The second guy I met on the Internet was Tom, who I dated for around 6 months, which is by far the longest relationship I've ever had as an adult. We long distance dated mostly, chatting everyday for a long time on FB chat and Skype. It's hard to imagine a more genuinely caring and kind individual. I owe a lot to him.

I've gotten a lot of exposure for my writing. My writing blog has gotten over 1000 unique hits since the Observer piece (quite a lot as before it was something like 20 people a day if I was lucky.) But more importantly the coverage exposed me to and so has allowed me to connect with a lot of new people I really enjoy interacting with.

One thing about having mostly absent parents that I think was perhaps "good" for the development of my intellect/writing is that I was given almost total freedom to read/write/look at whatever I wanted. I wonder a lot about how my past experiences, particularly my negative childhood (home life and being severely bullied/ostracized throughout school) as formed my/my thoughts/my writing, though I should also note those things were far from the only thing that had an impact on me/my writing.

What i'm trying to get at is that to me nothing felt glamorous or exciting or sexually liberating about it. I also think the amount of money you can make escorting is exaggerated (it wasn't uncommon for me to see ads for escorts for 40-60$/hr where I live.)

The pictures feel as essential to me as the text. I was always interested in including pictures with writing.

I first emailed Tao Lin a story I wrote about the experience of losing my virginity sometime in April 2011. He didn't respond until it was later published on Thought Catalog, after which he sent me an email that said something very similar to, "I enjoyed reading this on Thought Catalog. Good job."

The second guy I met on the Internet was Tom, who I dated for around 6 months, which is by far the longest relationship I've ever had as an adult. We long distance dated mostly, chatting everyday for a long time on FB chat and Skype. It's hard to imagine a more genuinely caring and kind individual. I owe a lot to him.