Story Part III

We thus began our cyber-dance. We were like two awkward teenagers, groping for a connection, trying to cop a feeling. My computer was now always on, my ears perked for the alarm telling me that there was yet another message to read, a new set of words to tumble through my mind. While he simultaneously became more real through our correspondence, my mind was busying itself incorporating these new details into the dream I was building. I was dating two men: one, a sarcastic, clever and mildly poetic Sebastian who had contacted me from an online dating site; the other, the fantasy named Sebastian whom I was silently, unwittingly constructing out of fragments pulled here and there from words on a screen.

I suppose he was doing the same.

Drunk one evening, I wrote the following email:

"Dear Sebastian,

I suppose this email is the beginning of my own journal of sorts. I just had a conversation with a friend in which we discussed love and the pursuit thereof...how much are you willing to imagine just to have someone to spoon...

Yes, I am drunk, and rightly so. I am home from my first day back at school, back to the halls of my disenchantment.

Favorite Weber quote: 'Disenchantment is bittersweet.'

I suppose this is why I love Baldwin's writing so much--he so elegantly captures that cognitive dissonance which occurs when one becomes disenchanted--that divide between religion and morality, religion and reality...Marching down one perceived path and discovering yourself in a wilderness altogether unantipicated.

I danced around their idol,
and twirled their mantras over my tongue
and I nodded when they whispered about --

Yes, growing up as a preacher's daughter has been odd.

Well, I suppose I should cease my ramblings for the evening. But if you would like to call, here is my number is 717-555-5789. Our emails have been wonderful, but there's just something about a disembodied voice...

I hope your own evening has been full of everything beautiful.

Lexi"

***

He didn't respond. I felt horrible at ever having sent such sentimental prose to a stranger across the country. Remembering that he was not yet a real presence in my life, I simply shrugged off this mere instant in a near-continuous existence of missed opportunities, went to my computer and pulled the lever again, hoping that one of the four faces greeting me might begin yet another dance.

And then one week later, I received a response:

"Lexi,
I apologize for not writing sooner. A grocery list of events has kept me away. Also, such great writing deserves a much better response than I am able to provide currently. But, I would welcome the opportunity to speak to your disembodied voice. Let me know when I can call.

Sebastian."

***

I still remember hearing his voice that first time. I was expecting his call, so I instantly knew with whom I was speaking, but it was not the voice in my dream. He sounded much more optimistic than his picture had led me to expect; and he sounded stuffy, as though he was working his way through a nine-year cold. It was jarring, it was intriguing, it was a warning to which I paid no heed.