Spike, Velvet and Mark

It's Sunday, and I'm home from the Association of Internet Researchers Conference at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kan. Right off the bat I have to tell you that Kansas isn't Kansas, Dorothy.\nA smart little city on the Kansas River, Lawrence flaunts a college town atmosphere with a sophisticated shopping street -- one that outdid our streetscaped Kirkwood in character and variety. \nKansas City, 30-odd miles east, is a surprisingly earthy and robust city, with barbecue that roiled my stomach, and the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum, one of the best museums I've been to in my culture vulture existence.\nMy trip to Lawrence was predicated by the conference, justified by my interest in Internet issues and much anticipated if for no other reason than novelty alone. I stayed at the Hampton Inn, drove around in a rented Elantra (my letter to Hyundai would start -- Dear Hyundai: Congratulations on updating the Yugo), and tried to sample the best the University of Kansas had to offer. \nThe conference itself was a broad affair, chock full of social scientists sniffing each other's credentials with the moxie of breeding stock. I was put off by the fact that nobody wanted to sniff mine. \nI never brought up the topic of HIV, but it found me a few times. I listened to a baby-faced doctoral candidate in communications talk about examining HIV support chats on the Internet and noticed a presentation on such a group was to be given Sunday (alas, my Priceline.com ticket had me leaving too early Sunday to attend).\nI went to a session on Internet research ethics, which gave me the most profound pause. I learned some researchers monitor support chats, sift their archives and extract their discourse in the name of advancing research and understanding the social networks we humans undertake. Ethics?\nI left that session with the worst taste in my mouth, one that reminded me of the sensation I had when I realized some people lie, cheat and steal for the hell of it. I admit to great naivete in some arenas of the human experience, though I sometimes consider myself jaded. I simply never realized anyone would sift these communications, sit in a support chat under false pretenses and report on the proceedings. \nI didn't realize people would advance their careers on the suffering of others, that they would blandly use these utterances, whether from protected identities or not, to fuel their maniacal quest for the ultimate lab rats -- the true cry of human distress. \nI wondered, too, what possible gain they could receive from the HIV support chats that I've encountered -- ones full of tales from the modern Arabian Nights, reworked Camelots and solipsistic Supermen. Ones where the boast of competence, sexual exploits and social masking were the modalities of success -- "I'm positive, and I'm doing grrr-eat!" -- full of the emoticons of people too bothered by typing to posit a truly revealing moment. \nWhen I left the conference that afternoon, I drove to Topeka, Kan., and walked around the Capitol. But I couldn't shake the depressed mood that discussion had left in my head. While not all researchers would do research in this fashion, it angered and troubled me that people in the full bloom of intellect, credentials gathered around them like the folds of graduation gowns, would ever consider such activity ethical, that their ends justified their means.\nEvery day of our lives, we walk on ground made of such good intentions. Highways filled with the bones of Native Americans, fields picked by migrant workers, we are served fast food meals from the hands of people who do work we consider beneath ourselves. They are the sociological phenomena of a careless society, a culture where the items on the list of throw-aways include other people's lives. \nBack in Lawrence, I locked myself away in the Hampton Inn, in my nonsmoking room. An oversight in my booking process, I couldn't escape my ashtray-less existence. I paced my cigarettes to commercial breaks, running out to the parking lot every once in a while when the nicotine level in my bloodstream threatened to dip below normal. \nI went out the last time at 11 p.m., just before bedtime. It was a beautiful night, a fact I had successfully ignored during my prior trips. \nThere was a dog in the parking lot, not a terribly strange occurrence with housing around the hotel. It was a friendly, gray and mottled mutt, with the sharp features of a greyhound and the tail of a golden retriever. \nShe wanted to play, and I didn't want to oblige. She ran in wider and wider circles around the lot, nipping at my calves in passing, leading me out further into the lot. \nThen I noticed another dog sitting under a light post. It sat unnaturally still, oddly crooked. I approached it carefully, not knowing whether these dogs were truly friendly or not, not knowing if the silent dog was injured and likely to snap.\nThis is how I met Spike and Velvet: Spike, the old schnauzer with bad hips; Velvet the hyper girl with the fox-like face. After an obligatory slow introduction, we warmed up to each other like long-lost pals. I read their tags and found a phone number. The front desk called and found the dogs were being sought all night, the owners panicked at their absence.\nFor a half hour of my life, Spike leaned against my legs, enjoying an ear scratching, while Velvet ran crazy eights pausing to nip at Spike or me, hoping to incite some play. Until the parents showed up, under a bright harvest moon, in the parking lot of a cookie cutter hotel, in Lawrence, Kan.\nI wouldn't have guessed this would be the highlight of my trip, a gift I had no idea how to ask for, no idea that I needed. I understood when one of the parents showed up in a Hoosier softball league T-shirt what I needed to know -- that all was well where it needed to be well, in my heart, on that most beautiful night in Lawrence, Kan.