Romance and Other B.S.

Here’s a line I didn’t think I’d be writing. Not now, not for years. Maybe not ever.

I met someone.

Urk. Talk about a fucking cliché. Especially when it’s so pathetic. I mean, “meeting” implies a handshake. Being able to read one another’s facial expressions, body language. Being able to hear their voice, get some clues about how much they’re lying. Whether they have an excruciating laugh. You don’t get that when your only knowledge of the person is what they type, what they publish online. Publish — that’s the word for it. Composing, drafting, reviewing, editing, crafting who you are before you hit enter.

I was lurking, again, when I first saw him. We were in a public craigslist forum on women's issues. I was just watching the bitches catfight — for a women's issues forum, it was mostly full of teenage girls trying to figure out if they were pregnant/diseased/overdosed, and over-the-hill divorcees whose standard piece of advice was “dump him.” On that night, the tabloid personality of the forum was in full blow, as the regulars ripped apart the latest celebrity infidelity.

Tal was trolling — not your standard sexist taunts, either. He knew each and every handle, knew their history, knew when to call them on their bullshit, to trot out their hypocrisies. In the space of an hour he'd enraged no less than five posters to scream at him in all caps and storm out of the forum in a text-based tantrum. I'd nearly wet myself laughing.

Then I got an email. From him, asking me over to a “secret forum.” Which was weird, because I don’t actually post all that often — I lurk, and I laugh, but I’m not about to dip my toe into that pool of piranhas. And because the secret fos are generally full of whiners and pouters who can’t hack it in the public fos, or asshats who got banned. They’re not even that secret anyway.

But it’s like being the quiet girl in the corner at a raging party. Nobody ever notices you, and you keep sitting there, hoping that by some sort of magic some Romeo’s going to see how beautiful you are, even though you’re buried and antisocial and intimidating. And you go home most nights alone, having only used your voice to order drinks or to say “no, that seat’s not taken. Go ahead.”

So I went. To the secret fo.

And no, I won’t give you the address.