Masterminx

\\If you can insert your name at the end of this sentence, and it sounds reasonable, you should change your name, or become a stripper.\\

In the online world, you never use your real name. You get to choose the name that world will use to refer to you. It's like that scene out of \\Dune\\, where the guy gets to choose the name that the tribe members will use when they address him as a man.

I chose Masterminx. Of course, the name didn't come to me in a vision. I made it up in the mid-1990's when I needed a name for my email account. I wanted something cocky yet feminine; sassy yet strong. It was the birth of a persona that has persisted.

Recently, someone asked me what they should call me. I floundered. I violated one of the principal laws of the internet world, and gave them an ordinary first name. Ordinary. Even when I worked in the adult telephone entertainment (phone sex) industry, I used a fake name that sounded a little more sexy on the lips.

I wish I could go back and change that name that I offered. I would tell her to call me something powerful: the name of a Greek goddess, or warrior. Something that carries a hurricane in the back of its throat and lightning in its fist.

Instead, I am just me.

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