Dear Andrea!
I’ve found the Love Story column on the Internet and it really stirred me when I read it.  I am currently living the most beautiful love of my life that began 3 months ago on the net and a week ago broke out of its cyber prison.  Trembling stomach, tight throat, dry mouth – a wonderful feeling.  It is difficult but I’ll try to force into words this deeply stirring, who knows when and where ending, unique and passionate adventure.  Thank you for creating this page.

Being a newspaper reporter the use of the internet is tightly associated with my work but I never even thought of using it for entertainment or finding a partner through the internet.  Out of curiosity, one evening three months ago – at the urging of my girlfriend – I logged onto the Bulinet.  I was looking around enjoying the fact that I could look at people’s personal pages without any particular goal.  One of the pages had me linger and linger even-though there wasn’t even a picture attached.  There was a single sentence that grabbed me:

“I’m no male chauvinist, or macho man but I’m a man with determination and a man from my head to my toe.”

I felt I had to respond and so I did with a brief message: “If you insist on someone who is a woman from head to toe, there’s one here.”  The whole thing was a game I didn’t take it seriously, but I was curious who was behind the page.  I didn’t have to wait long.  There was a lengthy letter of introduction in response to my one sentence.  Reading the lines I was beginning to find an unusually energetic, decisive person who plays sports at a professional level and someone who is working hard for recognition.

“I was born into a poor and broken family and it is my mother’s determination to prove herself that I can thank that I’m alive.  She assumed and fulfilled obligations beyond her strength and tried with degrees of success to raise me into a valuable adult.  In her opinion she succeeded.  As for my career, although I’ve no olympic placements but my world championship medals prove me of some success."

He had made a decidedly favorable impression and I liked his nick: Marki.  I really felt that I’ve found a knight with a noble soul in cyberspace.  I didn’t really believe in online friendships nor did I have any experience in these matters but I noticed that initially on a weekly basis, then every 2-3 days, finally we wrote to each other on a daily basis.  This dreamer of a 33 years-old little boy became a part of my life.  When I turned on my computer in the morning  and heard the beep that signaled mail I felt the sun shine warmer, and the leaves and flowers became more colorful.

“Soothe my mind, that I’m trying to ease missing you by gazing at your pictures amidst my thoughts of you, with a kind word.”

I still didn’t know the person behind the monitor but I did want him to reveal his face and yet I was also afraid of it: it was only good until I knew, for it would be impossible for him to be as I would have imagined him.  One morning unexpectedly I’ve found his face on my monitor and my room did a flip with me.  I actually hugged my monitor and did not care about the strange glances I got from office mates.  There he stood smiling holding out a bouquet of roses wrapped in newspaper and holding them toward me: the man that I’ve imagined in my girlish dreams, my teenage fantasies was standing in front of me.  Cyber love at first glance?  Who can say what we could call it when the monitor’s heart is not the one that’s pounding but mine.  I could not believe that it is really him, I was afraid that it was the morbid humor of some bored surfer playing games with me.  The same fears also came to him:

“I play with the idea of what you may be like in reality, what we may be like in reality.  It is a pleasantly exciting thought to get lost in even-though I know these are merely tricks of the cyber brain.  In any case, I’ll accept the glove and am willing to declare: OK, I’m game.  If it is a game, I’ll laugh.  If not, I’ll cry.  I’ll assume the responsibility because it is worth it, it appears so unique and forms not only my days but also myself in a different way.”

Despite of the doubts the e-mails continued to pass between us with words escalating in pitch from the mutual endearments.  He called me his Moonshine since in his Spartan life he mainly wrote during the night inspired by the moon.  I called him my Sunshine since I read his thirst quenching letters in the morning in the first rays of the Sun.  One week-end he wrote how he would send a kiss under my streaming red hair I felt we had to meet.  He is the man who knows me completely.

“Do you remember when we stepped out the door and waited for the elevator.  I planted a light kiss on your richly crowned head, I felt your scent and for me, in that very moment everything stopped and I felt:  I’ve arrived, there is nothing beyond.”

I was surprised when the next e-mail contained his telephone number.  This was the beginning of not only e-mail correspondence but also telephone calls and floods of SMS.  After three months of mere correspondence we arranged to meet in person at midnight.
“Having read your letter and knowing my own thoughts, my opinion is that there is only one solution, one way out and no appeal is accepted: the solution is a personal meeting.”

