Love Virtually (11 page)

“This woman,” I said, “allows me to think of somebody else apart from you, Marlene, and yet have similar feelings. She teases me, irritates me—at times I could boot her into cyberspace, but then I'm just as eager to get her back again. I need her here on earth, you see. She listens. She's clever. She's funny. And, most important of all, she's there for me.” “If it helps to write to her, then write to her,” Marlene told me on the way to bed. “And don't forget your pills,” she added.

I don't know what to do, Emmi. How can I get away from this woman? She's a block of ice, but I get hot whenever I touch her. When I walk with her through the streets of Amsterdam I get pneumonia. But when she lays her hand on my forehead at night, I begin to glow.

Right, Emmi, part two. I'm back. I've got no intention of striking camp from your cerebral cortex. I want us to keep writing to each other. And I'd like us to meet in person. By all the criteria of human logic, we've missed all the obvious, right moments. We've ignored the most basic rules of being together. We're old soul mates, mutual support in our daily lives, sometimes we're even lovers. And despite all this our relationship hasn't had the customary beginning: a meeting. I'm sure we'll make up for it! But I don't know how yet, without losing a part of what we are. Do you have any idea?

Right, Emmi, part three. I deliberately started my email talking about Marlene. Because I'd like us to share more about our lives. I don't want to pretend there's only the two of us. I want to know how you cope with your marriage, how you manage with the children, things like that. I'd also like to know what you worry about. I'd find it a great comfort to know it's not just me who has problems. It would help me to talk about them. It would be an honor to be taken into your strictest confidence.

Right, Emmi, part four. Please don't hate me on spec ever again! I couldn't stand it. At the beginning of March I dropped out of the study on the influence of email on our linguistic behavior and its significance as a means of conveying emotions. The official excuse I gave was that I didn't have enough time.

But in fact this subject had become too personal and I couldn't look at it scientifically anymore. Does that clear things up?

Have a nice day,

Leo

P.S. Although my “Out of office” autoreply was the correct punishment for your aggressive and suspicious note, I also felt sorry for you. That was a really lovely, candid, honest, and detailed message. Thanks for every word! Now you have a few cheeky comments in credit.

Forty-five minutes later

Re: Back!

Did you drop out of the study because of us? That's nice, Leo, for that I love you! (Luckily you can't have a clue what I mean by that.) I've got to take Jonas to the dentist. It's a shame he's not already under general anesthetic. There's your answer to how I manage with the kids.

Till later,

Emmi

Six hours later

Subject: (no subject)

O.K., Leo, I'm sitting in my study, Bernhard's still working, Fiona's staying over at a friend's, Jonas is asleep (minus two teeth), Wurlitzer's eating dog food (much cheaper, and Wurlitzer doesn't seem to mind, as long as there's enough of it). You know we don't have chipmunks—if we did, the cat would probably want to eat them too. I'm being stared at reproachfully by the furniture. Scenting betrayal, it threatens me: You'd better not let on how much we cost, what color we are or what our design is! The piano's saying: Don't you dare tell him that Bernhard was your piano teacher! Don't tell him how it felt the first time you kissed, and how you made love on top of me. The bookcase is asking: Who is this Leo anyway? What's he doing here? Why do you spend so much time with him? Why do you ignore me most of the time? Why have you become so preoccupied? The CD player is telling me: Soon it's going to get so bad that you won't play Rachmaninoff anymore—don't forget how important music is to your relationship with Bernhard—instead you'll want to know what this Leo likes to listen to. Who knows, it might be the Sugarbabes! Only the wine rack has something to say in your defense: Well, I don't have anything against Leo, the three of us get along just fine. But I hear threats from the bed: Don't lie here dreaming about being somewhere else. Don't get caught here with Leo. That's a warning!

