Love Virtually (3 page)

We're communicating in a vacuum. We've politely told each other what line of work we're in. In principle you'd be prepared to design a nice website for me, and in return I'd draw up some (mediocre) linguistic psychograms for you. That's the sum of it. Thanks to some crummy magazine we know that we live in the same city. But what else? Nothing. We have no one else around us. We don't inhabit anywhere. We don't have ages. We don't have faces. We make no distinction between day and night. We don't live in any particular time. All we've got is our computer screens—for our eyes only—and we share a hobby: each of us is interested in a complete stranger. Brilliant!

Now I'll make my confession: I'm seriously interested in you, dear Emmi! I don't know why, but I
do
know that there is a clear reason for it. I also know just how ridiculous my interest is. It would never sustain a meeting, no matter what you look like, how old you are, how much of your considerable email charm you could bring to a potential encounter, and how much of your on-screen wit you've also got in your vocal chords, your pupils, the corners of your mouth and your nostrils. I have a suspicion that this serious interest is nourished by my in-box alone. Any attempt to liberate it from there would no doubt fail miserably.

Now for the key question, dear Emmi: Do you want me to keep writing to you? (This time I'd be most obliged to receive a clear answer.)

My very best wishes,

Leo

Twenty-one minutes later

Re:

Dear Leo,

That was a long one! You must be taking a day off. Or does this count as work? Will you get time in lieu? Can you offset it against taxes? I've got a sharp tongue, I know. But only when I write. And only when I'm not sure of something. Leo, you make me feel unsure. But there's one thing I am sure of: yes, I want you to keep sending me emails, if you wouldn't mind. And if I've not made that clear enough, I'll say it again: YES PLEASE, MORE EMAILS FROM LEO! MORE EMAILS FROM LEO! MORE EMAILS FROM LEO, PLEASE! I'M ADDICTED TO EMAILS FROM LEO!

And now you have to tell me the truth: how can you know that there's a “clear reason” for your interest in me without knowing what it is? You see, I don't understand what you mean, but it sounds thrilling.

All the very very best (and another very for luck),

Emmi

P.S. Your last email was fabulous! Totally lacking in humor, but fabulous!

Two days later

Subject: Merry Christmas

Do you know what, dear Emmi? Today I'm going to break with convention and tell you something about my life. Her name was Marlene. Three months ago I'd have written: Her name is Marlene. After five years of a present without a future I've finally ended up in the imperfect. I'll spare you the details of our relationship. The best thing about it was always starting from scratch again. Because the two of us just loved starting from scratch, we did it every few months. For each of us, the other was “the great love” of our lives. Never when we were together; only when we were trying to get back together again.

This autumn it finally came to a head: she'd found somebody else, someone she could imagine getting together with, and also staying together with. (Even though he's a pilot for a Spanish airline—I mean, do me a favor!) When I found out, all of a sudden I was surer than ever that Marlene was “the one” and I had to do everything to avoid losing her forever.

For an entire week I
did
do everything I could, and a little more besides. (Again, I'll spare you the details.) And she was actually on the verge of giving me, or rather us, one last chance: Christmas in Paris. I'd planned—go on, laugh, Emmi—to propose to her there. What a complete prat! She said she would just wait for the “Spaniard” to fly in so she could tell him about me and Paris. She owed him that, she said. I felt queasy—why am I saying “queasy”? I felt like I had a Spanish Airbus in my guts when I thought about Marlene and that pilot. That was on December 19.

That afternoon I got—no, not even a phone call; I got a sickening email from her: “Leo, it won't work. I can't do it. Paris would be just another lie. Please forgive me!” Or something similar. (No, not similar, those were her actual words.) I wrote back immediately: “Marlene, I want to marry you! I really mean it. I want to be with you forever. I know I can make it work. We belong together. Give me one last chance. Let's talk about everything in Paris, please! Please come to Paris!”

Well, then I waited. One hour, two hours, three hours. During which I talked to her deaf-mute voice mail every twenty minutes, read old love letters I'd saved on my computer, scrolled through the digital photos of us as a couple, taken on those countless trips when we kept getting back together. And then I stared at the screen as if possessed. My life with Marlene—my survival, as I saw it then—depended on that short, soulless ping that heralds the arrival of a new message; on that tiny, ridiculous envelope in the taskbar.

I set myself a 9:00 p.m. deadline for this torment. If Marlene had not emailed me by then, Paris—and with it our last chance—would be gone. It was 8:57. And then, all of a sudden, a ping, a tiny envelope (a power surge, a heart attack), a message. I shut my eyes for a few seconds to gather the pathetic remains of my positive thoughts, and then focused on the message I'd been longing for: Marlene's consent, the two of us in Paris, the rest of our lives together. I opened my eyes and clicked on the message. And what did I . . . ? “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, from Emmi Rothner.”

Hence my “full-on Christmas-round-robin-email psychosis.”

Have a nice evening,

Leo

Two hours later

Re: Merry Christmas

Dear Leo,

What a great story! Particularly impressed by the punch line.

I'm almost proud to have played such a fateful role. I hope you realize that you've betrayed something extraordinary to me, your “virtual character,” your “identikit fantasy.” That's what you might call “private life à la Leo the Language Psychologist.” I'm far too tired to give you a useful answer today. But tomorrow you'll receive a proper analysis, if that's O.K. with you. You know, with 1), 2), 3), etc. Sleep well, have some meaningful dreams. But I suggest you don't dream about Marlene.

Emmi

The following day

Subject: Marlene

Good morning Leo.

Do you mind if I get a bit tougher with you?

1) So you're a man who's only interested in a woman at the beginning and at the end: when he wants to get her, and just before he's about to lose her for good. You find the time in between—which some people call “being together”—either too boring or too stressful, or both. Am I right?

