The One - No one said it would be easy

by Goldsmith, J. F.

  Number Twenty-one: Digital friends, but not in the real world

  After the rather unpleasant experiences with both my online-dating flops I had convinced myself that, in future, I’d give all blind-date-type activities a wide berth. However you imagine your unknown partner in all his glory will invariably be a far cry from reality. Reality always comes up with surprises that are decidedly less than glorious. But as always happens, what do I care for yesterday’s words of wisdom? And before long, I was headed for another oooh-how-exciting-online-flirting disaster. Oops.

  This time around, the whole thing wasn’t as obvious as before but sneaked up on me stealthily and nastily from behind. I came across Number Twenty-one not on one of the online-dating-thingies but on an online business network. Let’s not to beat about the bush: in all honesty there’s not that much difference between them, is there? However much you dress it up as a wildly respectable business network, what it comes down to is thousands of lonely hearts and pants looking for nothing more than a bit of relief from their dreary working life. Strangely enough, ninety-five percent of those accessing my profile are men. Somehow I doubt that it’s my business acumen that’s so in demand internationally.

  Somehow or another, Number Twenty-one and I got in touch with each other through this very respectable online business tool. He was on my profile, I clicked on his and liked what I saw: an artist, cute photo, with a really adorable name that immediately had me spell-bound. The name was simple but extraordinary and sounded very cool. I just had to get to know this guy. Without much hesitation I just wrote him a nice little note. Why ever not? This marked the beginning of a rather long “online friendship” and, had we not attempted to drag all this into real life, where we met up and, naturally, ended up in the sack, I bet we would send each other little cute messages to this day, being somewhat curious about each other but perfectly happy to maintain the excitement of the unknown.

  Unfortunately we both screwed that up royally. It’s like the story of the “fairie folk” of old: every night, the lovely fairie folk would work their tiny butts off to magically clean and tidy up the entire house, but one night the stupid lady of the house is so curious and nosy, she hides after sprinkling peas all over the house, so that the hardworking little creatures trip and slither and stumble, are discovered and immediately throw in the towel and leave, never to be seen again. The stupid cow had to do all the chores herself from then on in. Some things should be left well alone so that you don’t destroy the magic. However, our curiosity far outweighed this insightful piece of common sense.

  We were just writing a few lines to each other every now and then, Number Twenty-one and I, not a great deal and everything quite innocuous. Sometimes there was nothing for a few months, until one or other of us started up again. What we wrote to each other was quite special, though. Often it was about really inconsequential things, but always carefully, thoughtfully and lovingly worded. We didn’t actually include the other one in our respective lives, we knew practically nothing about each other. But we still managed to captivate each other and kept finding subjects to exchange thoughts and funny sentences about. We kept this going for about a year. Of course I wondered every so often what Number Twenty-one might look like for real, and how it might be to meet up for real. And of course you wouldn’t really keep in touch with a perfect stranger over such a relatively long period of time unless there was at least a homeopathic dose of sexual attraction. Why pretend otherwise? All the same, we didn’t actually confront the question of maybe meeting up in real life. It simply wasn’t an issue.

  But then our rather neutral connection suddenly changed: without any warning, Number Twenty-one rang me up. I nearly fell off my chair when an unknown voice announced: “Hello, it’s me. I just thought I’d ring.” I was stunned. Even though it was November, chilly and gray, I suddenly felt so hot I was practically dripping with sweat. My cheeks were red and I felt dizzy. I’d have never ever thought he would ring me. For a year we’d only connected in this one dimension, in writing. And now there suddenly was this new dimension, tangible, audible, a voice. It just flattened me. I succeeded in hiding my surprise and chatted amicably and confidently, as though it was the most normal thing in the world. I don’t know how I pulled it off, but I managed to concentrate and not stammer or flounder – a masterly performance, if I say so myself! Afterwards I sat and stared at the wall, dazed and numb. Number Twenty-one had a voice. He was real. This is what I had blocked out all this time. And now my gut gave me its instant reaction: my gut didn’t appreciate the way Number Twenty-one sounded or how he said what he said. Number Twenty-one sounded pretty lame on the phone. Which I didn’t want to acknowledge at the time. Not at all.

