Charlie J Forrest

Thus far I’ve blamed my mistakes upon Reddit, feminism and white male privilege. Next up, Twitter.

Things only really went south when I started crafting an online persona. You see it’s not enough just to write stories. Nowadays you need the whole package. The Twitter the Tumblr the Fet-Life the angsty self-justifying blog. So when I started writing under the name Charlotte, I started putting these other bits together.

At first it was fine, I mainly used Twitter to put unimaginative adverts up for my stories. Except then people started engaging with me. People started talking to Charlotte, and Charlotte replied.

This was the point at which the head fuck started. Because I didn’t want to ‘out’ myself as not Charlotte to everyone, but, as time went on and some people started engaging with me more, I didn’t want to carry on feeling like I was lying to them. What I’m saying is, there’s no clear cut-off point for when you should own up to people that you really have a willy. Some people probably wind up in that position for years, others either have the issue forced, or force it themselves. In my case it was the latter.

In March I attended Eroticon 2014 in Bristol. I put on my suit, I hung my name badge around my neck and tried to find the least creepy tone of voice for shaking hands and saying “Hello, my name’s Charlotte.”

I could have not done that. I could so easily have either not gone, or asked for a different badge name, or worn a track suit and a hockey mask for the entire weekend. But I didn’t, and I am so glad that I didn’t, because it made me realise just what an amazing group of people had gathered together for that conference.

One of the things that Dan Savage talks about semi-frequently are situations where you tell someone one thing, and their response tells you everything about them. That’s exactly what I found when introducing myself to people as, almost without exception, the conversation went roughly as follows:

Me: Hello, I’m Charlotte Forrest.

Other Person: [pause] Oh, that’s not what I was expecting.

Followed by perfectly normal conversation as if nothing unusual had just taken place.

Amazing.

But it got better than that. You see, at different points in the weekend some very considerate people sat me down and had quiet conversations, in the most constructive sensitive way imaginable about the fact that I was basically being a bit of a twat. Not only that, but in all instances, this was prefaced by, not only asking me why I was chosing to use a female alias, but was there something deeper driving this. Without judgment or harshness, on multiple occasions I was given the opportunity to talk about how much of ‘Charlotte’ there is in ‘Charlie’

A-mazing.

I thought I was going to cry.

I mean, sleep deprivation, complimentary Sherry and not eating properly all contributed to this emotional roller coaster, but the simple realisation of how patient and understanding people can be really got to me.

It also made me feel like crap. Not just for the reasons I’ve already outlined, but for the extra one, that it felt like a horrible wasted opportunity. I’d had 48 hours surrounded by these people and I felt like I hadn’t been able to connect with them the way I wanted to because I’d stupidly put up an unnecessary barrier, a giant elephant in the room that had to be negotiated before people could even begin to interact with me. the real me. And not just my willy.