Dirty Desktop(less) Drawers Part 1

I heard this question asked at a party once, in passing. "Where does my trash go when I empty it off my computer desktop?" There was a laugh and an answer I didn't hear because, I was passing. Probably, for more booze since I was moving swiftly in one direction. It sounded like a funny premise for a joke to me. But, I have since taken this inquiry a bit more seriously.

I'm paranoid because my very strict, old, gay landlord recently picked through my trash. He busted me with-my-shade-of-lipstick on several ciggerette butts. I promised him I wasn't smoking. So, consequently this led to a rent increase. Along with, came, a violated, and sickening feeling. As the wool scratched off my eyes, my life flashed before them. I recalled the time I was visiting my friend Bonnie in New York. She's a working actress on a series there. I remember she told me that she had to be careful what she threw in the trash because of nosey neighbors trying to find things out about her. Then there was the time I parked my rainbow banana seat bike in the back yard, eight years old, in Chicago. After being chased for several blocks. Five little black kids yelling at me to, "give me the bike!" I got inside the gate and closed it. Safe. I pulled the kick stand out with my foot and steadied it. Then ran up the steps into the house, catching my breath, and forgot about it. After dinner I came out to catch fire flies in a jar. The bike was gone. That bike was the last present I got from my mom before she divorced my dad and moved to California. Stepping outside and seeing it gone was a moment that came with a powerful realization. The inside of my fence is not "safe" like in baseball. Homebase doesn't exist in real life. A few days later, my step brother and I walked out of the public library. There were a bunch of kids at the bottom of the steps. One little girl with two big poofs in her hair came riding in on a rainbow banana seat bike. I started to say, "Hey! That's my bike!" But, my seven year old brother stuck his arm out across my chest and whispered, "Don't. They'll kill you."

The invasion of my privacy, on the part of my garbage picking landlord, stunned me long enough to ponder the possibility of a very serious question. Where Does my cyber trash go once it's supposedly erased off my desktop? Does it just poof! Disappear like I hope? Or is there a cyber BIG BROTHER landfill owner SLUMLORD collecting evidence on me by a "genius" at a "Genius Bar"? Am I polluting and tearing a whole in cyber ozone layers as a secret file thickens on me? Or am I someday about to be blackmailed for money unless I become a Scientologist?

In my minds eye, I see little cybertrash pickers with no-name tags sifting through my, once private, nude artistic photos say, or incriminating evidence of secret affairs I saved in a file of raunchy IM's, I finally discarded. I see cyber-trash-men with leaflet blowers on thier backs illegally working for the man, in their pants. Silently blowing my privacy into the hands of naughty hacker tradesmen who sell items in secret chatrooms. Spanking it to my naivete! Are there private agencies of word document traffickers!?! This might seem ridiculous, perposterous even. Still, and for the record. I have to ask. Can someone assure me that my paranoid conspiracy theory is nothing but a figment of my narcissitic mind? My God, I'm not even famous. Please tell me nobody cares about what I dumped into I don't know where. Where? Do you know where my cyber trash goes? Or you can just snicker and pass this by, like I did. Until the Big Brother of your life dips into your private trash and uses your broken promises against you. Smoke up Jonney!

Also, for the record. I met an African American woman in a personal growth seminar that had her bike stolen by a bunch of white kids. We laughed as we traded stories, and then eyed each other suspiciously. She asked me if I used to live in Bakersfield. I asked her if she used to wear her hair in poofs.