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By R.W. Deutsch "Tune in, log on and link up to the hot new world of love online! Looking for that special someone? Why spend another night babbling in bars or stalking the supermarket when the hottest dating scene is on your computer? The ancient quest to find a mate has entered the computer age. Each day tens of thousands of people log on to the Internet or online services to chat flirt and form relationships. Looking for Love Online shows you how you can enter this exciting new cyberspace dating scene!" A quote from the publisher of "Looking for Love Online: How to Meet Women Using an Online Service", by Richard M. Rogers Okay. Quick story. Last week a friend told me she was on an airplane sitting next to this guy who seemed distressed. She asked what was wrong. He was en route to rendezvous with a woman he had met online. He was flying cross country to meet his cyber mystery date. Only one problem, when he called her during his layover, her husband answered the phone. Needless to say, he didn't know there was a husband. Ouch. So remember this story — forget mine.... It will probably never happen to you. I wasn't looking for love. Okay. That's a lie. I'm always looking for love. But I wasn't lurking in any chat room or posting my turn-ons at some match-making Web site. I was just sitting at my computer reading my e-mail when I got a little fan mail about my Web site (excuse me if I keep this anonymous so as not to have you fun-loving readers deluge me with fake marriage proposals). Whatever, I usually write back. No big deal. Thanks a lot. Come back again. Then one day, I received an e-mail from a girl who had only been online for three weeks. She found my Web site and loved it so much she had to write. So I wrote back. And then she wrote back. Let's get something straight — I'm no innocent. The way I figured it, the percentages ran like this: 40% chance this was a guy; 30% chance she was bedridden because of her weight; 15% she just had some hideous skin disease or a mental disorder; 7% she was lonely and married; 5% she was underage; 2% it just wouldn't work out; and somewhere just less than 1% I'd gamble she'd be the real thing. I even wrote her pretty much to that effect. But still I continued writing. We wrote how we felt about things, the world, our friends and our lives. The deep stuff you can write someone you have never met and may never meet. I was diving head in and praying I wasn't going to land on a 200 pound, 16-year-old boy with a real bad case of eczema. She knew by now I was a writer and wrote me these words daring me to do something with them: It's dark with a luminescent blue glow and the strong aroma of night blooming jasmine, just warm enough so that you don't need a sweater and you can faintly hear a Bille Holliday record playing... It was a brilliant move on her part, albeit a little empurpled. I added a little more to the story and sent it back. Our e-mail novella grew and in it we flirted — touching, feeling each other, fantasying a romantic evening that would make even Fabio blush. Well that was it. It was time to exchange photos. Nothing could have been scarier. Here you are, having a deep and meaningful relationship with someone you've never seen. Now you want to spoil it all, don't you? What if they do nothing for you physically. Can you handle that? Can you get past that? And what if she feels that way about you? We took simultaneous deep breaths and hit send. And all was well, brothers and sisters. A couple of weeks went by and she wrote she wished we could meet. I eagerly e-mailed that I had done some research and believed the best route was, when she was ready — I was giving her complete control over where we were going — to move to the phone. I had read that when people meet after e mailing each other one of the big hurdles is that in real life there are long pauses, people aren't as witty as they are when they write, and the importance of putting a real sound instead of your imagined voice to the person. I said that when we were comfortable with that, we should — again at her complete discretion — meet somewhere neutral and spend a couple of days walking around, getting to know each other. She shot back a note saying she didn't know if we'd ever meet. This was enough for her for now. Why couldn't I just be happy the way things were? I had misinterpreted her message — it was just a wish. But a week later, she wrote that she almost called the previous night. I had given her my phone number earlier and told her if she wanted to, whenever, she could call. The following night we talked for two hours. We continued to e-mail each other and continued to talk. In a week it was going to be her birthday. She was planning a trip to Vegas that fell through. Now she was thinking of coming to meet me. * * * I drove by the restaurant once, trying to see if she had arrived. By the time I parked my car and walked back through the rain, she had. We had by now exchanged several pictures. Each one looked different enough to be different people. In real life, we both agreed we looked like a combination of all the pictures. She was nervous. I was nervous. We agreed on the salad, but chose different desserts. Should I take that as a sign, I thought? Of what? After dinner we stopped and had cocktails. Here she was in flesh and blood. No more just an ethereal lover I could never touch. It was all so real. So romantic. All right. I'm a sucker for that crap, I can't help myself. I was feeling good and feeling scared at the same time. She was someone I had just met, but someone I knew so much about. Things that a stranger would have taken years, or maybe even a lifetime to discover about her. I dropped her off at her hotel. We kissed once and she went upstairs. I drove home. She had gotten a hotel room twenty minutes from my place. My mind was trying to process all that had transpired. What did it all mean? Was it successful? Would she want to see me a second time? When I got home there was a message: "I'm sorry if I sent you away so quickly. I didn't mean to. Call me if you want... or even if you don't want." I called. Twenty minutes later I was back at the hotel. Five hours later we had some donuts and walked around town. It's now a month later. We've gotten together two times since then and we still e-mail and telephone each other at least once a day. I can't say I know where it's going. Neither can she. And now we're suffering the pains of the long distance relationship. We stumble. We get up. But we keep hitting send and receive. So now forget this story. It will probably never happen to you. What do you think about online relationships? Are they purer, since they're based on more tangible things than looks? Or are they doomed to failure? Share your thoughts — and your stories — in the "Cyber-Love" topic of the Women's Zone conference. R.W. Deutsch has produced Web sites for Excite, Infoseek and Digital City, as well as his own personal Web sites. His writing has appeared in Tripod, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and The Mississippi Review, and his collection of quotes by actors, writers and directors, "Inspirational Hollywood," is now available at your favorite online book store. Illustrations by Federico Jordan
© 1998 Tripod, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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