Hunters

 journal 12th April 2014  

When my grandfather (Harry) Burgess was married he lived in Auckland, and was employed by the Melanesian  Mission to captain their ship the Southern Cross (IV or VI). He (and his wife) had four daughters, Mary, who was the eldest, Dorothy, Margery, who never married, and Jessica Olive. When she was little, the first word she learned to say, naturally, was papa. Then he taught her her name, Jessica, and then, because he used to bath her, and he wanted to expand her mind by teaching her a word which wasn't a noun, fresh. When she had had her bath and was towled dry, she was "fresh". Pappa, Jessica Fresh. He didn't tell me this. I remember being with him when I was still in my high chair, and mum and my sister and I visited them in Auckland. He would have been over 70, and I woke one night and he was painting his pictures of ships, and I sat on his knee and helped him until Gran came and put me back to bed.

 It was online on camarades www.ww.com that I first met Jess. She called herself Pappa Jessica Fresh and Machinegun bang. Camarades was quite a different web site in those days. (2006) and the idea was to let people stream web video free peer to peer to enhance communication, but human nature being what it is, it turned into a sex cam service where even the people running it tried to exploit the people using it. Originally the idea was that every bit of video streamed to the camarades server was sent back, so that there was no chance of imbedding any malicious software into the stream, but that wasn't the intention of the camarades controllers, and I even get the impression that one or two of them would drive from their headquarters in california to get free sex if they thought it would be profitable  for them, but that is another story. What is new in California? 

Jess was putting on shows on her web cam, like many other people, many of them unemployed, bored, and finding themselves on the internet with a whole day to fill. But Jessica was different. When I tried to talk to her, she responded and we connected through msn, on a secure link, and she let me share some significant milestones in her families life, including the birthday party of one of her daughters.

In her own words:

y story? I used to tell my friends that it was better than fiction, but that was more for the dramatic angle. Everyone appreciates a good story.

How do we know what our story is?