I can't do it, Leo. I can't share this world with you. You can never become a part of it. It's impenetrable, like a fortress. It can't be conquered, it allows no one to intrude, it resolutely keeps them out. You and I have to stay “outside,” Leo, it's our only chance. I'll lose you otherwise. You asked how I “cope” with my marriage? Admirably, and I mean that! And Bernhard does too. He worships me. I respect and treasure him. We respect each other. He would never deceive me. I could never let him down. We would never want to hurt each other. We've built up a life together. We depend on each other. We've got music, we have the theater. We've got lots of friends in common. Fiona, she's sixteen, she's like a younger sister to me. And I really have become a kind of mother to Jonas. His mother died when he was three.

Leo, please don't force me to open my family album. Why don't we do it like this: I'll tell you about my home life if I feel like it, if I've got something on my mind, if I want to confide in a very close friend. But you can tell me about your private life anytime you want, down to the very last, explosive detail. (Just don't go into anything erotic—I forbid you!)

I'm off to bed now—and I'm finally going to get a good night's sleep. I'm so glad you're back, Leo!! I need you! I have to be able to live, breathe, and feel beyond my world here as well. You are my other world! And we can talk about Marlene tomorrow—I'm going to need a clear head for that. Good night, my love! And a good night kiss!

The next day

Subject: Marlene

Good morning, Leo. If you can't be with each other, and you can't be without each other, the only other option is to find someone else. You need someone else, Leo. You need to fall in love again. And that's when you'll realize what you've been missing all this time. Closeness isn't just an absence of distance, it means actively eliminating it. The thrill doesn't stem from a lack of completeness, but from constantly striving for it, and clinging on to it when you've got it. There's nothing else, Leo, we need to find you a woman! Of course it would be naive to say “Forget Marlene!” But you've got to, once and for all. I've got a suggestion to make. Instead of thinking about Marlene, why don't you make a conscious effort to think about me instead? Imagine you're doing everything with me that you'd like to do with Marlene. (My furniture's beginning to stare at me again.) I mean, just for the transition phase, until we've found you someone else. What kind of a woman would you like? How would you like her to look? Go on, tell me! Maybe I've got someone in mind.

Seriously now, a woman who says, “If it helps to write to her, then write to her,” is a million miles away from what I understand by being in love. Marlene doesn't love Leo. Leo doesn't love Marlene. The passion of these two non-lovers is forged from the other's craving for love. I can't put it better than that. I have to work now.

Till soon,

Emmi, your “virtual alternative”

Four hours later

Re: Marlene

Dear Emmi,

Greetings from your other world. I enjoy your emails, and I'm really grateful for them. Please tell your various pieces of furniture that I admire their attitude and respect their team spirit. I'm not going to intrude on the Rothner household; I'll restrict my dealings with Emmi to the screen. My particular compliments to the wine cabinet. Maybe one day the three of us can have another midnight rendezvous. (I promise not to drink so much beforehand.)

I'm extremely tickled that you're thinking about pairing me off. What sort of women do I like? Women who look the way you write, Emmi. And I wouldn't mind getting a crack at being their real world, not just their other world. In short, women who aren't already “happily married,” holed up in a family fortress and under surveillance by their furniture. Until one of those crosses my path, I'll gladly take you up on your offer and think about you before I think of Marlene. It won't always work, but if you keep on spoiling me with emails I'll inch ever closer to my goal.

I hope you have a nice evening. I'm meeting up with my sister Adrienne tonight. She'll be pleased that I've managed to break up with Marlene again. And she'll be delighted that I'm still in touch with you. All she knows is the odd excerpt from your emails and what I've told her about you—and she's seen the three Emmi candidates. She likes you, irrespective of which one is you. She's agreed with her brother on this.

The next day

Subject: Mia!

Hi Leo, it came to me in the night. Of course, Mia! It's Mia! Leo and Mia—it already sounds wonderful! Listen up, Leo, Mia's thirty-four and gorgeous. She's a gym teacher with long legs and a lovely figure, not an ounce of fat on her, dark complexion, black hair. There's only one drawback: she's vegetarian, but all you have to do is tell her it's tofu and she'll eat meat too. She's extremely well read, highly intelligent, enterprising, cheerful, always in a good mood. In other words, she's a dream woman. And . . . she's single!