  Shortly after this memorable occasion, our first phone conversation I wrote a brief email. It said: “You can’t just ring here! Now I’m sitting here all in a sweat even though it’s really cold out, my cheeks are bright red and I can’t concentrate.” This marked the beginning of a new era for our online communication and acted as a style sheet for his reply, which went something like this: “Well then I suggest you wear a bikini.” And that was the end of our days of innocence. We were hooked on each other. Texts flying back and forth, one thing leading to another and all of a sudden we had an actual date. We had agreed to meet at my place. I was starting to feel a trifle unsettled. After all, Number Twenty-one was driving up from quite far away. And he hadn’t even asked me to recommend a hotel. Was he going to sort that out himself? Was he planning to drive back in the evening? Was he assuming he’d sleep at my place? And what if it turned out to be absolute pants? None of my problem, not any of it. Number Twenty-one was plenty old enough to understand the potential hazards of visiting a female stranger in a strange city, and he was quite capable of sorting out his sleeping arrangements accordingly. But I knew me. I would back myself into a truly idiotic situation again, where I didn’t feel comfortable but wouldn’t find it in me to just walk away and instead would end up allowing the unavoidable to happen. Which is exactly what did happen. Even though I had absolutely decided not to have sex with Number Twenty-one under any circumstances, we did of course end up having sex. I should have been a fortuneteller.

  During the Number-Twenty-one era, I’d decided I had to keep a diary again. Every so often I was overwhelmed with the feeling of wanting to sort out my thoughts and emotions and I’d start writing things down. I’ve never actually managed to continue for more than two weeks, finding all these mental clean-up operations just too stressful. Funnily enough, I recently found what I wrote immediately after he’d gone again:

  “Oh boy. He was here. And he was completely different to how I’d imagined him. Completely different. When I first saw him standing there, all I could think was, oh dear. It still was good but there was no thrill. And it was only good because I insisted on making it good. He looked at least ten years younger than he was. Like a little boy. Didn’t look anything like his photo, which looked like a man. But in real life, something else all together. Kind of sweet, but also weird. Like a mixture of Pippi Longstocking and a Monchichi. The conversation was OK but there was no flair. I beamed and pretended everything was wonderful but it wasn’t. In reality, I was totally disappointed. But since I couldn’t – or wouldn’t – just drop him, I carried on.

  The conversations dragged on. Everything that made our emails so special just wasn’t there. Went for a meal, sat there for ages, talking, eating, then he started to say sleazo things like how I looked amazing and so forth. Then the big question: what to do next? He babbled something about showing him my bikini. Nah, I thought, you can’t pull off a hot-stuff number like that, just leave it alone. And at that point I should have said, thank you and good-bye. But, I can’t do it. He’d come from so far away. We take the subway back to my place. I hope we don’t run into anyone I know. I’d be embarrassed to be seen with him. At my place – wine, drinking, talking, painting. Then: me, bathroom, then bed, and hauled him in too. Didn’t feel like the usual slow-
dance-into-bed.

  Everything a bit mechanical, no romance whatsoever. He crawls into my bed and under my blanket, picks up a book and starts to read to me. I was flabbergasted. I snuggle into him and then it turned surprisingly wonderful. Yep, wonderful and erotic, rubbing against each other, he kept reading and we made out and touched more and more, that was hot, and then I was horny and aroused, really a lot. He felt good and he smelled nice. And then we really went for it and hello! Surprise surprise, it was excellent! Really getting our claws into each other, rubbing against each other. Most intense. I had these shudders of excitement run through me, practically drowning me.

