“The intensity and scrutiny afforded by a chat window cannot be discounted.”
– Me, circa 2010
This lady made me chuckle in delight. Yet, I was always aware that what I saw of her on a little chat window was a minimization of an entire existence. And therein began the contradictions. From the plenty she did share, I began to care. A crappy day at work, a tiff with a friend, a budding romance nipped in the bud – They all suddenly seemed very relevant to me. Never mind that she was a complete stranger – A stranger who I knew plenty about ( She’s chatty, this one!) but very little of. In return, I struggled. I struggled as the faceless name who she knew little about and of but as, in retrospect, an erstwhile escape for her. A willing one at that for it seemed my accorded place. And I was right.
But by god! We did cute. We did cute exceedingly well. That chat window was quickly becoming a big-rectangular-warm-squishy-fuzzy-pink-heart-unicorn-spotted gateway to a dream land ruled by anarchy of the adorable (Don’t eyeroll just yet… we’ve all been there!) Between talk of workplace arguments and lesbian laments, she also teased and teased and ….teased. One afternoon I get back home after 24 hours spent trying to make a 2 hour plane ride. 20 minutes into our conversation, she says to me:
“I am going to sound like a kill joy but I have to crash! Super tired…”
Already snuggled into bed ready to nod off, I confessed as much.
“Actually I am going to crash too ! so it sounds like a delightful idea…”
Pat comes the reply, “Lets go to bed then! 😀 ”
And the tease then proceeds to grin from ear to ear enough for me to believe my screen was forced into emanating new found brightness.
When I insisted upon remaining a faceless name, she delights me yet again…
“Fine. Play hard to get. Don’t send me your picture! At least I would know who exactly is giving me sleepless nights!”
“You make it sound like I climb up your window every night”
“You do. My chat window 🙂 ”
And I did what I do best. Sigh, shake my head and chuckle.
But if you think it was all peachy as pie – Think again. The tease busted my balls ( which I lack so it was perceived pain) just as delightfully. For her. Not so much for me. Every time I retreated to the relative simplicity of an anonymous chat buddy, her truly mercurial mind devised yet another way to whip my secretive posterior end ( aka ‘arse’) into line and before I knew it I had spilt the beans on a few thousand trivialities about myself that I’d never spoken of before. And after every single one of those conversations, I came away laughing. Laughing about myself and my self imposed cagey-ness. Laughing at her and her remarkable displays of martinet like behaviour ( kind of sexy, if you ask me). Laughing at us and how we did cute.
But that is not all we did. We were walking some kind of line … not a very clearly demarcated one but it existed alright. To a well-deserved jab, she once spewed “screw you 🙂 ”
“I’d like you to…”
By this point it only seemed right that I be honest. Apparently, two can play this game.
“I know 🙂 So would I …”
Whoever said smiley faces aren’t seductive was a raving nutter.
So there I had my girl who radiated enough sunshine to take the edge off a morbidly depressing cloudy Chicago day, a dastardly fleeting chat window that was decorated with cute bunnies and …words. Soon the obligatory “take care!” became cuddles, the “toodles!” became kisses and foreplay of the mind turned to the body. And that is when things got reaaaallly interesting…
To be continued…