Shall I introduce you?

An hour and a half later

Re: Mia!

Emmi, Emmi, Emmi! I know all about those long-legged Mias. My little sister introduces me to one of them practically every week. I've seen those designer clothes catalogues full of 0.0 percent fat models à la Mia, each one more beautiful and long-legged than the next. And they're all single. And do you know why, dear Emmi? Because that's how they like it! And that's how they want it to stay for a while longer.

I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm, my dear other-world Emmi, but I'm not in the mood for meeting a dream Mia at the moment. I'm very happy with my life as it is. Thank you for your efforts nonetheless!

My sister sends her greetings, by the way. She says I shouldn't make the mistake of meeting you. Her exact words were, “A meeting would be the end of your relationship. And this relationship is doing you a world of good!”

Bye,

Leo

Two hours later

Re: Mia!

O.K. Leo, our meeting can wait, I'm reconciled to that. You'll make a patient woman of me yet! I'm delighted your sister has been thinking about us. But how can she be so sure that our “relationship” would be over if we met? And who does she think would end it: you or me?

One other thing: in your email yesterday evening you referred to me as “happily married.” Why did you put “happily married” in quotation marks? That makes me think you wanted to make some kind of rhetorical remark, with a tiny tinge of facetiousness to it. Do you know what I mean?

Now back to Mia, you've misunderstood me entirely there. She's not just some kind of eye-catching beauty from a fashion mag. Mia is a really lovely woman, and she's slipped into being single without wanting to. A typical case of relationship mismanagement in her younger years. When she was nineteen she met a man, an Adonis on the outside, a bundle of testosterone, a real sex machine. But on the inside he was empty, especially in the brains department. Two terrible years of waiting and hoping, and then finally he opened his mouth and the magic was gone. So she's twenty-one and immediately meets another muscle-bound hunk. And she thinks: There's got to be more to this one. But there isn't, so on to the next. This develops into a classic female pattern: she thinks she needs the same kind of guy each time, to correct the “mistakes” made the first time around. But with each subsequent mistake she's drawn ever more strongly to the same type.

Mia's men all looked identical, and not one of them was able to compensate for the shortcomings of his predecessor. On the contrary, each succeeded in reiterating that his predecessor was just as hollow as he was himself. For two years she's been far too exhausted and unmotivated to meet new men. She never makes any approaches. Recently she said to me that if I ever met anyone nice, I should feel free to introduce her. But she doesn't want to have to make too much effort. If it doesn't happen of its own accord, then it won't happen at all. That's Mia for you. I'm telling you, Leo, you'll really like her.

An hour and a half later

Re: Mia!

Dear Emmi,

I'll deal with your opening questions first:

1) My sister didn't specify which of the two of us would be the first to end our “relationship” (is it O.K. to put relationship in quotation marks?) after a meeting. She was probably thinking that our written exchanges would be incompatible with face-to-face conversation, and that would soon end the whole thing.

2) It's astonishing how much you pick up on! I didn't put “happily married” in quotation marks consciously. Maybe the software does it automatically. No, in all seriousness, the expression is yours and I was quoting it, because I always feel that “happily married” is a subjective notion. I doubt, for example, that what I understand by “happily married” is the same as how you or your husband perceive it. In any case it really isn't important, is it? It was never meant to be facetious, and in future I'll leave out the quotation marks, O.K.?

And now to your friend Mia. Next time you see her, by all means say you know a man who has also tried repeatedly to correct the “mistakes” from the first time, except that he only needs, or rather needed, one woman to do so. A man who's just as exhausted and unmotivated to meet new people. A man who's also stopped making any kind of advance toward women, who doesn't want to have to make too much effort. Everything's got to come to him, and if it doesn't then it's not going to happen. Tell her, “That's Leo for you, Mia!” But don't say, “You're going to love him,” because that presupposes that we might actually have to look each other in the eye. And at the moment I suspect that would be too much “relationship effort” for both of us.