Gwen (If anyone can guess the significance of this title I will send you a check for 50 dollars) consider this a contest. email me the answer here.

So...here I am, taking a look back.

Why does part of me feel like Lot's wife?

Jokes aside, I am testing my courage by taking a semi-long look at one of the most baffling events of my life. And, considering what I've been through, that's saying something.

What you are about to read is NOT fiction...even as a fledgeling writer, I could NEVER dream something this subtly twisted up. I have, of course, changed the names to protect the guilty.

In my more optimistic days, I discovered an animal called AOL. I also discovered how to go to work without sleep, as I became fascinated with chatting and meeting people via the pc screen.

"OK," you say, "we've all been there, done that."

 At any rate, I soon met a kindred spirit. warm, caring, a little silly...some of those special qualities we all look for. Then there was another...on a different level, but the same wavelength. Soon I could not easily categorize my Buddy List. But in every field of flowers, there's always that one bloom that takes your breath away...holds you transfixed...changes your life. She'd always been there to chat with, ever since the first sessions. But I found myself talking with her a little more often...found myself chatting with another group and seeing her enter a room simply because she was looking for me on-line...and so on. This appetite for each other's attentions led to private chatting, blocking everyone else, Instant Messages and E-mails while in a private chat, and other mania. All I can tell you is, it was sure nice to "be around" somebody who GENUINELY wanted my attention.

 Our contact progressed to writing letters...Snail mail, I believe it's called. We sent pictures, wrote letters, poems...this of course led to phone calls. But try as we did, we couldn't call less frequently than twice a week. Even when we were on line...if the urge to speak "in person" hit one of us...we'd log off and call. After nearly a year of this long-distance courtship, the decision was made (mutually) to meet. As I was the man, I would show my fidelity by visiting her..so she would be at ease in her own home...showing my trust in her to provide transportation to and from an airport which turned out to be a two hour drive from her home.

 All right, let's stop calling her "her"...Gwen was overjoyed at the news...especially since I made the decision to fly out two weeks before Christmas. I took extra time and care, Dear Readers, to purchase only gifts that had special significance to us both...fortune smiled upon me in my shopping travels...suffice it to say that every single gift Gwen was to have was loaded with personal connections. Upon arrival, I waited about thirty minutes in the airport before Gwen arrived to pick me up. We'd seen each other in pictures, so I had a general physical idea who I was looking for.

 Ever heard of someone looking a lot better in person?

Gorgeous is not a word I use lightly...yet that was the first thing that popped into my head when I first laid eyes on Gwen. Apparently she was just as pleasantly surprised, because our first embrace was that of two people that had spent much time together and were being reunited. Which, now that I put it like that, we were. I  recall that romantic drive back to her place, when she pulled over and let me drive, her head resting on my shoulder, a cassette of music I made especially for us playing on the tape deck. Life should be made of more of such moments.

 The day before I was to leave, during a particularly tender moment, the bottom dropped out.

Without warning, Gwen shoved me away from her, turned her back, and didn't say another word to me for twelve hours.

 Remember, this was the woman who couldn't get enough conversation or attention. Yet here she was, uncommunicative and unresponsive with me there in the same room with her.  I asked her if I had hurt her; she replied in the negative. I asked her if she was angry with me; another negative.  I left her room and sat on the couch in the livingroom in total darkness. NEVER IN MY LIFE,BEFORE OR SINCE, HAVE I FELT AS ALONE AS I DID AT THAT MOMENT. The next day, Gwen was next to comatose as I tried to get through to her. For some strange reason, I felt as if the air in that house was ground glass, and each lungful I drew in was shredding my insides. I made the decision to leave that afternoon; Gwen's mother was kind enough to take me back to the airport. I spent the night in that empty, lonely airport, opting for this hell rather than the one back at Gwen's place. (She didn't even say goodbye.) I knew full well that there wouldn't be a flight out of there until the next day. I was awake and alone that night, no one to call, no one who magically appeared to comfort me like in the movies; just me and the Pain, so big in me I could hardly breathe. I had some music with me and a Walkman...but regretted bringing only "upbeat" music with me. I did manage to find three songs that were vaguely appropriate...but I will tell you this:

 That tape I made with all the special songs on it? I erased it once I was back home. There are very different songs on there now.

 What's the point?  The moral of the story? You're asking the wrong person. All I can tell you is there are many people who have heard Internet Love Stories that ended badly...but this is the worst one my friends have heard. Not trying to "top" anyone...but if someone out there has a scarier one, I'd like to hear it.

Ok, I changed my mind. There IS a point to this story. If I hadn't followed my heart...if I hadn't let my head use its logic in drawing the obvious conclusions to her attentions...there was a distinct possibility that I would have missed a genuine opportunity at love.

 And paying that price would have been too damned high.

 Craig/Wisr4it