Wintertime in the Mountains * * * I got it into my head not too long ago to fall in love online. Ok, technically, the online part was put into my head by my best friend, who decided it’d be a gas to play cribbage on MSN. Cribbage, I thought. Is there a better way to meld loneliness, desperation, geeks and a touch of the geriatric ward at Our Lady of the Broken Hip? I submit that there is not. And let’s be fair…. the “in love” part was more a bewitchment by a twisted harpy, bent on devouring the souls of men…. but I’m getting ahead of myself. It started out innocently enough. I sat down at a table, she sat down at a table, it happened to be the same table…. It should have been a neon, Las-Vegas-sized sign to me that the cribbage people have an artificiality all their own: one “sits” at a table; “waves” hello to friends, “meets” people, etc. As if trying to belie their isolation by clinging to the action verbs. There is no passive voice in chat rooms – only passive people. Pretty soon there was cribbage every night. Then we spilled into backgammon, where she taught me how to play and I soundly beat her every single game. After a few weeks of that humiliation, it was hearts; then spades. Not the greatest card player, but she did have a way with emoticons and acronyms. Our lovesick croonings were peppered with “lol,” or “LOL,” or when we really wanted to express laughter (even though I, for one, never once “laughed out loud”), “lmao”. There were :)’s and :))’s and on rare occasions (at the end of the night, usually), :(‘s. And the way she cut through all that messy spelling: u, thru, 2…. when she told me that she was in “luv” with me I was hooked. And then it happened. She was upset one night, in tears (well, that’s what she typed, anyway), and I made the fatal error: I told her to call me. Suddenly we were sprung out into the open field. No more hiding safe behind a keyboard, no more emailing each other pictures of models that came with the frame. Suddenly, it was almost, sort of, kinda real. And for me that’s pretty real. Add to that the fact that she was a stewardess, whose whole career was flying around the globe, and there was an entirely new element to the equation. Element X. The variable that changes all the rules. The clang in the transmission that always jerks the car to an uncomfortable stop. The thing that keeps men in the delusional stupor that the stripper really does like him and isn’t rubbing her breasts for that dollar bill in your hot, sweaty little fist. The one thing that turns a pleasant diversion into a horrific reality. Element X. Possibility. My god, I thought, she could actually visit! She could actually move here. She began talking about that very thing. And rather than do what every other red blooded American male does – namely, tuck tale and run – I did the opposite. I decided that not only was I in love with this stranger, but that I would never love another. I was as in love as I could possibly be. And, as you can imagine, I was cut loose. Dumped in a chat room. Now if I can just get a woman to break up with me through semaphore, I’ll have been dumped via every form of communication. But the worst part (if there is a worst part): I was dumped for a Canadian. A cribbage-playing Canadian. And no matter how hard I try, I can’t get the stink of desperation and back bacon out of my apartment. (Editor's Note: Huck is currently involved with a real, live woman. Well, unprecedentedly lifelike and pushing the boundaries of silicon technology anyway. Also, for those of you not in the know, "back bacon" is the commonly used name for real Canadian bacon (aka peameal bacon)). |