Wheels

Gordon Wallace was tall and thin and he sometimes thought awkward was his middle name. Well, 'awkward in situations that involved interactions with people not his mother or his uncle Pete or old Mr. Wu who ran the corner grocers', but that was quite the mouthful for a middle name, so he just went with awkward for short.

Not that it really was his middle name. Justice was his real middle name. Gordon Justice Wallace. Awkward wouldn't have been much worse, really, and he figured his fate had been sealed when Gordon had become Gordy.

Gordy was the old guy who lived down the street or a hockey player with no front teeth. It was the name of your bachelor uncle, or what you named your pet goldfish.

Or, in his case, it was the name of your average six foot tall, blue-eyed, wild-haired geeky webpage designer.

One of the things Gordy loved about the ‘net was you could name yourself. You could go cute or serious or geeky or strong or funny or anything you wanted. Gordy went with Thorston or Thor for roleplaying and HammerDude for pretty much everything else.

Tonight he signed on as HammerDude and joined Trombones, a local online bar. He grinned when he saw Wheels95 was already there. He and Wheels had met on a World War Two RPG and when their characters had been taken as POWs together, they'd emailed back and forth a bit to talk strategy. Some personal information had leaked out along the way and it turned out they both lived in Baston and were both gay.

Wheels had a few years on Gordy, but they seemed to have a lot in common and got along well. Or at least they did online. Gordy was shy and well, yes, awkward in person. It was nice though, there wasn't any pressure and he'd been able to flirt and Wheels thought he was funny.

Wheels had also been making 'let's meet in person' noises and Gordy figured he'd been putting the man off long enough that if he didn't agree to meet he'd chase the guy off anyway, so after a bit of back and forth he stepped up to the plate and suggested they find a non-virtual bar for their next meet-up.

HammerDude: You know, pretend to be like the normals for a day -- going out on Friday night. I hear it can be fun.
Wheels95: LOL!
Wheels95: That sounds great, Hammer
HammerDude: Supper? 7 at Mama Georgina's?
Wheels95: It's a date.

A date. Wow. Gordy grinned. He had a date. And it had been painless, too. He thought maybe he should change his middle name to Smooth.

At least until seven o'clock tomorrow night.