First off, let me just say that if you are in any way related to me or under the misguided impression that I am the same sweet and profoundly innocent boy you knew in college or desire to keep a safe, comfortable, virginal image of The Mighty Jimbo, you may want to skip this post. Hell, after I finish this, *I* may want to skip this post.

And Paula, if you are in fact reading this and decide to mention it to our mother, you are seriously getting coal for Christmas this year. And next year. And every year.

I don't know when it happened, but sometime in the last week I started channeling the ghost of Halcyon past. And I'm not just talking about the vinyl pants and the fetish collars and the disclosure of waaaaay too much personal information on the internet. Permit me to explain.

So last Thursday, after having drinks with Pete in San Francisco, I returned to my room at the St. Francis to check my mail, finish a post, and get to bed in time for at least six hours of uninterrupted, uneventful sleep before my morning conference calls and customer meetings.

I had just finished a blog post when I got an IM from a new digital acquaintance. A new and rather attractive female digital acquaintance. And an invite to her web cam.

And she was in lingerie. Missing a key part of her ensemble.

Let me clarify here that I have never met this woman. I have never spoken to this woman. With the sole exception of one chat session, I have never communicated with this woman outside of our regular, mutual, occasionally flirtatious commenting on each other's web sites.

Needless to say, this was suddenly way more interesting than work. Actually, fungal growth is way more interesting than work most of the time, but I think you get my point.

So here she is in white silk and stockings and I'm thinking, "aren't you cold?"

Actually I'm thinking it's getting real difficult to balance this laptop on my lap now, but that's pretty much the natural result of near naked women parading around seductively in front of me.

Despite her obvious lack of pelvic coverage, she was, oddly enough, wearing a telephone headset - which kinda made her look like a pornographic version of Brittany Spears. But I'm pretty sure this sort of thing doesn't happen during a Brittany concert. Christina Aguilera perhaps, but Brittany, probably not.

In a nutshell (so to speak), she asks me to include her in my, uh, private time. Not surprisingly, this isn't really all that difficult a request as what she was asking for was almost assuredly going to be part of my evening anyway. And this was bound to be way better (and way cheaper) than pay-per-view.

But what made her request truly interesting was that it was at the direction of a third party - a long distance lover on the other end of that headset. Now admittedly this sort of behavior is normally outside my own social-sexual boundaries. This doesn't mean I was freaked out - it takes a whole lot more than a sexy woman's domination fantasies to make me all a-twitter. I'm just saying their personal perversions were not necessarily on my own sexual menu. Not that there is anything wrong with that. The definition of a pervert is just anyone kinkier than you are. And, honestly, I don't have many hang ups.

Anymore.

Besides, this was all done via internet, and via the internet I may well have embarked on a little digital diversion to reach the same result anyway. So it seemed to me like everybody wins.

Long story short, I indulged in this fantasy. Although I will admit that the smart ass side of me really wanted to take off on some twisted jackass style chat like this .

That part of me was quickly subdued by, uh, stronger urges. Seriously, if you saw this woman, you would totally understand. And for the record, you can't see her because we have promised anonymity. Which is a risky promise when two bloggers decide to bump uglies - even if it is only through the magic of cyberspace.

Regardless, she is gorgeous. And, frankly, I was seriously the lucky one just to have been on line when I was (I swear I am never shutting Messenger down again - EVER).

However, I wonder if this little electrical encounter will in anyway taint our digital - and eventual personal relationship. Earlier in the day we had agreed to meet in a week for caipirinhas and stories of blogging and Brazil. Will our internet intimacy put some awkward spin on things? Kinda like Dr. Evil and Frau Farbissina. "It got weird, didn't it?"

Like "Hi! I'm Jimbo. I've seen your vulva."

Now I have engaged in some provocative chat sessions with bloggers before. I have participated in my share of web-cam naughtiness, but only with people I had met previously, or at least had a long, detailed history of digital interaction.

I asked Halcyon for some advice in this matter. If anyone would know how to handle the social complexities of this, it would be the creator of Globalgasm . His advice was simply to separate the sex and the person. Which isn't always so easy. Leave the vulva chat on the screen where it belongs.

This of course brought up another concern. All that vulva chat happened to be on a work screen, and after signing off I realized I was still logged into my VPN.

Let's just say I'm real happy that I am employed by the least intrusive company in America.

At least, I really, REALLY hope so.