In the days before text messaging and cellphone world domination the
only way you could communicate was via land line and the written
word. Written on paper, you know? With a pen or pencil. After I got a
little more comfortable talking to Monica on the phone and got over
my anxiety we actually hit it off pretty good but there was that
problem of having to coordinate phone calls and leave messages with
her mom or dad. She could have called and left me messages but I
would have never known because my family is constitutionally
incapable of answering the phone or taking messages. Sometimes I
would give her a call and ask why she hadn't been in touch and she
would claim to have called six times and never gotten through. Sounds
plausible. In addition to our phone calls we also would employ that
quaint 19th century convention, the letter. There is
still, for me at least, no comparison in the level of excitement
between reviving an actual paper letter hand delivered by the
post-person. She would write all kinds of flirty things and send
pictures which legitimized my long distance love interest in the eyes
of my skeptical friends. What older trick is there in the nerd
playbook then having a hot sexually insatiable girl friend who lives
just beyond the verifiability of his, hopefully, deeply impressed
friends? I had written documentation and photographic evidence to
back my claims of a reasonably attractive girl who was interested in
me. The best thing about having a other town love interest is that
she didn't come up on the radar of my more parochial potential
paramours. Displacement in either temporal and physical terms is
essential to an effective war on two fronts. Girls tend to get a very
narrow definition of love in their minds and assume that a young man
can only feel genuine lust affection for one lady at
a time. Sure that is probably true most of the time but if anything I
was the exception that ruled the proof. I had seen the tragic
consequences for boys less diligent in the separation of spheres and
had taken great pains to ensure such a unfortunate fate and
subsequent naming and shaming would not befall me.
