My Darling
Reminiscing about our time together in that chat room all those years ago has brought many memories flooding back. It seems a little trite after your poetic utterances but there is one incident in particular that stands out in my mind. It was the day we swapped identities.
I may need to go “full geek” here a bit to explain what really happened. My darling you were always lightning fast; your brain and your fingers seemed to operate on a plane above we mere mortals. I couldn’t actually admit it to myself at the time, but you were actually quicker on the draw. I would console myself with the fact that you were in America and closer to the servers, and your ping was faster. I would make excuses that here in far away Australia I only had a 33.6k dial up modem whereas you had the superior 56k variety. To the younger generation this will mean naught, but to those of us who grew up listening to the sounds of those modems as they made that hideous “connecting to the internet sound” they will know the significance of those numbers.
That sound! I hear it now. Occasionally there will be an old film or TV show that has it in the background. It plays and I am instantly transported back to you. It was the sound that trumpeted your arrival, our connection. In reality it was shrill and coarse, but to me it was the soundtrack of my love for you. How strange that sounds and later smells should trigger such vivid memories of you. But I digress.
As I have already said, you were a dynamo, totally unstoppable. I would just sit and bask in your brilliance and wit. To the rest of the room though, when we went at it and let go with our full arsenal of caustic comments, the ironic one liners, the caustic barbs, the devastating put downs, well they would just go a little quiet. They were in awe. You and I, we were having the time of our cyber lives. They would see some acerbic comment and think a killer blow had been landed. They waited for one us to wilt under the strain. It may be my rose coloured memory but I don’t ever recall feeling hurt or even slighted by one thing you ever said. I would just throw my head back and laugh. Then I’d keep a mental tally knowing that an opportunity would present itself and I would exact my revenge.
So, let’s be a little hedonistic here, we were brilliant together. Then at some point, and I’m not sure who was initially responsible, we decided to switch identities. The fact that we would happily exchange our passwords, even when viewed through the prism of a simpler time, still shows how much I both trusted and loved you. So we were in our chat room. You were me, and I was you. And so it began. We knew each other so well that we could mimic each other’s “internet voice” for want of a better description. I cringe to say it because it reveals a vain shortcoming of my own but you even replicated one of my regular typos. You typed “loose” instead of “lose” and any variation of those two words. I hated that you knew me so well (not really) but I loved the agility of your mind and the fact that you so thoroughly took on my chat room persona and inhabited it so completely. We then set about flirting with ourselves. The narcissism didn’t strike me at the time but goodness knows what a competent psychologist would make of our behaviour. I know I used to make jokes about being so arrogant that I would cry out my own name at the moment of climax while making love. I think this may have been the chat room equivalent.
Anyway we did this on only a few occasions and when that field was fallow we moved on to greener pastures. I am not sure why this memory has surfaced now but it makes me so damn happy to remember you at the top of your game, though I fear for my own sake that you still may very well be at the pinnacle. It seems strange that such an act of self indulgence be such a fond memory. It just showed you in all your magnificent glory and revealed, if only to me, how truly brilliant you were and still are. I was completely head over heels in love with by this time. This just cemented in my mind how truly remarkable our connection was, and dare I say still is. I love you my darling. Words cannot express what it is like to have you back in my life. To find myself reliving our past in a blog should be a little disconcerting, however it is not. I have no need to interrogate why I feel the way I do about you, but by putting these thoughts down in writing it has crystallised my emotions and confirmed them on yet another level.
You Will Always Be My Darling
From Sir With Love
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My Dear Sir,
What connivers we were! I had forgotten all about our switching identities scheme. I had studied your online character intensely, and I have no doubt that I felt rather confident in impersonating you; consequently, I would never be so presumptuous and bold now. I had even forgotten your ‘lose – loose’ mix-ups. That made me smile. I loved you for your minute, human errors. I found them to be on the adorable side for such a strong person. I even found it rather endearing that I made a better online man than you made a woman purely for the reason that your masculinity was so prominent. Your charisma is as astounding today as it was back then. Some things never change.
If memory serves me (and I admit you have the stronger independent recollection here), I do think I remarked and teased you about all the private messages I received while pretending to be you. You had many female admirers. They all wanted to rub shoulders with my Sir. I couldn’t fault them for wanting the very thing I did.
I trusted you implicitly with my name, and I know that trust was reciprocated. I would never have abused your faith in me. Your name had a reputation of being a gentleman, and I had to uphold it no matter how tempting it was to tell your female fans to get lost. You are correct that we never hurt one another intentionally with our verbal sparring. It was exhilarating and entertaining. If you even thought for a second that you had hurt my feelings, you would instantly apologize. Again, proof that you were (and are) a true gentleman.
I think this memory of yours (and mine) held a much higher purpose because it answered the question – could we trust each other? I think we both passed with flying colors.
Fondly,
Darling
©2013 Darling and Sir
The Sir Letters 