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When your e-male turns out to be shorter than an azalea plant
Knowing that I’m about to horrify my mother, I will divulge exactly what happened: I had a torrid affair with a guy I knew only as BikeMan.
That was his alias on the Internet, which is where we met and where we carried on our affair-before we dared to meet face-to-face.
Our
story begins with me marooned in Central Oregon, where I’d moved
on a whim after leaving the commitment-phobic cop I’d been dating
for three years. After ten months, including a lonely New Year’s
Eve at Dairy Queen, I had not exactly met Prince Charming. So I let go
of my small-town fantasy and arranged to move home to L.A.
Right before my move, a friend suggested I join match.com, the most popular Internet dating service. It wasn’t a bad idea. I’d heard worse. I thought maybe the service could help me line up some dates for my impending arrival in L.A.
Signing up was easy. I paid my $14.95 monthly fee, typed in my vital stats, detailed what I was looking for in a romance, and wrote a brief essay listing my "likes" (biking, country music, guys who remember your birthday) and "dislikes" (pets, men with ponytails).
The first day, I scored 33 "matches." I was elated-until I scrolled through them. "I recently paid off my new 5-bedroom home," InvestInMe wrote, "and am well on my way to being a millionaire." Bragged MalibuDan: "I'm often asked if I'm a model or an actor, but I'm more the writer/intellectual type."
A guy called Bobo said he liked sports and travel, so I asked for details. He responded that he’d played rugby in New Zealand, attended the ballet in Moscow, and rafted rivers in Zambia. To me, however, he posed only one question: "Know any good Mexican restaurants near the beach?"
And then, remarkably, BikeMan surfaced. "You sound really cool!" he wrote, introducing himself as a Jewish bike racer who worked in advertising. He was an intriguing bundle of contradictions: a guy who’d go for a killer 70-mile ride, then spend the afternoon at a sculpture exhibit, a Web site designer who didn’t own a home computer because he preferred to read and listen to public radio.
BikeMan’s e-mails were lyrical, literate and provocative. "The best poets," he remarked, "are like the best journalists: They have extraordinary powers of perception and description." Quite a contrast, this was, to the prose of my ex-boyfriend the patrol sergeant: "Victim stated that suspect was wearing a red hooded jacket."
Within days, BikeMan and I were revealing intimate details about our families, our hopes, our heartbreaks. A week later, he e-mailed me a photo. I wasn’t bowled over, but he had a full head of dark, curly hair and a nice smile, and by that time I didn’t much care what he looked like.
I suppose I’m the one who nudged our e-mails into X-rated territory. One morning after a gynecologist visit, I mentioned that I’d spent upward of $400 on birth control pills that had gone to no use. "Fear not," BikeMan replied. "Everyone has some underutilized product from time to time. Got some decomposing latex myself."
With the word "latex," there was no turning back. Within hours we were discussing likes and dislikes-and I don’t mean country music and ponytails. I couldn’t get any work done. For the next three weeks, I was checking my e-mail constantly and walking around with an ear-to-ear grin. One afternoon a woman I barely knew gazed at me and said, "You look radiant today!"
Reaction among my friends was split. The Are You Insane? faction included married people and singles who didn’t own computers. They couldn’t fathom the affair and worried that BikeMan might be the next Ted Bundy.
The
You Go, Girl! contingent included friends who had discovered the seductive
power of the Internet for themselves. Sarah had met a guy online who lived
2,000 miles away. After a month of passionate e-mails, he hopped a plane
to visit her; a year later, they were living together, practically engaged.
Mary, meanwhile, was swept up in a bicoastal fling with a guy she’d
met on a business trip; soon after exchanging e-mail addresses, they were
exchanging everything online but bodily fluids.
A week before my move to L.A., BikeMan and I planned our first rendezvous. Certainly, it would involve sex. "Won't that ruin the potential for a longterm relationship?" asked my friend Dana, a leading member of the Are You Insane? faction. I said I felt like we'd been on a dozen dates and at this point, sex was only natural.
I was so sure I’d adore BikeMan that I wasnt even nervous as I dressed for our date. But when I opened the door, my heart sank. BikeMan wasn’t actually 4-foot-2, but for a split second, he appeared to be shorter than my azalea plant. He’d mentioned he was thin-"wiry" was the word he’d used-but he seemed to be drowning in his yellow t-shirt and jeans.
Yes, we had sex anyway, and it was great. But everything else wasn’t. I simply could not connect the athletic, poetic e-male of my fantasies with the awkward, skinny fellow in my bed. When the flesh-and-blood BikeMan uttered the same phrases his online counterpart had used, I felt like he was stealing the other guy's lines, like he was some kind of imposter.
I tried hard to warm to BikeMan. He laughed at my jokes and bought me earrings and told funny stories about his neighbors. But after a half dozen dates, it was clear we had no chemistry.
My friend Mary understood my dismay. By this time, her bicoastal relationship had begun to fizzle. In person, she began to see traits that hadn’t been apparent online, like his impatience at restaurants. "If a waitress didn’t come over to refill the coffee right away, he wanted to walk out," Mary said.
Sarah, on the other hand, felt grateful that she’d met her boyfriend online; if they’d been introduced at a party, she’d have dismissed him instantly because he wasn’t her type.
I’d had the opposite experience. The guy I’d loved most, the cop, would have been a disaster via e-mail. He wrote entire arrest warrants without a single comma and thought "diluted" and "deluded" were the same word. (Me: "You’re so deluded; him: "I’m mixed with water?"). If we’d met online, I’d have hit the "delete" key. I’d never have discovered the qualities I found so endearing, like his enthusiasm for shaving and the way he’d cheer me on when we’d lift weights at the gym.
Three weeks after our first offline encounter, I told BikeMan that I’d had fun but we just weren’t a match. He said he’d sensed my lack of interest, gave me a hug, then darted out the door. I was overcome with relief.
Although it didn’t work out with BikeMan, I haven’t given up on Internet dating. I have, however, have changed my rules. Now, I don’t hesitate to ask for a photo up front. If I’m not drawn to the picture, I’ll back off- without guilt. And I’ve stopped pouring out my emotions online.
Most important of all: I always, always insist on having coffee before having cybersex.
(Health, 1999)