  He touched me just right. Even inside my panties, really awesome, hard and at the same time, gentle, and not just one finger – no, he worked me with his entire hand, and held me tight, and I came, really hard and brilliant and intense. Then I did him, he had a problem getting it up – what is the matter with these guys, another one! – I had to really work here, mouth and hand, but then he grew huge, really long and thick, and then he came. And how! I’ve never seen anything like it! He juddered and twitched for ten whole minutes, it was bizarre. Like he had some kind of a seizure, he was really out of it. And made weird groaning noises. It irritated the hell out of me. Then fell asleep, after a fashion. Unusual benefit: he was so quiet I hardly noticed him. No loud breathing or anything, really very nice. The kissing was so-so, neither top nor flop. And he did smell very nicely. And he was nice to touch, too, all soft and kind of fluffy. Totally boy-like. Next morning went at each other again, ferociously, tooth and claw, and he made me come again, beautifully, and then I wanted to do him and also do it with him again, such a nice big fat cock, but he couldn’t get it up again and had to stop in the end. Pity. Then breakfast in bed, watched TV, cuddled up some, fell asleep, then talked for ages. By then we were past our zenith and I just wanted him to leave, but in another way, not. He buzzed off late afternoon, we didn’t “arrange” anything. See what happens. The emails will be all different now. And the thrill is kind of gone now. Pity.”

  After Number Twenty-one had gone, I had a really weird feeling in my belly. I was kind of glad it was over, I knew that this was the first, only and last time for us. I was sad, too, because it was also clear that our lovely email relationship was history now. And I was disappointed because, even though it had been quite nice with Number Twenty-one, I had imagined him completely differently. He wrote me a sweet email with hot words after our night together, quite like before. It went back and forth like this for a while, lovely poetic and soulful emails flying through the cables. I wasn’t in love but I often thought of him. We rang each other a few times and had, oh-oh, phone sex. During which we told each other what we wanted to do together, but more like poetry than pornography, and I rolled around in bed getting all excited. Not bad! We made the phone lines glow, sometimes we were on the phone for several hours. We woke each other up with a morning call just to say “have a nice day”. It was all very lovely and close and beautiful.

  One day I asked about meeting up again, because I was suddenly quite taken by Number Twenty-one after all. He kind of verbally twisted and turned and came out with some drivel about money and anyway and it wasn’t that simple and so forth. I got fed up with it quite quickly and wrote fine, let’s call it a day then, this is pointless. And he sent a furious email back, saying, oh how predictable, I was only interested in money. He sounded completely like some griping loser. I hate losers. And how! I was that outraged about his reply that I just didn’t reply to him at all. How unbelievably stupid! You spend more than a year building up an image of a really wonderful person and all of a sudden he turns out to be a raging Rumpelstiltskin. I was angry and disappointed and frustrated all at once. Reality had caught up with us and we had a massive fight. Some time later he sent me a sheepish text message, I couldn’t hold a grudge and we started to write emails again. And suddenly found ourselves conversing about things we’d never before even thought about discussing. We wrote about life and our expectations, our attitudes. Which is when we realized that we were entirely incompatible, and our email communication ceased. It’s so silly that men and women just can’t keep their mitts off each other! I kind of miss our pre-sex emails. We should have left it at that.

  Number Twenty-two: Emergency sex with a surprise from behind

  Crap. The festive season beckoned. What could be more depressing, sad and goddamn frustrating than being single on Christmas and New Year’s Eve? My birthday had been bad enough – single as I was this year, I’d spent it hopelessly mired in self-pity of the I-am-so-terribly-lonely-and-nobody-loves-me kind. A miserable state of affairs, and the irony of it is that, as long as you are in this state, you’re not going to get out of it. Because, let’s face it, what man would want to be saddled with a frustrated misery-guts?

  I would have liked to leave the entire old year behind, preferably packed in a box, then catapulted into space where it could vaporize and rain down on Jupiter as space dust for all I cared. Away with it! Shot of it! And without all that out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new crap. However. Cowardess that I am, I wasn’t quite brave enough to stay home and bunker up in bed. Why there’s such a fuss about New Year’s Eve is an annually recurring source of amazement: everybody says they have no expectations at all because it’s just another evening – and then everybody goes into hyper-drive and enters the what-are-we-going-to-do-for-New-Year’s-and-which-party-do-you-suppose-is-the-best marathon. For some reason, nobody seems to want to admit that they really quite like the idea of a bombastic giant party.

