"I loke u body"

I've gotta get out more. This business of sitting at home every night because I'm unattached has got to end, ASAP.

One of the main reasons I've avoided going to various events alone in Nairobi is I haven't felt like being treated like a whore when I get there. But with each passing evening at the Lizard Apartments, I'm realizing I don't even have to leave the premises for that to happen.

Turns out I can get disrespected every time I turn on my laptop at home. You see, in cyberspace, all women are frenzied nymphomaniacs just panting for some dull-witted 26 year old Moroccan named Mostafa who's suffering from undiagnosed borderline personality disorder to contact them on Skype and flash a picture of his penis.

I am not making this up. For those of you who aren't familiar with Skype, it's just another computer method of instant communication, like Yahoo messenger or AOL IM, or Facebook. Skype goes one step better, because you can also make phone calls to any other computer that has the Skype program and a microphone. It's pretty cool...when it works.

Anyway, I've gotten into the habit, whenever I'm at home, of signing onto Skype and leaving it on, just to see if I I'll hear from anybody I know, or get an interesting message from an interesting person in an interesting part of the world.

Okay, full disclosure time. I know that I wrote a few weeks ago that I had ended my search for "Mr. Right," and was leaving that aspect of my life to Fate. Well, Fate needs to get the lead out, cuz I'm extremely open to male companionship these days. And even though my track record on Match.com was dismal, I'm not averse to chatting up guys online.

Actually, Skype makes that pursuit a lot safer for me, because most of the men who contact me are at least a couple thousand miles away. Besides, I generally do a good job of screening out freaks. For example, any guy who calls without first introducing himself by email chat gets an instant hang up. Look, I wouldn't talk to a stranger who called my landline or mobile, so why would I accept a cold call from some dork in the Ukraine?

Also, I generally try to check a guy's profile before I respond to his instant message. If he's in his 20s, I often ignore the overture (unless it's accompanied by a smokin' photo...hey, at least that way I can pretend the hot flashes are caused by something else...)

Recently, I've actually had a few interesting conversations with British men in their 40's and 50's. It's easier to set ground rules with more mature guys, so I just let them know right off the bat that I'm not going to send them any naked pictures, I'm not interested in sex chat, and I don't want to see their nether regions, either. That winds up weeding out a good 7 out of 10 contacts right away.

If they're still hanging around at that point, chatting is really stress free. You can talk about politics, travel, news, a whole range of things, and then when you're finished, just sign out. If during some moment of abject desperation I ever decided I wanted to actually try and meet any of these people, I could trade contact information.

But getting messages from men older than 30 has been pretty rare, so I've decided
to view my Skyping as a sort of an anthropological expedition. I'm alternately amused and horrified by most of the guys who bombard me whenever I sign on. I'm getting a lot of messages from Italian guys, and guys from North Africa, and from Turkey, for some reason. I've also met a couple of Americans, like this really funny guy named Tim who was consulting in Germany until returning to Arizona last week. This past weekend, I had a lovely chat with a guy from India, but then he admitted he was 26 years old and "very lonely," and I knew where the conversation was headed. I'm sorry, but there's really not much I can do for a horny kid in Mumbai, so I usually excuse myself fairly quickly in those situations.

Sadly, most of the Kenyan men who contact me are of the "Beach Boy" variety. If you ever saw "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," you know what I'm talking about. I'm told there's an epidemic of young Kenyan studs hanging out at the hotels of Mombasa, looking to be "chaperoned" by lonely German women with more Euros than good sense or common decency. Amazingly, somehow these guys are able to take one look at my headshot, conclude I'm an African American in my late 40's, and craft an introduction that fairly reeks of corny machismo. This one dude sent a picture of himself actually flexing in front of a weight machine, and promised to show me the time of my life if I ever come to Mombasa. Oh, and his profile said he was 22.

I'm sorry, but my pulse is just NOT racing for some reason. Even though I'm actually headed to Mombasa on Sunday. People, there are things mixed in with my navel lint that are older than this guy. Besides, here's how I've analyzed the situation...I could hook up with Mandingo when I get Mombasa.....or I could inject myself with a vial full of a potent serum comprised of chlamydia and syphillis. Either way, the end result would likely be a major hospital stay.

You know, the worst part of this whole scenario is that I can't even consider myself a pretty hot tamale because all these guys see my headshot and fire off email kisses and pleas for my undying love. I mean, how much of a coup is it to be cyber-stalked by a guy whose idea of romantic prose is, "I loke u body...u want me penis?" It's actually kind of sad, imagining those men sitting in darkened rooms, apparently 24 hours a day, trolling the Internet hoping for the occasional onscreen coupling. Just think of the man hours lost to frenzied masturbation alone.

Anyway, the point of this posting is that, nearing the 3 month mark of my stay in Nairobi, I've concluded that fending off pervs in cyberspace will eventually make me feel really pathetic and lonely, and that I need to start creating frequent opportunities for social interaction. They don't necessarily have to be focused on finding male companionship, by the way. I just need to avoid falling into a rut.

You should pardon the expression.