Real Life

by Brian Schwartz

I have a friend who thinks too much. You're not a real friend, she told me, just an internet friend. How can you think you know me when you've never been within a thousand miles of me? You've read my blog and that's about it. So I told her, "that presents interesting epistemological and perceptual questions. Lets say you really pour your heart out in your blog, as fully and honestly as you can, and of course most people will read and not understand, but what if someone reads and it suddenly clicks, somehow he or she totally understands, doesn't that person know you better than a coworker with whom you have exchanged superficial work-related chitchat every day for years? Yes, I'd say."

Big words, lets see how it works in real life. I shall set down various conversations I had last night, in real life with real girls in a real bar after drinking a real lot of real beer. You will be the judge of how profound they are.

Hey, I told this girl, I just picked my myspace URL, look at it and be prepared to see the coolest URL you will ever see in your life! And I showed her a card on which I had carefully written what is indeed the most awesome myspace URL ever known to man. myspace.com/Brian-rocks! Hey, mine is myspace.com/carla, she told me. Yeah right, said I with a touch of skepticism in my voice, that's what you told me last week and I checked it and it's a 16 year old girl in the Phillippines. I'm not a 16 year old girl in the Phillippines, she replied indignantly, I'm 26 and I'm right here in Tulsa! So she won that argument. I forgot, she told me to clinch her victory, it's really myspace.com/kk, try that and you'll get me for sure.

Having achieved an intimacy far greater than I could hope for in the most torrid internet relationship, I moved on to the next table. The next girl I talked to was also 26. She and Carla had something in common. She said she'd seen me earlier. That showed she's perceptive and has good judgment. And she told me her myspace address was BS_Queen, and that made me sure. That's my initials, I said, BS!! Surely we were destined for each other!!!!! She told me that the B was the initial of her first love, Brian. That is so cool, I thought, when she gasps my name in passion it will be so easy for her to remember.

We talked and talked, mostly me saying God knows what, for quite some time. Now it was time to put her depth and commitment to one final test. Oh, I must be boring you, I said, sometimes I talk so much you'd have to sit on me to get me to shut up. Now I was taking a tremendous risk, but nothing ventured nothing gained as they say. She was definitely not overweight, she looked just perfect, but she was quite tall and most definitely voluptuous. I don't know her exact weight, I was so distracted I just forgot to ask! But still, if she chose to sit on my chest, I'd have to lift every ounce of that unknown but not inconsiderable weight with each breath I took. And just as when you do sit-ups the first is so easy and each future one gets harder and harder, each breath would be more and more of a struggle until after twenty minutes or so each ragged, gasping inhalation would be a major battle. And she was with friends, what if she got to talking with her girlfriends and just forgot about the man feebly struggling beneath her? I could be there for hours as she laughed and chatted. Or maybe she was in one of these college sororities I've heard about, where they have initiation and hazing and a girl can't join unless she's sat on a man for a really really long time. So as I said I was taking a really big risk, but it was the only way to test her character. Just like the waiter rule, which states that if an executive is a good person he will be kind to waiters, so if a girl is kind and compassionate she wont sit on you even when you offer. And she passed with flying colors. She didn't sit on me at all!!!! Instead, she simply said, no, you're not boring me at all. Definitely a keeper. I'm getting ready to write a BS_Queen email right now.

So there you have it. A true, unvarnished account of the intimacy possible in real life. But hey, you're an Internet friend, I've never been within a hundred miles of you. Do I really know those bar girls better than I know you?