Do you remember a few months ago - I mentionned meeting an american cowboy from Kansas city - uprooted and now living in Minneapolis - on my last cruise to the carribean?
This was end of February, early March - after entertaining the idea of a long-distance "relationship" for a few weeks following the cruise and talking via webcam almost every night, he invited me over to his place and sent me a plane ticket, making sure I didn't have any endless lay-overs, shelling out an extra two hundred dollars to get me a direct flight . "Let's see how this could be in real life, he said. We'll both be working during the day, this wouldn't be a vacation - but we could spend our evenings together - just like a REAL couple, in REAL life." What I didn't know at that point - is that he didn't have one. My cowboy had no life whatsoever.
A few days before my departure to Minneapolis - in the dead of winter, mind you - Rose & Justin were spending their March break with their father - we had a webcam conversation that left me panicked. From what I remember, I asked him about his personnal history with his previous wife/girlfriend: - "why did she leave baby, what happened?"- some random piece of information any sensible woman flying 3,000 miles to spend a week in her virtual boyfriend's high-rise condo in the American mid-west and concerned with her personnal safety would be concerned about - anything, really - anything to give her a reason not to get on that plane, to bail out, you know what, it's not a good idea after all, let's just stop this here, shall we? Thank you, it was fun, see you on a next cruise perhaps - yes he seems nice but he might be a psychopath kind of thing - just give me a reason to not go through with this, will ya? - Any evasive ready-made conventional answer would have been ok really, would have made me feel like I was dealing with a semi-normal human being - so I was there, at the other end of the webcam, watching him, waiting for him to answer something, anything - but instead, his eyes turned mean, he fumbled, pointed his finger at me via the magical world of cyber communications and screamed at me. "That's not of your fucking business! Stop asking me these questions! You poke, and poke, and you don't shut up! What difference does it make! You bitches are all the same! You always need to get your way!" I was startled - horrified - and started crying. "what...D...I didn't mean to...why are you so mean to me...what did I say..." and then he made a hand gesture that meant "whatever ", looked at the computer screen, and in a fit of rage, unplugged the webcam, therefore ending abruptly our surreal conversation. Now that's a first - I've never had a guy hang up on me live on camera. Not pretty. And totally uncalled for. I just layed there in my bed, laptop on my thighs, stunned - and worried. What the fuck is up with that dude???
This was end of February, early March - after entertaining the idea of a long-distance "relationship" for a few weeks following the cruise and talking via webcam almost every night, he invited me over to his place and sent me a plane ticket, making sure I didn't have any endless lay-overs, shelling out an extra two hundred dollars to get me a direct flight . "Let's see how this could be in real life, he said. We'll both be working during the day, this wouldn't be a vacation - but we could spend our evenings together - just like a REAL couple, in REAL life." What I didn't know at that point - is that he didn't have one. My cowboy had no life whatsoever.
A few days before my departure to Minneapolis - in the dead of winter, mind you - Rose & Justin were spending their March break with their father - we had a webcam conversation that left me panicked. From what I remember, I asked him about his personnal history with his previous wife/girlfriend: - "why did she leave baby, what happened?"- some random piece of information any sensible woman flying 3,000 miles to spend a week in her virtual boyfriend's high-rise condo in the American mid-west and concerned with her personnal safety would be concerned about - anything, really - anything to give her a reason not to get on that plane, to bail out, you know what, it's not a good idea after all, let's just stop this here, shall we? Thank you, it was fun, see you on a next cruise perhaps - yes he seems nice but he might be a psychopath kind of thing - just give me a reason to not go through with this, will ya? - Any evasive ready-made conventional answer would have been ok really, would have made me feel like I was dealing with a semi-normal human being - so I was there, at the other end of the webcam, watching him, waiting for him to answer something, anything - but instead, his eyes turned mean, he fumbled, pointed his finger at me via the magical world of cyber communications and screamed at me. "That's not of your fucking business! Stop asking me these questions! You poke, and poke, and you don't shut up! What difference does it make! You bitches are all the same! You always need to get your way!" I was startled - horrified - and started crying. "what...D...I didn't mean to...why are you so mean to me...what did I say..." and then he made a hand gesture that meant "whatever ", looked at the computer screen, and in a fit of rage, unplugged the webcam, therefore ending abruptly our surreal conversation. Now that's a first - I've never had a guy hang up on me live on camera. Not pretty. And totally uncalled for. I just layed there in my bed, laptop on my thighs, stunned - and worried. What the fuck is up with that dude???
At that moment, red lights were flashing in my mind, and alarms were going off like crazy. RED ALERT - CRAZY NUTCASE ON THE RADAR - I was not going to Minneapolis anymore. No fucking way.
Three days later, my friend was driving me to the aiport - Montreal to Minneapolis-St.Paul. To this day I don't know what kept me going. I was scared as hell. But I had to go and see for myself.
There she is - Happy, traveling Bridges - at the Delta airlines bagage check-in, laptop in case, in a state of mind I like to call fully conscious denial, happy to be flying somewhere - anywhere - with a smile on my face.
Regardless.
