Hear that sound? That’s the sound of your name being omitted from a group e-mail that reads “You want to take this one, Nancy?”
Randy, the executive assistant to the CEO, calls me immediately. He explains what I already know to be true, that GoDaddy had been trying to reach me via Hotmail before they gave up. I, in turn, explain that rattling off dates is like listing all the times you rang the doorbell of an abandoned house. For me, this just happened. I’m not saying it did. I messed up. But if Randy can’t help me legally, logistically, or financially, he can at least do me the courtesy of acknowledging my reality.
“I don’t check Hotmail,” I say for the umpteenth time. “I use it as a graveyard.”
For some reason, this metaphor strikes at the core of Randy.
“You know,” he says, “I think we’re similar people. Same approach to life, same habits.”
Under normal circumstances, I’d be inclined to think this was some kind of customer service gambit, but Randy does not work in customer service. Pop psychology is above his pay grade. A self-described “glass half full” kind of person, he’s just a nice guy with “CEO” at the ass end of his title and the burden of talking to me.
“Our guys are really good,” he assures me. “I’m sure you’ll get your site back.”
That I would not be afforded the opportunity to get my domain back had not occurred to me. I am sliding down the ladder of hope at an alarming speed. This morning, anything less than the reinstatement of my account and an apology for the inconvenience would have been unthinkable. Now I am praying for the privilege to send a stranger a piñata full of money. Never outside the realm of fiction have I so deeply fantasized about someone I didn’t know and had not seen. Never have I so desperately wanted to breach the barrier of unknowability to understand why a person was not responding to his or her e-mail. Never has my brain been host to the thought: It’s just the one planet. How hard could this be?
At 10:30 p.m., like a flashlight dying in a cave, my e-mail goes down for good, refusing to accept my password, which is an elaborate version of a password I’ve used since college. This feels a little like one’s in-box getting sudden-onset dementia. Don’t take it personally, you think. This isn’t you. This isn’t us.
I check the domain registration again. I am now property of a man named Al Perkins.
* * *
British Man Defends Buying B.C. Town Name and Turning It into Porn Site.
According to an article in the Canadian National Post, Al Perkins of the British dependency of Jersey recently nabbed the town of Barriere’s website and attempted to milk them for $9,700. This will turn out to be only partially true. Perkins does not actually reside on the island of Jersey, only registers his domains there, and Al is not his real name. But the unfortunate part—the milking part—checks out. When the town refused to pay, Perkins raised the stakes and flooded its site with pornography. Which is how visitors to barrierechamber.com wound up “greeted by a wall of explicit images in categories such as ‘college,’ ‘fantasy,’ and ‘gagging.’”
Well, that does not sound promising.
Technically, what Perkins is doing is legal. He owns the site, he can do what he likes with it, including redirect it. Though this is a seriously disproportionate response to a clerical error. Perkins’s defense is that if a domain means that much to someone, why wouldn’t he or she renew it? At first, I am struck by how nicely this argument dovetails with my own guilt. How could I have been so negligent? On the other hand, this is the philosophical equivalent of asking, “Why are you hitting yourself?” while slapping someone in the face with their own hand. I maintain my site. And I do so knowing absolutely no one is on the hunt for a 2006 rant about frozen yogurt. Unless I’ve committed a minor felony, traffic hovers at around eighty visitors per day, two of whom are most definitely my parents. But at least it’s mine. Was mine.
I assume barrierechamber.com will be dead—the town has moved on to the more literal pastures of barrierechamberofcommerce.com. Instead, it leads me to the Facebook page of one Wesley Perkins. This is surprising, as I gather most people in his line of work do not want to be found. And yet there he is, in his mid-forties with squinty blue eyes and sandy hair. There is something of the elfin Conan O’Brien about him. He is in a relationship with a pretty raven-haired woman named Lesley. There are pictures of their faces pressed close together. Wesley and Lesley. I wonder what Perkins would look like to the unbiased eye. He looks nice. Normal even. Under different circumstances, would I register his smile as an expression of joy and not the cackling of someone who probably cut his teeth stealing wallets from old ladies?
Reasonably, I know the profile of my buyer is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how many puppies this man has skinned. But
