I recently attended a 30th birthday celebration for friend "A". He had attended my 30th birthday gathering nearly a decade before. I gifted him with a dvd of "Logan's Run". We had called my party a Logan's Run party because in that movie the people of a future society, when they turn 30 are recycled at a "Carousel" ceremony.
A began to relate to me the significance of that night a decade before. He came to my party with my girlfriend's cousin. She was his girlfriend at the time. He was very young, visiting the big city, at a party in a high-rise with older people. That night was a night of many firsts for him. He recalls seeing the internet for the first time as I demonstrated eWorld to him on my Mac and he was "blown away" that you could chat with people from all over the world in virtual rooms. We scanned through several of those rooms that night and more than one of them were very peculiar to him. There were "man-to-man" rooms in which men could anonymously chat with other men in a provocative and sexual manner.
He told me his mind was set spinning that night and a whole range of possibilities seemed to be opening up to him. He soon moved to Toronto and came out about a year after that night. He is now happily partnered with a nice medical professional.
What I remembered as a boring and lame evening of pizza and videos was to someone else an earth shattering event. It was for him a wedge that drove right into his brave new world.
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