I waited for him at a five-star
hotel in Amsterdam. He was the man I had
been talking to online for six months.
He thought I was gutsy for flying across a continent to meet a stranger;
I thought I was gutsy for having the nerve to meet a man I lied to about my
age, weight, and picture. All the time we chatted, I perpetuated the lie I was
35 and still the 125 pounds of the 25-year-old self I posted a picture of on my
profile. Really, I was 43 and 30 pounds
overweight. I knew all my lying
constituted a “moral sin” in the world of internet dating, but I never thought
it would lead to anything, especially not to a hotel in The Netherlands. Yet,
the conversations between us were electrifying.
It started with a mutual
admiration for Henry James’s short story, “The Beast in the Jungle,” the story
of a man who couldn’t “see” anything, not even the great love of his life, who
he had intimate conversations with until the day she died. He told me he was the selfish, self-involved,
and overly imaginative incarnation of the protagonist John Marcher; I told him
I would never be his patient, ever-suffering Jane Bartram - and that was our
first instant message. After that, our
conversations took off speeding across a galaxy of binary lines, where there
was the dream of true love and enough miles of distance between us to keep its
reality at bay for the rest of our lives. I thought we would be the next John
and Abigail Adams - with a bit of an x-rated twist in our more erotic communications
- who had more of a relationship in letters than in physical proximity. Yet, he
sent me pictures of everything he was and owned: his estate and garden in Denmark, the grounds
where he hunted, and a picture of himself in the captain’s uniform he used for
work at a major Scandinavian airline.
He wanted to make sure I was comfortable with his appearance, life, and
plans for our” happily ever after.”
I never provided him the same
exchange of physical evidence. Instead,
I baited him with mystery: I told him
the pictures were coming, but I never uploaded anything besides the old picture
of my 25-year- old self already posted on my online profile, the one I never
thought was all that pretty, and the one he felt had the “Mona Lisa smile and
the face of something sacred.” Even with
such flattery, I played his game of cat and mouse with all the ingenuity and
bravery of a hunt made to order online.
I was the Schopenhaur, Innana, and Gypsy Rose Lee of wordsmith, and I
seduced and stripped him of his guard and pretensions until he confessed to
erections so hard he stopped typing so that he could take care of them
Now I waited for him in the suite
he booked in a hotel that was once the administration building for the clippers
of the early 20th century. When
I checked in at the lobby, the receptionist told me he was running late, so I
waited alone in the room, anxious and drinking the African wine that gave me a
headache. Even the liquor wasn’t nulling my anxiety, the one that started on
the plane ride from the States, where I spent most of the time staring at other
Scandinavian passengers with broad foreheads, meaty noses, and strong chins,
profiles strong enough to be immortalized in busts like the ones I had seen of
ancient Romans in the Uffizi gallery in Florence.
In the room, I pulled on my sleeveless,
red dress with the low v-neck, reapplied my makeup, and searched the bathroom
mirror for any signs of my 25-year-old self, the one in the picture I posted
online, the one he said was his soul mate. In retrospect, she was a pretty
girl, with soft, wavy, brown hair, smiling eyes, and sense of hopefulness, but
what did she know about life, marriage, divorce and raising two children on her
own? Who was I kidding? I looked tired and aged: My cheeks were puffy, there were dark circles
under my eyes, and a thick line between my eyebrows.
Now I was nervous. Mats, the 53-year-old Captain, as I called my
internet lover, knew a thing or two about beautiful women. He came from their
part of the world, were beauty was the norm and lack of it unnatural. But he said he was tired of roses. He needed a fox like me, someone who
understood him, knew his complex nature and drive. On the computer, it was easy to imagine that
reality was a quick transference of the imagined to the real. Anyway, I was good with words, and I quickly
learned that communicating on an international website was my forte; there I
used my love of quotes, books, and philosophy to charm my Europeans matches,
unlike most of the American ones, who only wanted to know whether my intention
was to remarry.
American men, especially the
powerful ones, like the LA producer and Wall Street power-brokers I exchanged
messages with, did not seem to have the instincts or stomach to chase love or seduction.
“No games,” they posted on their online profiles, as if they could diffuse the mysterious
nature of attraction, whittle it down to bit-sized pieces, and masticate on
it. Mostly, they were afraid of feelings
that set the wheel in motion for the life-span of a connection, whether it
became pen pal, lover, friend, or partner.
So when I answered their questions about my expectations with a “let’s
see what happens,” they immediately disqualified me, reducing any possibility
between us to a one-night stand. “How many dinners before you sleep with me?” a
man asked. Yet another man asked me how “long”
I liked it. One man proceeded to give me
his sexual history and proclivity to three-ways in our first telephone
conversation.
I quickly dismissed my American
matches and stuck to international ones. I had gained a pen pal in Florence who
wrote to me about life in the city and his excursions to other European destinations,
especially to places where he could ski, and I met a charming Indian man who communicated
with me in one-liners: Darling, will you talk to me today? Babe, will we meet
when I travel to your city? He traveled the world as a technology consultant
for a Swiss company. When we met at the airport in Miami, he bought me a martini
at the bar and gave me a sloppy kiss, so I refused his advances and lost sight
of him soon after our first meeting.
When I ran into Captain, though,
I was pulled into a maelstrom of feelings easily translated and reciprocated
online, as if its realness could only be conveyed through such a medium. This
connection was a cut above the rest and from the get-go the Captain seemed a
version of the man my heart sought in real-time. If there was any truth to a man’s
subconscious pull to the madonna/whore type then my desire as a woman was for
the warrior/boy, a man capable of being as fierce in his professional life as he
was sensitive and accessible in his personal one. And even though an embrace of such extreme
ranges required Napoloeanic/Shakespearan
efforts, the Captain was one of the few men I’d ever met capable of it.
When the he gave me his credit
card number and ordered me to buy a ticket to Amsterdam, where he had a layover
that weekend, I was convinced it would all work out between us. But now reality set in. Memoir, " of ," available at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TT5DDWO
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