The message popped up, a greeting. I was polite, but I am an attention grabber. If I am not in the light, I am gone. I was getting ready to cancel the initial IM session; there was no information in her details, I had a full list. I was doing all the talking, and getting nothing. I had other things to do; I had forgotten ICQ was even running at the time anyway!

My details linked to my homepage, and there is a picture of me there. She said something about it that changed the conversation. She said she liked my lower lip.
It bounced in my head for a while, even as we talked for the next several hours. And as it did, I became angrier. Because I knew that I was talking to someone who saw things differently. And I was angry because I had come to find out we were over 3000 miles apart. We didn’t chat long. Wait, I said above “several hours”… I asked her for her phone number because we were touching on , and discussing things in a way that needed to be voiced, not typed.

As with us all, I can’t remember everything we talked about. All I know is that each subject was met with squeals of disbelief and laughter. We had so many shared experiences, and neither of us could deal with the fact that the connection was becoming way too real, far too fast for either of our “practical” sides.

In those initial few hours a plan was outlined. I would visit her in one month over school break, and when I was finished with school at the end of this year, we would explore a dream. She would fly here and we would drive back together, exploring the country and anything left in us.

Well, three days later I had the ticket in my hand, and we are going to see each other very soon. My life has changed dramatically because of her, and we talk, write and use Net meeting to see each other in the meantime. As much as computers are a part of this all, we are exploring our secret desire of composing snail-mail!

I knew almost immediately that I had found the person I had been looking for. For all of our days, we were perfecting ourselves ( her words! ) for this moment. I just felt , and feel so sure of this. When I read all the stories here, it didn’t feel weird anymore. It never really was weird, but people find it hard to believe that love is real on the Internet.

Being here, I was even safer.  To be continued after the meeting…

"Marty"

>> Continued in Part Two