffin." I used my real name in some misguided gesture of authenticity, not understanding what a powerful tool a nickname can be.
The importance of taking on a nickname in the virtual world was taught to me by one of the best-loved regulars, a disarmingly sincere and articulate 14-year-old who called himself "Gumby."
The regulars felt protective of Gumby. He was like everyone's favorite little brother. One day, Gumby and I found ourselves alone in some private corner of Johnny Normal's universe. "How's it goin' today, Gumby?" I asked.
"This isn't Gumby," he said. "This is Pokey."
"Hello, Pokey," I said - knowing that the unmistakable voice was Gumby's. We talked for a while.
Finally I asked, "Do you know Gumby?"
"Yeah," he said. "Gumby's cool."
"Pokey," I said gently, "how are you different than Gumby?"
"Pokey's gay," he explained.
I made sure he understood that Pokey could be my buddy on the line as much as Gumby was.
Soon after that, Johnny's number found its way into a crowd of high school kids who mounted a crusade to hassle as many gay men off the line as possible. Johnny took the system down for a couple of weeks, leaving a recorded plea for tolerance in its place. Finally, he shut it down permanently.
Seven years later, I was interviewing the counselor of a gay youth group for a story I was writing. As he sat in the cafe talking with fire and eloquence into my tape recorder, a feeling of recognition swept over me.
"Were you - Pokey?" I blurted. "On the Johnny Normal line?"
He looked into my eyes and smiled.
