I still remember my first time. I remember exactly how it felt. It was so exhilarating, yet shameful. It was so intimate, yet invasive. It was so simple, yet my life would be forever complicated by its presence.

I still remember my first time. I felt like a little boy in a candy store, but also like some voyeuristic pervert being watched by everyone I had ever known. In a moment I knew my life had changed forever.

I still remember how I felt that first time…my first time signing into Facebook. .

Wait? What did you think I was talking about?

It was two years ago this week when I finally broke down and created a Facebook account. I was a little late to the social networking party trying desperately to hang on to my anonymity. I avoided Classmates.com  and MySpace, and then Facebook like they were some two-bit prostitutes. But just like driving by a threesome of two-bit prostitutes I was extremely curious.

I remember telling my wife that I was signing up for Facebook. It was like I was telling her I wanted to start seeing other people.

“Hey Honey…I think I might sign up to Facebook,” I said casually while helping her dress our bed in clean sheets.

There was a long, tense silence in our bedroom. I immediately regretted ever opening my dumb mouth. Did I just ask my wife to have a threesome? Did I just ask me wife for some weird sexual favor?

“Why would you want to do something like that?” she asked.

“I don’t know? Because the entire world is on Facebook.”

“If the entire world jumped off the Ben Franklin Bridge would you?” she asked.

“Um……..” I really had to think about that.  “Yeah. Um. I think I just might.”

I understood my wife’s concerns.  We had a nice little family of five and survived our life so far without any electronic help from the outside world. We both avoided Facebook long enough. We even made fun of its participants together saying we didn’t need to be part of that waste of time. But this Facebook thing didn’t seem like it was going away anytime soon, and I had nothing but time to waste.

So I signed up the next day. Alone in my dark basement, I stripped myself of my social networking virginity and logged on for the first time.

It felt both freeing and incarcerating. I felt nude. Kind of like a baby being born into the world, only more like a man-baby being born as a grown male naked on the stage of Radio City Music Hall. Friend requests started attacking my screen. Pictures of my children started to appear on my monitor as people were tagging me. My Facebook wall was being infiltrated by the entire galaxy!

I still remember how it felt my first time. It felt so dirty and embarrassing.  After about one hour I turned off my computer and seriously thought about disarming my new Facebook account. But instead I just took a shower.

Logging on to Facebook that first time was like this old recurring dream I used to have about being at a dinner party with everyone I had ever known. And yes, of course I was naked in this dream. I no longer have that dream.  Now I just log on to Facebook if I’m looking for that naked-in-a-crowd feeling.

Of course, it got better over time.  And eventually my wife even joined me online.  My reserve and humility turned to deference and arrogance. I once was afraid to be tagged in someone’s photo album, and now I publish my pathetic blogs about my pathetic brain to thousands of people.

So I’ve turned my attention over to Twitter, signing up this week for the first time. Like Facebook, Twitter doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.  And like Facebook, Twitter is just another two-bit prostitute that my curiosity cannot deny.

So find me on Twitter @mypatheticblog. I’ll be the guy with my clothes off…Electronically speaking, of course.