I knew it wasn't the best idea in the world, but he seemed so nice in his emails that I had to consider it seriously. I mean I know everyone says it's risky to meet people face to face that you have only talked to over the Internet, but I felt that this was a special case.

He said his name was Andrew. His screen name was Andrw1066. He was one of the people who read my book in the ASSM group on Usenet and sent me an email telling me how much he liked it.

If you haven't read it yourself, go Google for '{ASSM} Sam - Part'. It will turn up on one of the archive sites. I had to break it up into 21 chapters to get it into small enough pieces to post. The whole thing is like 900 pages and I swear I had no idea it was going to turn into the War and Peace of erotic literature!

The amazing thing was the number of emails I got from people saying how much they liked it and even asking for more stories. It seems it was popular among the - ahem - more discerning readers of 'pawnogruffee', as it is called here in the South. I was highly flattered by all the nice comments, and I may have let it go to my head a bit. By the time I got to the one from Andrw1066, I was positively giddy.

I won't repeat what he said verbatim, but he basically told me that he found the book to be well-written and very moving. I assumed by 'moving' he meant he had only one hand on the keyboard while he was reading it and he had to stop frequently to recuperate. I know that's a big assumption, but hey, that's how it affected ME and I wrote the darn thing. I had to hike my skirt up and sit on a towel whenever I worked on it or I'd soak the chair. I'm hardly going to pretend to be shocked to hear that some guy jerked-off while reading it. Beyond the fact that I think it's the best review I could get, it makes me feel that I've shared something intimate with a lot of people.

Andrew seemed sincere, and I sent him a reply right away thanking him for the kind words. He answered back and things kind of took off from there.

After we had exchanged a few messages, he started saying how he'd like to meet me and even take me out somewhere. I thought he was just flirting, but then he said he had figured out where I lived from the clues he found in the book. This was something of a shock to hear, since I didn't put any 'clues' in the book. In fact, I thought I had changed enough of the names and places around so that no one would know where I really lived. Andrew knew. He told me where and he was totally right.

I was so shocked that my first reaction was to shut down the PC as fast as I could, as if that would keep him from crawling through the wires. When I calmed down enough to think clearly I realized I had accidentally sent him a couple of emails from my personal account. Still it was probably silly to be scared. All he knew from that was the city, and it's a good-sized place. I was sure there wasn't any real chance he could find me unless I gave him my address. Still, it was startling to have someone figure that out. It reminded me of what Neeka says, that the Internet isn't the big anonymous place everyone thinks it is. If you are online, it's just like a phone call — it can be traced.

I decided right then to only use my off-shore account when responding to reader's emails. It's way off in Micronesia, which is a place you can't hardly find on a globe using a microscope.

I left the PC off the rest of the day anyway, while I thought it over. Even so, the baleful stare of the dark monitor screen seemed to follow me reproachfully whenever I walked by, radiating waves of electronic guilt.

"Oh, stop being such a wuss!" I told myself, finally. "Either agree to meet the guy or just tell him to get lost. But make up your mind."

I sat down and turned the PC back on. While it came up, I tried to figure out what I was going to tell Andrew. Nothing brilliant came to mind. With the blank reply box on the screen, I finally caved.

"Sure," I wrote. "I'd love to meet you. How about dinner on Friday? We could meet at the Green Grotto at 7."

The Grotto is one of several places near the college. It's the one where students take dates they want to impress, since it has a more sophisticated ambience; good, but still reasonably-priced food; and a great deal of greenery and fake rocks arranged to give the illusion of privacy. Some of their booths are downright secluded, which I thought would be ideal for a private chat with someone who already knew more about me than I was totally comfortable with.

The message I got back said, "Wonderful! I'll see you then." That was all.

I wondered for a little bit about how he planned to find the place, but then I remembered all the map sites Neeka had shown me and how you could get directions from anywhere to anywhere else. Just for the fun of it, I went to one and typed in my address and the address of the restaurant. It showed me a map and gave a list of directions that might have got me there, but wasn't at all how I knew to go. I hoped Andrew wouldn't get lost.

Friday evening came around very quickly. I must have been nervous, because I spent a lot more time than I planned getting ready. I even changed clothes twice, although I wound up wearing what I had planned to from the start.

My dress was one that Mom bought me to wear to the fancy parties she liked to go to and was nice enough to take me along. It's an incredibly slinky thing, deep blue synthetic fabric with the draped, backless halter-top that looks so good on me, and a separate skirt that is just two gathered panels of material held up by a thin string that rides my hips. The skirt is calf-length, but the panels mean there are two slits all the way up on both sides that let my legs show. It's a dress that shows a lot of skin, but nothing really scandalous. At least it does as long as I remember to move slowly so it stays put. It got me a lot of compliments at the parties and I hoped that Andrew would like it, too.

The shoes were he tallest pair of heels I owned. They didn't exactly match the dress, but I wanted very much to look like an adult when I met Andrew, not a little girl wearing her Mommy's clothes. That's an issue I guess I'll have all my life — that I'm afraid people will look down on me figuratively as well as physically.

I walked into the restaurant with as much grace and poise as I could manage. Meaning I didn't stumble or fall on my face. I was about to ask the hostess if there were any unattached gentlemen hanging about when someone touched my shoulder.

"Sam?" He said. Then added, "I hope."

When I turned to look at him, I'm afraid my face must have betrayed how startled I was. I nodded, briefly at a loss for words.

