Anyone remember the telephone hookup called LavaLife? It was basically SA without the internet! I met a super hottie on the outskirts of the northside named Chelsea that I still remember today. She was hella fun. She had a playboy bunny tattoo near her hipbone. God she was so cute....
Originally Posted by yinzerpgh
Ah, I remember LavaLife - or as some guys referred to it, LarvaLife - 'cause you were never really sure what you were going to find there...
I was never particularly interested in it, mainly because I didn't like the way it was set up - you had to prepay for "minutes" on the system, you could browse the audio ads for free (as I recall), you were charged for every minute you were talking to someone. When you ran out of minutes, you couldn't communicate with other members (nor could they communicate with you). The only thing that made me join was because there was one of my "ones that got away" that advertised there, and at the time it was the only way to get in touch with her. She went by the name Cassie. She was a stripper with long red hair, pretty face, body to die for, and enormous implants (like, way too large for her frame...). I knew about her because a couple of guys had seen her and mentioned it on ASPD, and posted some pictures. I took one look at the pics, and I was like, "OMG, she's *perfect*, I absolutely have to see her..." Plus, she was supposedly really wild "in the room", and that sounded good to me too.
So first thing I did was go to Rite Aid and get a prepaid credit card to pay for my minutes. I got a prepaid American Express, because the fee for the card was the lowest of the cards they had. Then I called them (because in order to open an account, you had to call their customer service and talk to someone in person). Gave some phony name and address information, and my prepaid credit card number to pay for my minutes, and ... declined. Tried it again - declined again. There was definitely enough money on the card to run the charge, but it wouldn't go through. So, I called American Express. They looked, and they said, "yep, we see those charges, and they were declined". I asked why. They said it was because LavaLife was considered a "sexually oriented business", and they don't allow the use of their cards with sexually oriented businesses. (You'd think LavaLife would have known that and would have told me as soon as I gave them am AMEX card number...) I had to go back to Rite Aid and get a prepaid Visa card (for a higher fee) which I was able to use with LavaLife. (At least I didn't lose anything, I was able to use the AMEX card for other expenses that I would have otherwise paid for with my debit card...) I didn't purchase a lot of minutes - the only thing I wanted to do was to have enough minutes on my account to exchange a couple of messages with Cassie. That was all I needed.
So, I got on LavaLife, and left a message for Cassie in her voicemail (since she was not on the system at the time). The next day, she left a message back for me, included a phone number, and told me I should call her. So I did. I called the number, some guy answered - I asked for Cassie, he said "hold on", and a minute later she was on the phone with me. This would turn out to be the one and only time I ever got to talk to her. She had the most adorable "baby doll" voice... I told her I wanted to see her, she told me what it would cost, and I said that was fine. I asked when I could see her, she told he she had time in her schedule a few later (which I kind of balked at, usually when I'm talking to someone about an appointment, I'm looking for "right now", or at least the same day - but this girl was so gorgeous that I decided that I was willing to wait a few days). We set a day, and a specific time. She told me (and I still remember this like it was yesterday, hearing her "little baby doll" voice saying this...), "So, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to call you on (whatever day it was supposed to be...), about an hour ahead of time. You're going to come and pick me up. We're going to go somewhere and get a room. When we get there, we're both going to get naked, and then I'm going to fuck the shit out of you. Does that sound like fun to you?" I told her it did, that I was looking forward to seeing her at the appointed day and time, and she said she was too. That's where we left it. I went to my boss at work (I was at work at the time this conversation happened...), said I wanted the afternoon off on the day that Cassie and I had agreed to meet. This was (and still is) really unusual for me, because I basically *never* take time off work for an appointment - but I was willing to make an exception in this case... My boss said that was fine, so I was all set.
The day came, the time she told me she was going to call me came ... and went. I waited a little bit. Nothing. If I recall correctly, I was supposed to meet her at 1:00pm that day. About 12:45pm, I was about to give up - I had the whole afternoon off work, so time wasn't critical for me, but I wasn't going to hang out all afternoon waiting for her, I wanted to at least have some idea of what was going on. So I called the phone number she originally gave me. The same guy answered. I asked to speak with Cassie. He asked why I wanted to speak to her. I wasn't sure what to even say, so I just said that she had made an appointment to meet with me that afternoon. He let out a clearly exasperated sigh... He told me, "Cassie isn't here. I'm her boyfriend. This is my phone. I wish she would stop giving people this number. I'm at work right now, and I have no way to get in touch with her. I won't be seeing her until tonight sometime. If you want, leave me your number and I'll give her your message whenever I see her." Well, that was awkward... But I did give him my number, he said he'd pass the message along, and I thanked him. I said something like "Sorry to be a bother", and his reply was something like, "Don't worry about it - I'm getting used to this by now..." Long story short - I didn't hear from her that night, nor did I ever hear from her again... (Oh - and once all this went down, I went back to my boss and said I wasn't going to need the afternoon off after all - no way I was going to burn half a vacation day for no reason...
)
Over the next few years, I made a number of attempts to connect with Cassie. I left occasional messages for her on LavaLife until I ran out of minutes, but I don't think she was even picking her messages up. Usually contact attempts were via other guys on ASPD who'd said they'd seen her - either they'd give me a phone number that they said they used to contact her, but the number turned out to be bad by the time I got it. Or they'd tell me they'd give her my phone number whenever they next saw her, but then they usually never saw her again after that. At one time, someone who said he was Cassie's "friend" was kind of advertising for her by proxy on ASPD - there was an account called "Cassie" (or something like that) on ASPD, but if you PM'ed it, you were really talking to this male "friend". I talked to him, he said he was just trying to help out his "friend" because she didn't have a phone of her own and wasn't particularly organized, but he was collecting inquiries and passing them along to her. So I gave him my info, and waited... Not long after, I talked to him again - he said something to the effect that he did pass along my info, but it was difficult to get her to follow up on anything, and that he'd pretty much given up trying to help her because it seemed like it was wasted effort, and "good luck, I hope you can get hold of her"....
I know she moved around the areas of Castle Shannon, Dormont, Beechview, and Brookline for a while, staying with various men that (supposedly) mostly picked her up in bars, and she was skilled enough at manipulating them that she was able to convince them to let her move in with them pretty quickly. Then pretty soon after, something would happen (I presume things in the guy's house, or things from his wallet, would start turning up missing or whatnot - you can probably guess the main reason her life was so unstable...), the guy would kick her out, and she'd start the whole process again with someone else...
For good or for ill, I never did get to see her, and I never got a chance to her again after that one phone conversation. She's one of the few girls that I made numerous attempts to see, and I never got to, even though I knew other guys were seeing her. Heck, even Meeka I eventually got to see (though it was at least 10 years after seeing her was really "fun" in any way...
). But not this one. She remained forever out of reach... Years later, I did talk to someone who supposedly knew her from going to school with her, and said that she eventually got her life on track and had a decent job and was doing OK.
Anyway, that's my LavaLife story. Probably way more than you wanted to know...
