cyberlovers

For the past six years, i've dabbled in online love connections. Prior to that, i had always thought personal ads were a touch pathetic, but when i began using craigslist for job purposes, i discovered the "platonic only" personal section. This seemed an admirable evolvement in the genre, and i browsed. I occasionally answered an ad, and made some new friends. I realized after a year or less that i was only answering ads by females, and that whenever i met a woman, it almost invariably became romantic. I embraced the obvious and began browsing the romance section. In the years since, i've answered many ads and posted some of my own (being a male and off the beaten path, i've met almost no one from my own ads). I often answer the ads which seek opinions, or offer questionnaires. I try to keep an attitude of fun. Craigslist is the only site i use, as paying money for a dating service invokes a level of neediness that's not me.
I rarely look at ads which don't have a picture, as i believe pictures do tell a thousand words, particularly for someone off that aforementioned path. In a similar vein, most men don't need the words of an ad to know whether they're interested in a woman. Which is not to say that men don't care about personality, but sex is sex...or stated a little more generously, the average male can glean enough of a woman's personality from a picture to know whether he wants to meet.
I would estimate that at least half of my NY love life has come through the online world.
This article isn't about that.
This article (and the following two) is about online lovers who never meet...and three women whose lives became a part of mine, but never in the material world.
Being fond of the written word, most of the online connections i make are with atypically literate women. I can be game for flurries of back and forth letters. In general though, if there's a connection, i prefer to meet sooner rather than later. C was one of my early connections. I suspect we met in the "platonic only" section. For a while we wrote increasingly tender and revealing letters, sharing our poetry and lives. She wrote beautifully. She and her lesbian partner lived outside the city. She had only ever been with a man sexually once, when as an adolescent her father or step-father raped her. To this day, one of my cherished possessions is a poem she wrote about that experience, and i will sadly ever keep my word to not share it with the world. Over the months we wrote ever-increasingly intimate letters. She finally became convinced that she had found in me the first male lover of her life, and that making physical love with me would be the most important step in her long journey of healing. I felt the same...her words affected me viscerally, and i was sure that i was who she believed me to be. I honestly can't remember whether we ever shared pictures of each other.
Strangely, considering that she is the lead woman in this memoir, C doesn't fit into the parameters, for we did meet. After about four months, we met at a Manhattan Starbucks. It was faintly surreal, as we sipped and talked. After an hour, she headed back to the station. As we said goodbye, i think we both knew that something we had been so sure of, was not to be. Our physical connection was gentle and friendly, but the spark that would have made real all those months of build-up, just wasn't there. I think it was so obvious to both of us, that we didn't even speak of it. We just smiled and hugged each other goodbye.
We exchanged one or two more notes, and faded out of each other's lives.