"Not what you expected?" He said, seeing my expression.

"No! Yes!" I said. "At least, I... well, I guess not. I didn't know..."

This wasn't going at all well. I had let my imagination draw a portrait of Andrew and the man before me just didn't fit it. The real man was just a little bit taller than I was in my high heels and slim, with a handsome face and a head full of wavy black hair that had gone steel-grey at the temples. He had to be in his middle to late 40s. What startled me so was finding that I was on a blind date with someone old enough to be my father. Older. Daddy was only 39.

"You look very..." I started, and ran out of diplomatic euphemisms.

"Please don't say 'distinguished'," he said, smiling.

"OK," I agreed. "'Handsome', then. Why not 'distinguished'?"

"Because it's usually a synonym for 'old' and I may be over 40, but I don't feel old — yet. You look wonderful. That dress suits you. But I thought..."

"You thought I'd be shorter?"

He nodded and I wondered if I wasn't being given a quid pro quo for my faux pas.

"It's the heels."

I did a turn a little too quickly and bent a knee to bring one of my four-inch heels into better view in the low light.

"Once I learned to how walk in them without falling on my face, I wear them whenever I get a chance, which isn't too very often. It's just so much nicer not having to look straight up at people all the time."

The way he jerked his head down to look at my feet told me he had been looking at something other than my shoes while I was doing my twirl. I didn't know how to take that. I mean, I appreciated him looking, but there was a big difference between being ogled by a middle-aged businessman at one of Mom's cocktail parties and being given the once-over by the same kind of person while we were on what I kept thinking of as a date. I wondered when it had gone from 'dinner' to 'date' in my mind.

"Well, you wear them beautifully," he said.

I smiled and tried not to blush. I'm a sucker for flattery, even the total-BS kind.

The hostess showed us to our table, a booth way in the back corner that could have been in a rain-forest for all the plants around it. I didn't know if this was something Andrew had arranged or if the hostess was just giving us the usual 'man taking mistress to dinner' table, based on the obvious difference in our ages.

Of course, as soon as I thought of it like that, my stupid libido started making suggestions. I tried to ignore it, but some of the things it wanted me to do sounded really wicked. I managed to shut it up, but I couldn't turn it off.

Andrew held out his hand as I slid into the booth and I gratefully braced on it as I lowered my rear down from the lofty shoes. If you've ever worn heels that keep you up on your toes, you know it's possible to walk in them, but getting up and down can be tricky. I thought it was very considerate of him that he was aware of this. Then a small voice in my head asked if there weren't other things that an 'older' man might know about how to treat a younger woman.

Andrew ordered a Whiskey Sour and rather than get into the 'I don't really drink' thing, I asked for a glass of white wine. Both were served in record time. When I reached for my glass, my elbow hit the edge of the table and I realized that I was 'sitting in a hole' again. This time it wasn't too bad. I was just a bit too low to reach over the table comfortably. I have been in places where it was my head and not much else above the level of the table. This is a common problem for those of us who are somewhat vertically-challenged and I had a few tricks to deal with it without asking for a booster-seat.

I reached down and undid the straps on my shoes, slid back into the booth so I was leaning against the far end, and pulled my legs up under me. With my back braced, sitting on my feet wasn't uncomfortable. And it did give me a few extra inches of altitude. This time when I reached for my glass, I didn't have any trouble. We both took a sip before continuing the conversation.

"So, do you come here often?' Andrew asked, ignoring my difficulty, which I appreciated enough to excuse his trite question.

"Not really. When I go out with friends from school, we usually go for pizza. A couple of guys have brought me here on dates, but they were trying to impress me."

There I was with the 'date' thing again. I wondered where this was going and if I should really be going there.

"And were you impressed?"

"I guess a little. It's nice when someone makes a special effort. They just tried a bit too hard, you know. It seemed... forced."

As opposed to Andrew, I noticed, who seemed much more at ease. Another plus for a man of experience. Andrew had invited me to talk about my writing, but I wanted to know more about him first.

"So, what do you do?" I asked.

"I'm what you call an entrepreneur. I have several businesses all over the country, but my involvement is purely as a silent partner. I don't actively manage any of them."

"What kind of businesses?"

"Whatever opportunities I can find that I think will turn a profit. A franchise chain here, a service firm there — it has more to do with investing in people than in the businesses. I find people whom I think can make a business successful and I partner with them. I provide the money and they provide the imagination and the drive."

"Imagination?"

"Oh, yes. Edison said that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. I think business is like that, only the amount of inspiration needs to be higher. You have to invent a business like you invent a product. No matter how much effort you put into it, it mostly depends on how good your vision is of how the business should work."

"How do you find people to invest in?"

"I keep my eyes and ears open. I talk to people. Lots of people! Sometimes I see that spark that tells me that this is someone with a vision. If they seem willing to make the effort to achieve that vision, then I make them an offer."

"You're a Capitalist!" I said, flashing back on my Econ 101 class.

"Guilty as charged! And I don't happen to think that is a dirty word."

"Oh, it's not that. I just never met anyone who actually fit the definition before. Everyone always seems to work for someone else."

"Well, I help people who are willing to work for themselves. When they succeed, I succeed."

"Must be very rewarding work. In more than one sense of the word."

"It is. And you are very perceptive to see that."

"It's part of being a writer. I have a great deal of empathy. I like to get into people's heads and find out what makes them who they are."