Cyber-Magnetism, Part I

Due to the success of my last attempt at telling stories about my life, and, thanks to requests for more from some of you, I have another story to tell you. It’s another story that ends in heartbreak, but with a ray of hope at the end. The hope was that I had just met Michael, the man I’m with now, during part of this story. There aren’t as many feelings of teen angst and that wonderful/terrible stirring of first emotions. No, this story contains more feelings of inadequacy, fear, confusion…

So, why tell the story? Well, there are several methods to my madness when re-telling this story. For one thing, I like to use it as a cautionary tale to others who may fall into the same situation I found myself in almost three and a half years ago. For another, it helps to talk about it, hash it all out. I came out on the other end of this experience feeling heartbroken and foolish, and, the more I tell the story, the less foolish and the more victimized I feel. Also, the end is hopeful, as I’ve said before. Now, without further ado, here is the story.

It was the beginning of the summer of 2002. I was living at home, after a disastrous attempt to live with my best friend in an apartment (luckily we are still friends to this day regardless). I had just finished a spring production at UNT, playing Marty in the 50’s musical, “Grease.” High off the end of the show, I was ready to jump back into another one, preferably one of Denton Community Theatre’s summer productions. As fortune would have it, the show was one of my favorites, “Once Upon a Mattress.” I knew several friends were auditioning, including The Nutcase, CatPants, and Dr. Dexter.

I don’t remember much of the audition, except that I sang well, learned the choreography well, and read a scene with Dr. Dexter. I do remember one key moment, however. After everyone had sung, danced, and gotten a drink of water, we began to look over sides of the script for cold readings. Then the door opened and someone walked in.

“Hi, sorry I’m late, can I still sing?” I looked up to see who would show up to an audition over half an hour late and still look so confident and sure of himself. I saw an attractive man in his early- to mid-twenties, dressed very nicely, but looking very arrogant.

Bill, the director of the show, said that of course he could still sing. This guy handed his music to the accompanist and got ready to sing. He sang “Many Moons Ago” which is from the show. At this time in my amateur theatre life, I was always appalled when anyone would sing a song from the show at the audition. To me, this guy was just dripping with arrogance. He knew he was talented.

After the auditions, CatPants, Dr. Dexter and I were standing outside the theatre chatting, when Mr. Arrogant walked out. He stood and chatted with us for a minute, before heading out on his way. At this point in time, he left my life for a bit. He got cast in the show as the Minstrel, CatPants was cast as Winnifred, and Dr. Dexter was cast as Dauntless. I was not cast in the show.

That night when I got home from auditions, I was bored as usual. So, as usual, I logged onto my terribly slow dial-up internet connection at my dad’s house, and logged into one of my Yahoo aliases, which, at the time was Cosette86.

Just as a gag, I decided to peruse the chat rooms. As a general rule, I hated chat rooms. All anyone ever did was argue and pick fights and flood the screen with things like “If you want to cyber, type 123” or something else just as asinine. So, I just sat back and read what was going on, occasionally typing in a “LOL” or some other chat lingo. After one of these random comments, I saw my screen name on the chat room.

FiremanG: Hey Cosette, is that name from Les Miserables?

I was surprised that anyone in this chat room full of cyber-junkies and perverts had the education and intelligence to notice that my screen name was not just some random nickname plus the year of my graduation. I thought, “What the hell,” and typed back, “Yes it is! I’m surprised anyone noticed.”

FiremanG and I spoke back and forth for a bit in the safety of the chat room window until that inevitable question arose, “Want to go PM?” For those of you who aren’t internet lingo savvy, this means “Private Message.” In other words, leaving the public forum in order to carry on the conversation through an instant messenger. I hesitated for a moment, leery of all the Lifetime Original Movies I had seen about internet perverts taking advantage of young girls. But, I figured, I was no fourteen year old. I knew what kind of people existed in the world, and, I told myself that at the first sign of “How big are your boobs?” or “Want to cyber with me?” this loser would be blocked and ignored for all eternity.

FiremanG and Cosette86 hit it off immediately. We chatted about our jobs (mine as a recent acquisition to the serving staff of Olive Garden, his as a firefighter in Colorado), our families, music and movies that we liked…you name it, we discussed it all in that first night. Before I knew it, it was almost 5:00 am, and I told FiremanG that I had to go to bed. I had to work an opening shift at the Olive Garden the next morning. We said good night (or good morning), and I went to bed with that exhausted happy feeling that comes from nights of sharing stories and philosophical conversations with someone you find an immediate connection to.

Looking back on this very first night, even, I find myself wondering why I didn’t immediately notice the tiny inconsistencies in what he said to me in that messenger window. Small things, like calling his dog two different names, or saying once that he had 3 roomates but then later saying he had 4. I guess that I was younger than I thought…or at least immature and naïve enough to be blind to these simple things.

But then I want to give myself more credit than that. After all, it was just a random occurrence. I just randomly found someone remotely interesting in a chat room full of freaks, perverts and overall losers. This wasn’t the first time it had happened, so any inconsistencies I might have done a double-take at initially I probably brushed aside, thinking I’d never speak to this person again.

However, that was not to be the case. This was neither the only nor the last night that I spent awake until sunrise, clicking away on my keyboard. The two months ahead of me were, unbeknownst to me, going to be the most difficult two months of my life…

That’s all I can do for now…it’s hard enough to type this out in phases. Stay tuned!

~Frecklehead