2) By some miracle you managed to evade marriage (this time), but you'd be quite prepared to saunter up the aisle to get a Spanish airline pilot out of your soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend's bed. That testifies to something of a lack of respect for the wedding vows. Am I right?

3) You've been married once before. Am I right?

4) I can almost picture you wallowing in self-pity, sitting there reading old love letters and looking at photos instead of doing something that might make a woman believe you were capable of anything approaching love, or that you had even the slightest desire for something more permanent.

5) And then MY fateful email comes flying into your in-box of destiny. It's almost as if I chose exactly the right time to say what Marlene must have had on the tip of her tongue for years: LEO, IT'S OVER, BECAUSE IT NEVER EVEN STARTED! Or to put it more subtly and poetically, more atmospherically: “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, from Emmi Rothner.”

6) But then, my dear Leo, you do something pretty special. You reply to Marlene. You congratulate her on her decision. You say: YOU'RE RIGHT, MARLENE, IT'S OVER, BECAUSE IT NEVER EVEN STARTED! Or in other words, more subtly, more energetically and forcefully, you say: “Dear Emmi Rothner, we don't know each other in the slightest but I'd like to thank you for your warm and highly original round-robin email! One thing you should know: I just adore round-robin emails. Rgds, Leo Leike.”—You're a phenomenally good loser, dear Leo—magnanimous and classy.

7) My final question: Do you still want me to write?

Have a good day,

Emmi

Two hours later

Re: Marlene

Hello Emmi!

Re: 1) It's not my fault that I remind you of some man who has obviously let you down—quite stylishly even, the way you describe it in point 1. Please do not presume to know me better than you can! (You cannot know me at all.)

Re: 2) As far as my most recent evasion of the wedding vows is concerned, I can only call myself a “complete prat.” But sarcastic, sanctimonious Emmi with her size 6 1/2 shoes goes one better to save the honor of marriage, presumably with eyes tightly shut and slobbering at the mouth.

Re: 3) Sorry, but I've never been married! You? Several times, am I right?

Re: 4) Here's that man from point 1 again, a man who prefers to read old love letters to proving his undying love for you.

Perhaps there have been many of those men in your life.

Re: 5) Yes, at that very moment when your Christmas greeting arrived in my in-box I felt as if I'd lost Marlene.

Re: 6) I replied to you back then to distract myself from my failure, Emmi. And I still consider my correspondence with you to be part of my Marlene therapy.

Re: 7) Yes, by all means feel free to write to me! Type away all your frustration with men, from the depths of your soul. Unleash all your self-righteousness, cynicism, and gloating. If you feel better afterward, my in-box has done its job. If you don't, then just treat yourself (or your mother) to another
Like
subscription and unsubscribe from “Leike.”

I hope you have a nice Monday afternoon,

Leo

Eleven minutes later

Re: Marlene

Ooops! Now I've upset you. I didn't mean to, really. I thought you'd be able to take it, but I was expecting too much. I'm going to get me to a nunnery. Night-night, Emmi P.S. Re: Point 3: I've been married. And I still am!

CHAPTER TWO

One week later

Subject: C.W.

Crappy weather today, isn't it?

BW,

E

Three minutes later

Re: C.W.

1) Rain

2) Snow

3) Sleet

Rgds,

Leo

Two minutes later

Re: C.W.

Are you still upset?

Fifty seconds later

Re: C.W.

Never was.

Thirty seconds later

Re: C.W.

Perhaps you don't like chatting with married women?

One minute later

Re: C.W.

Yes I do! But sometimes I wonder why married women enjoy chatting so much with complete strangers, like me.

Forty seconds later

Re: C.W.

Am I not the only one in your in-box? How tiny a proportion of your Marlene therapy am I then?

Fifty seconds later

Re: C.W.

Well done, Emmi, you're slowly getting your touch back.

Before, you came across as a little meek and timid, and almost lacking in motivation.

Half an hour later

Re: C.W.

Dear Leo,

In all seriousness I need to tell you how truly sorry I am for having sent you that seven-point email last Monday. I've gone back over it a few times since, and I have to admit it comes across as really vile out of context. The problem is that you have no idea what I'm like when I say things like that. If we were face-to-face, you couldn't possibly be angry with me. (At least, that's what I imagine.) And take it from me, I'm anything but frustrated. My disappointment in men is kept in check by the natural limitations of men themselves. Meaning that of course some men are a bit limited. But I've been lucky. I'm very happy in that department. My cynicism is more playful than resentful; it doesn't come from some desire to settle scores.

That aside, I'm very touched that you've told me about Marlene. (Even though I now realize that you haven't told me anything about her at all. What kind of a woman is/was she? What does she look like? What's her shoe size? What kind of shoes does she wear?)

One hour later

Re: C.W.

Dear Emmi,

Please don't be angry with me, but I'm in no mood to tell you about Marlene's taste in shoes. She'd normally go barefoot on the beach, that's about all I'm prepared to say. I've got to sign off now, I'm expecting someone.

Have a nice day,

Leo

Three days later

Subject: Crisis

Dear Leo,

I had resolved to wait for another email from you before I wrote one myself. I may not have studied language psychology, but a couple of things are chiming in my mind.

1) Between the lines I've given away that I'm not only married, but happily married to boot.

2) You reacted to this news with possibly your least enthusiastic response since our virtual togetherness began so auspiciously more than a year ago. And then you don't email me again at all. Have you lost interest in me? Have you lost interest because I'm already spoken for? And could it be that you've lost interest because I'm happily spoken for? If that's the case, you could at least be man enough to tell me.