I wrote this a couple of nights ago, but thought I’d post it now…
Over the course of the last couple months, I’ve developed an acquaintance with a guy I’ve never met in real life. He responded to a personal ad (long story) I put up on PennLive.com, and we’ve been corresponding via email and AIM ever since. What he doesn’t know is that I put my ad up because I read his and wanted to be able to contact him, but couldn’t without first creating a profile. By the time I’d finished, I’d forgotten all about him, until he contacted me about a week later.
I’ve come to really enjoy talking to him, and recently we’ve been talking more often and, I think, have developed a higher level of comfort with each other. We have not seriously discussed meeting, but I think the subject might arise soon. I am open to the idea although I’m not looking for anything more than friendship with him, either emotionally or physically.
What is strange to me is that we live fairly close to each other, we talk all the time, have similar interests and hang-outs, and our paths have never crossed. I drive by the bar where I know he is on my way to pick up Snow, or order a drink 10 minutes after he’s left. It feels like we exist in parallel but completely separate worlds, or that we’re each enclosed in our own bubble, moving through the world independently of anyone around us.
I spend half my time running into people I know, so in a world that often feels extremely small, his existence makes it that much bigger. Sometimes it feels disjointed, like not only are we existing in these separate worlds, but also that I am somehow set apart from the rest of the world as well; sometimes it gives me a sense of calm, reassuring me that somehow I can find quiet even in a world where it feels like I know everyone and have exhausted the limits of this small city.
8/30/2003