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 had lied to about my age, weight, and picture.
All the time we chatted online, 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 42 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 right from the start.
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 (he was in Denmark: I was in the United States) to keep its reality at bay for the rest of our lives.
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 (he was in Denmark: I was in the United States) to keep its reality at bay for the rest of our lives.
I
thought we would be the next John and Abigail Adams--with an x-rated twist in
our 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 woods 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 the same exchange of physical evidence. Instead, I baited him with mystery: told him
the pictures were coming but 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 said 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, seducing
and stripping him of his guard and pretensions until he confessed to erections
so hard he stopped typing so he could take care of them
Now
I waited for him in the suite he booked in a hotel 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 in the room, anxious and
drinking the minibar’s small bottle of white 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
European 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 puffy, eyes tired-looking
with under-eye circles, and eyebrows divided by the wrinkle of two deep lines.
Now
I was nervous. Mats, the 52-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 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 men,
who only wanted to know whether my intention was to remarry or meet up for
casual sex.
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 bite-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, fling, lover, husband or friend. 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, gaining a
pen pal in Florence who wrote me about life in the city and his excursions to
other European destinations where he skied. There was also 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 that.
When
I ran into the Captain, though, I was pulled into a maelstrom of feelings easily
translated and reciprocated online, as if realness of feelings could only be
conveyed through such a medium. Our connection was a cut above the rest. From the get-go, he 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. Now reality set in.
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