Story Part XIV

I should have known better than to label this a short story...I also should have known better than to email him back. I've never played hard to get, so when I answered his emails so cautiously, I believed I was holding him at bay while I figured out a new way to extricate ourselves from an impending disaster:

"Dear Sebastian,
Compatibility and shared passion are indeed rare and tremendously exciting. Your nod to Oscar and Lucinda was not overlooked. However, I should explain promptly what terrifies me about this prospect: We seem to have a library of commonalities, but I'm also searching for those precious gaps which leave room for new and amazing things to grow. I fear our commonalities might overwhelm that chance for growth. Further, we hermit crabs are primarily observers, filing away details for our collections of humanity. The idea that I might meet you and be merely filed away is disconcerting, to say the least.

I hope I don't sound too presumptuous, myself. I simply feel that patience might be best.

So, feel free to mildly amuse me. I might surprise you with a bark of laughter.

Emily"

I had been careless. I had encouraged correspondence, and this was certainly not in my initial plan. I still didn't want to erase my dream self from existence, but I certainly did not want to encourage Sebastian to continue corresponding. So, I simply turned my profile off, believing that one could not message a person whose profile was no longer active....I was mistaken.


" Emily:

The things that you say, they make me wonder if you could be that elusive person around whom I would be comfortable to grow. I have no trouble with challenge, it is the hand in mine I know and trust that I crave. But I concede. I am too eager with potential. And my healthiest balance of will is patience.

And accepting the wisdom of another, perhaps you will agree, is always complementary.

As is conceit, I hope, when delivered with sincerity.

Sebastian

You are the first person ever to get the Oscar & Lucinda reference, never mind understand it so succinctly. It is jarring to hear a response to such soft words spoken."

***

Yes, I was feeling increasingly tormented. I was also feeling increasingly amused...fascinated, really. While this story takes place in an on-line dating site, in which people are based on profiles depicting their favorite media choices, clothing, and sex scenes, the truths about human behavior and relationships were beginning to unfold and spill out into a much wider context. Those first impressions--those first words exchanged have the ability to entirely determine the path of a relationship. The profile I had written here, Emily's profile, was me--in the guise of a baker living in Chicago, of course, but it was filled with more truth and honesty than my former, "real" profile...the brutal honesty of my self-description was guiding our exchanges into an entirely new territory. But I knew the truth--reality--would soon have to intervene, and I still had no idea what to do.


I responded.

"Dear Sebastian,
I think this is what terrifies me most: to most people who click through my profile, there are but words on a screen. You, in being so extraordinarily similar, understand perhaps everything I've written. I feel terribly naked and exposed right now. though I suppose that's exactly what I sought when I first joined this odd world.

I have quite the busy weekend, but I look forward to your next response.

Emily"

***

I spent the next few hours agonizing--again, this response was not careful, it encouraged him to be hopeful. It was not kind, it was not thoughtful. It was selfish. So, that evening, before he had a chance to reply, I send another email:

"Dear Sebastian,
I apologize, but this just isn't the right time for me. I wish I had met you under different circumstances, but I did not. I hope you understand.

Emily."

I suppose this is how one plays hard to get. I had no idea.

A day later, he replied:

" Emily:

We, both being terribly diverse and dynamic creatures, must have countless experiences, passions, obsessions, inexplicable pleasures, traits minor and major, embarrassments, hang ups, loves and beliefs to share with each other.

It is when fully clothed, layered and obscured, that what is profound in us both may simply evaporate into small talk. But when I can speak to you directly, like a familiar hand, palms up, gliding across another's skin, so much, so simply, can be said. So as vulnerable as you may be naked, it is trust drawn from shared experience that draws you closer, as breath, like you say, forms with the one beside you.

And that, dear friend, is as much liberty as I dare take with my imagery today.

I hope your weekend has been busy is the best of senses.

Sebastian."

***

Well, if backing away was failing to create a bit of distance, perhaps running full speed, arms flailing, might do the trick...