We were afraid of stepping out of the safety of cyber world into the real, but wondering if reality truly held for us what we’ve come to imagine during enthusiastic play at the keyboard?  What was the first moment like?  The most positive surprise that could ever be – for both of us.  There he stood smiling in the moonlight he helped me into his car and said where we were going was a surprise.  A half hour later we were at the top of the city watching the lights below.  We talked and the air sizzled around us.  His voice was music and I swam in his gaze.  Later he took me to his favorite club and I enjoyed as he made the way through the crowd holding my hand tightly as he introduced me to his friend at the bar.  It felt wonderful to have his arm around me protectively.  At dawn he showed me the house where he lived the first 30 years of his life.  Day was breaking and we still couldn’t break away from each other.

“My dearest cyber angel, give me the inspiration, the helping lines that I can cling to like a drowning man where my fingers can find by themselves the written magic that may appear on Yvette’s monitor and serve as a balm to her soul.  Let’s admit, putting aside all the macho ideas, I desire your letters, await the beep of my telephone signaling your message, I crave the excitement that drives my adrenaline level out of sight.”

He had to tell me something: his wedding was two months ago!!! My tears appeared, I did not understand what this was all about?  It is a joke, a nasty trick?  I waited for him to tell me he was only joking, but instead he began to tell me that he waited for so long to find the girl of his dreams that he finally decided she wasn’t going to appear and he would marry someone he could tolerate the every days of his life with.  He didn’t believe that a cyber love could become reality.  Before our meeting he thought about it and also admitted his close friend into his confidence.  It was his friend who warned him for the first time that there were examples where people he knew who met on the internet fell in love and are still together.  He thought for a long time what was the correct thing to do: confess it in a letter or tell it in person.  He decided to do the latter.  I wanted to get up and run out, to forget the entire mess but I was not able to.  A beautiful bouquet appeared from thin air, he intended it for me not as a way of asking for forgiveness but as a thank you for all the beautiful letters that he so awaited each day.  When we said good-bye he held me as though he never wanted to let me go.

“So there will remain a quiet but deep burning, the glance at your pictures and my fantasy (that with the proper inspiration can be very rich) in the depths of where I can experience your cyber love.”

Perhaps it would have been best if that is where this bitter-sweet story ended, serving as an example of how much real joy and sorry an unknown can bring from cyber world.  Four hours later, however, he was in my apartment.  An SMS arrived and I could not resist, he was drawing me like a magnet, pulling me down like a currant that I can’t get out of.  I bring to my mind all the typical adjectives: playboy, sleaze, cheat.  But they are not true, he doesn’t even kiss me, just holds me burring his face in the crook of my neck.  He is not taking advantage of his magical hold on me, just quietly sizzles by my side.  He treats me gently as a flower writing to me last thing at night and first thing in the morning.

“My morning was spent missing you too much.  It hurts to even think it, how can I survive the coming years without your letters!!!"

I try to find excuses for myself: I’m not the guilty seductress, I can’t have him stray from the right path.  What kind of marriage must it be where a wife does not ask her husband where he spent Friday night and where he runs to on Sunday morning, who do you write SMS’s hourly to and whose pictures to you look at while dreaming in bed?  There are many unanswered questions:  how does he dare appear with me at well known night spots, to hold my hand in public?  I’m haunted by doubts: maybe I’m not his only ‘cyber angel’?  I wrote to him under a nick “dumb blond” and he responded.  I thought I had him, he finally slipped, but no!! There came an e-mail to me:

“A message arrived on my phone that I should log on to Bulinet because a message arrived for me.  I did happily enough, but when I got there it turned out to be from an unknown calling herself “dumb blond” who is interested in establishing a sexual relationship.  I thought to myself, it’s OK I’ll send her a recycled letter.  The response came that we should meet.  This struck my as odd.  What I didn’t tell her was that cyber wise I’m bound, and the owner of my chains is my cyber angel.  I could have, but I didn’t because it is none of her business.  That is to be our private adventure!”

There’ll be those who resent me for this, those who will sympathize but few can truly understand my situation.  My conscience is bothering me and yet suffer from desire.  Our passionate love was never fulfilled since the passion of our emotions often scare us back behind the monitors.  We are lost in the maze of the real and the cyber desires.
Yvette

“I’m certain that you make a strong impression on your readers and they’ve never even seen you in person.  They did not have that distinct pleasure, and can only dream of their loss and never even come close to it’s real measure.  I was happy that I could see you, and the person on the other side of the machine took form (and what a form it is).  I can hardly believe still that this could actually happen to me, that this is real.  Now I’ll have to go, I’ll be in touch!”
Marki