  Since a close girl friend was in a similar position that year, we both decided not to resign to our sad fate as singles and instead go on a skiing break over New Year’s Eve. In a last-minute maniacally instantaneous manner we managed to put together a six-person contingent of more or less well-known friends and acquaintances and booked into one of the few hotels that still had vacancies. One of the participants in our little private enterprise was a good friend of my close girl friend’s. The holiday itself was a minor disaster. The hotel turned out to be a youth hostel out in the sticks and our room had three bunk beds in it, with a modest shower cubicle separated from the bedroom by a curtain. The rest of the youth hostel was occupied by numerous loutish morons from the provinces with the combined IQ of a washing-up sponge. Breakfast and dinner were handed out at a serving counter like the one at school camp. Super! That’s what great holidays are made of!

  Quite by accident we found a brilliant venue for the scarily looming bloody goddamn New Year’s Eve celebrations: a party was going to be held at a lodge 2,000 meters up, in the middle of the forest, complete with snowcat-taxi collection service. Afterwards we’d all get back down by toboggan, through the dark wintry forests. Okey-dokey, that sounded excellent. Surely it wouldn’t be that difficult, once this fun-at-the-lodge had taken off, to find some halfway male creature to smooch with. The idea of entering the New Year unkissed, with nobody to throw my arms around at midnight, was just terrible. I had always been with a boyfriend before. Never mind how shitty your relationship, it’s worth putting up with just so you don’t end up all alone on New Year’s Eve, standing there like a miserable cow, washing down your sorrow with 250ml of vodka whilst watching all and sundry hug and kiss the New Year in. Sadly though, my plan didn’t work out. Yes, the lodge was heaving with folk, but I couldn’t see even just one male that I’d remotely consider kissing.

  Even worse: I’d have been prepared to make allowances by then and go for compromise, but it was as though I’d been hit with a spell of invisibility. I, the undisputed flirting queen of the century, was unable to raise even just one tiny spark of interest from any one of the resident males. I was air – nobody took any notice of me. I squeezed into every possible photo opportunity, so that I could – thank God for digital cameras! – check the results, just in case I had acquired some massive gross spot on my nose or my ears were leaking yellow gunk. But no – I looked entirely normal. So what the hell was going on
here? I couldn’t believe that even the pudgy waiter, whom I’d been trying to flirt with in sheer desperation, wouldn’t return my smile. I went to the ladies’ room and looked in the mirror, frustrated and puzzled. A perfectly normal pretty girlie-face looked back at me, wearing flash New Year’s make-up. Hell, I pep-talked myself, I looked miles better than most of the other girls up here! But it made no difference. It was as though an invisible electro-fence surrounded me. Presumably, anyone even thinking of coming near me was hit by a massive keep-away-from-her-she’s-a-frustrated-single electric shock. I had no other explanation.

  Eventually the goddamn clock struck goddamn midnight. While they all dashed out in front of the lodge to embark on the terrible New Year’s rituals – screeching Happy New Year, being overcome by make-believe joy, pressing their bodies against one another – I disappeared behind the lodge. I just couldn’t bear all this merriment. Clutching a plastic beaker of bubbly, I sat on a snow-covered tree trunk and shivered into the New Year, all alone. I sobbed and cried and sniffed and stared at my mobile, in case someone should send me a really nice personal text message, not one of those collective ones. Most of all, I hoped for something from Number Sixteen, I still missed him terribly. Naturally, that didn’t happen. Instead I got a text from Number Nineteen. Ah well – better than nothing. Still, his message didn’t make me feel any better. I downed the freezing cold sparkling wine, stared into the darkness and nearly froze to death in my exile of self-pity. At some stage I pulled myself together and went back to join the happy throng – however frustrated I was, I didn’t really want to end up as a flash-frozen drunken body. At least my little band of mates had missed me and worried about me and was happy to see me back safe and sound. We clinked our glasses together for another round of New Year’s wishes and I managed to put a brave Happy-New-Year smile on my face. Even the toboggan run through the wintry forest later that night couldn’t lift my sadness – this was definitely the worst ever New Year’s Eve. I promised myself that, should I still be single next time around, I’d hire a New Year’s escort. Whatever the cost. I will never ever put myself through this terrible single-on-New-Year’s-Eve ordeal ever again!