Ultimate blind date

OK, so after my last post, perhaps there is the perception that I am only lamenting a lost love and I have no immediate prospects for a new relationship. That isn't the case.

So there is this woman. Everything about her and our relationship is a contradiction.

I've known her almost 7 years, but we've never met.

She's beautiful, but I have no idea what she looks like.

She's become by best friend, but we remain strangers.

We can, and do, talk about everything but there are some things I'm a too scared to tell her.

I cannot wait until we can be together, but I'm terrified at the prospect of being in the same room with her.

Our meeting is long overdue and yet it's coming way too fast.

I'll try to explain.

By friend and recent guest blogger, known by the apropos nickname of Brat, and I have scheduled a meeting in a little more than a month. We started talking online before the turn of the century using AOL Instant Messenger. She struck up the first conversation based on one of the items in my user profile. I was living at the time in a small town in central California that she knew because a former boyfriend had lived there. Actually they were engaged. He was the love of her life and broke her heart. Then, years later, in a wierd way, he introduced us.

Our early conversations were pretty light and given that we were living a large distance from each other, it was highly unlikely anything would come of those talks. At the time, I didn't see the brat that Brat would become. Not that I'm a wild man or anything, but my new cyberfriend seemed far too nice for someone like me. Our conversations were pretty, um, polite, and squeeky clean. In fact on of the exclamations that we used at the time still survives in our conversations to this day. I'm not sure which one of us started it, but we both use it now. We say "oh my" when something surprising or shocking pops up in our talks. Offline, I am more likely to say "holy shit" for some other profanity in the normal course of conversation, but she seemed too nice to swear in front of. If this woman had been Catholic I would have pegged her as just a few inches shy of tripping on the threshold of the convent door.

Holy shit! Did I have some things to learn.

And I've learned a lot. And told a lot. We've laughed and cried and, well, let's just say we've flirted, a lot. If flirtation leads to heavy breathing and beads of sweat, then yes, we've flirted quite heavily.

But there have been times when we've drifted apart. I had a splended affair with a woman I also met online at roughly the same time I met Brat. My lover taught me to open up sexually and share thoughts and feelings that I would have previously assumed would have gotten me slapped. I had a great time and made a good friend, but my heart was engorged like the rest of my anatomy by the affair and I played the role of arrogant ass to the best of my ability and dumped her.

A year or so later I dated a woman for a while. She was too young for me and completely wrong for me but she made me grin like an idiot for a few splended weeks. Then she dumped me by refusing to take my calls or return my e-mails. It may not have been too bad except for the fact that we worked together. What is that they say about not dipping your pen in the company ink? Well, my pin never got dipped anywhere precisely, but it's still sound advice because it made going to work quite difficult for a while.

It was such sound advice that a year or so later I decided to ask another woman I worked with out. This would be the ex from the previous post. She literally took me places, geographically and emotionally, that I had never been before. So I gave her a ring. Six month later she gave it back. It's taken longer to get rid of the ring, and the emotional baggage left behind (some of which I'm obviously still dutifully packing around), than that entire romance lasted.

But Brat has helped me pack a lot of that baggage away. Some of it has been mercifully tossed out. And some locked away in trunks out of site. But there are some remnants lingering around, like gum stuck to my shoe.

And now, my sticky shoes and I are waiting for a plane. It's not getting here for several weeks, but we need the time to prepare. To get ourselves spit-polished and ready for company.

Given the long reamble to this meeting and the emotional attachments that have developed over the years, there are high expecations for that meeting. No pressure, no pressure.

I'm full of questions and a few worries about this whole meeting. I haven't dated anyone since the breakup of my engagement. She had a pretty emotional breakup herself a while back, but she's had a fling or two since. She's experienced her "rebound" relationship. Should I have? I don't know? There is a lot of conventional wisdom and advice about love and romance, but it's difficult to know if wisdon and advice apply to matters of emotion.

One thing is clear already. She is a person I care about, even though we haven't met in the conventional sense. We talk almost every day. But what will happen when we are finally together?

That is the big unanswered question.

Relationships
Online romance