At the bar, I asked Amy what it was—or rather, how it was that two people could not know each other and fall in love and all of that. She told me that all her life people had only ever treated her like a body or a girl—or both. And interfacing with Michael over the Net was the only way she could ever really know that he was talking to her, not with his concept of her. “Reveal your gender on the Net, and you’re toast.” She considered her situation: “It’s an update of the rich man who poses as a pauper and finds the princess. But fuck that princess shit—we’re both kings.”
