Orgies On-Line

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

By 11 p.m. the scene has begun to heat up. A man named Norm is nuzzling a young woman who calls herself Tricia. Tricia, in turn, is gently biting Brit's neck, while Annabeth flirts in the corner with Chaz. Then Suzi breaks in and asks Norm if he's looking for some real action. As if to test the waters, Norm gives Suzi a passionate kiss. Suzi kisses Norm back, hard. With no further preamble, Norm takes off Suzi's shirt. You can almost feel the temperature in the room start to rise.

Except that there is no room, no shirt and, for all we know, no woman named Suzi. These events, and their steamy denouement, exist only as text messages scrolling by on a computer screen and as libidinous images in the mind's eye -- in this case, the imagination of the three dozen men and women who have chosen this particular moment and this computer locale (the "sex" channel on the Internet), to exchange pseudonymous X-rated fantasies. Participants simply type in their best pickup lines and indicate what physical actions they are taking -- such as kissing or undressing.

It was perhaps inevitable, given the rapid growth of computer networks, that people would find a way to use the new communications technology to share their most intimate urges. Sex, as Gerard van der Leun writes in the new computer-hip magazine Wired, "is a heat-seeking missile that forever seeks out the newest medium for its transmission." He cites the spread of printed smut in post-Gutenberg Europe, pornographic pictures in the age of photolithography, X-rated tapes in the video stores and dial-a-porn services on the 900 telephone lines.

But the action this spring is on what the Clinton Administration likes to call the data superhighways, and by all accounts sex is busting out all over. According to Jack Rickard, the editor of Boardwatch magazine, the number of small computer-bulletin-board systems in the U.S. has jumped from 30,000 last year to more than 46,000 this year -- the majority of them offering some form of digital titillation. When Boardwatch ran a reader's poll of the best computer boards, three of the Top 10 were explicit "adult" systems -- including Pleasure Dome, based in Tidewater, Virginia, which offers, among other things, electronic access to ThrobNet, SwingNet, StudNet and KinkNet.

Sex on the networks comes in as many flavors as there are positions in the Kama Sutra. If your taste runs to explicit pictures, there are thousands of them on such bulletin boards as Nixpix in Aspen, Colorado, and Odyssey in Monrovia, California. Jim Maxey, a former journalist and part-time private eye who runs the Event Horizons system in Lake Oswego, Oregon, grossed $3.5 million last year from computer users willing to pay $9 an hour to connect to his bulging database of R- and X-rated digital images and film loops.

But as anybody who reads romance novels will testify, words can be just as exciting as pictures, and much of the sexual activity on the networks is strictly text only. The Internet, the government-sponsored data pipeline that links computer networks around the world, is the repository of hundreds of sexually explicit narratives organized, in the Internet's bizarre filing system, by sexual preference: sex.bestiality, sex.bondage, sex.fetish.feet. And nearly every network offers some form of "hot chat" capability, in which users attempt to turn each other on by composing one-line messages that appear on each other's computer screens as they are typed. "If you are a good writer, it can be quite effective," says one online Lothario. "It helps to be a fast and accurate typist."

There has been, predictably, a backlash. The family-oriented Prodigy system closed down its "frank discussion" conference in January when the language got a little too frank for its owners (Sears and IBM). In March federal agents raided bulletin boards in 15 states searching for evidence that they were trafficking in child pornography (which, unlike most pornography, is illegal in the U.S.). Parents' and women's groups complain that sexually explicit material is still available to any youngster who can operate a modem. "The last thing this culture needs," writes Stephanie Salter in the San Francisco Examiner, "is yet another method for reducing women to sex objects."

But there are women for whom netsex clearly has its attractions. "It's not just the ultimate in safe sex," says Patrizia DiLucchio, a health-care consultant who runs the Eros conference on the WELL, a popular West Coast bulletin-board system. "It's also safe romance. It's like falling in love with a demon lover who knows just what you want and says all the right things." Several of DiLucchio's digital infatuations have blossomed into real-life love affairs.

Meanwhile, back on the Internet sex channel, the online orgy is winding down. Suzi and Norm have consummated their encounter, and the voyeurs who had gathered to watch have started to drift away. Hoping to rekindle some heat, one bystander tentatively approaches Annabeth and slips his hand under her sweater. But rejection in cyberspace can be uniquely swift and stinging: Annabeth types back that she is snapping off her suitor's sex organ and tossing it over her shoulder. So much for safe romance.