[I first wrote this post on Livejournal some years back about finally meeting a woman I'd gotten to know online. I loved her writing, her sense of humor and her smarts, and one day we made plans to get together and hang out one evening (she lived in nearby Charlottesville). Given that she turned out to be quite amazing both in person and online, I thought made it appropriate to repost on MyIdealWoman as an homage to a wonderful woman. We hung out another weekend for the Virginia Film Festival and had a great time, but she now lives in San Francisco so I haven't seen her in a while, but keep up with her on Facebook.
NOTE: I mention "my wife" in the post, this was originally written before we split up. -- Bennie]
On June 25th, my birthday, I knew I wanted to go see Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Now, I typically go see movies by myself for several reasons: first, my wife is the polar opposite of me in terms of being a fan of movies– she doesn’t hate them, per se, but she can take ‘em or leave ‘em. Movies come out that she finds interesting, but not enough to make any sort of effort to work in time to see them. It used to drive me crazy when we started dating, because when a movie came out that she’d expressed interest in seeing, I’d hold off seeing it myself trying to get her to go with me and typically weeks would pass with her rather doing other things than going to the movies, and I’d eventually give up and just go and see it myself. I can’t remember the last time the two of us went out to the movies together– it’s been years.
Second, the rare nights when I might be able to slip out to see a movie, I have no idea when I’m actually going to be able to hit a theater. Getting my son home, helping to get both kids fed, bathed, and ready for bed is typically a variable affair dependent on how ornery either or both kids want to be. I can step out the door anytime between 7:30 and 8:30 or even later, which means I really can’t commit to a time and place. This makes it tough to meet friends to see a movie. So basically I hit the car, check the time, look at the paper and try to find a show that fits for a solo movie run.
June 25th was going to be different. It fell on a Friday, when I’m typically going down to the game shop to hang out with friends and I don’t usually get home until very late. So swapping “hanging at the game shop” for “going to see a movie” was pretty easy. What was really cool was that when Alena found out I was wanting to see the movie, she suggested meeting me there. I was finally going to meet Alena!
Some of you may not know, but I’m pretty deep into a collectible card game called Magic: the Gathering. You’ve probably heard of the Pokemon trading card game, Magic was the first and is a much deeper game and is steeped in fantasy images and flavor. Anyway, I’ve been playing the game for 10 years now, and been a semi-serious player for much of that time, attending various Magic tournaments in and around Virginia. I even won the Virginia State Magic Championships in 1999! One thing that’s cool about Magic is that many Magic players are quite active online, and I’ve made lots of friends through various Magic forums, newsgroups and egroups. One such friend was The Ferrett, who enlightened me to something called Live Journal that sounded quite interesting. I gave it a try about the same time another friend of mine, Ted did. I’d gotten to know Ted quite well on the Virginia Magic circuit, with him living in nearby Charlottesville, we often attended the same events. Ted’s wife Alena jumped in on Livejournal around the same time, and since I was hungry for friends to add to my infant friendslist, I added her too.
In the time since then, Ted barely posts at all, while Alena is much more prolific. I’ve enjoyed all of her posts, which are well-written, thoughtful, and often quite funny. I try to be good about commenting on her posts, and she’s commented on many of mine, so along the way I’ve gotten to “know” her in some ways. Enough to feel that she’d be a great person to hang out with sometime in the real world.
It’s always a tricky thing to finally get to meet someone face to face that you’ve gotten to know through other means, whether it’s letters, email, phone calls, chat rooms, what have you. It’s a pretty common thing actually in the work world, where you might talk with someone from the IS group a lot when you’re first trying to set up your computer, and not actually meet them face to face for months later. I remember at my previous company meeting a project manager for the first time after talking with her on the phone for several months; she worked from her home in Chicago but would fly out to Richmond periodically for meetings and such. She had a low sexy voice and flirty manner of speaking that evoked a mental picture of her that completely clashed with the short, stocky grandmotherly reality when I met her (she even said, laughing “I’m not what you expected, I bet!” when she first shook my hand).
Outside of work, though, it’s rare that I’ve gotten a chance to meet someone whom I’ve developed a relationship with remotely. Mostly it’s been Magic players. There were two women I met through a singles line way back in my bachelor days, both of whom I got along fabulously over the phone, but when we met for our date things fell flat.
So I wondered: what would Alena be like in person? So many people develop “online personas” where they are more of this or less of that, a created personality that only reflects the parts of the person they want you to see. Which is fine– to each their own, but it makes meeting them in the real world a bit jarring. One thing I’ve always tried to do in my journal is to be pretty honest and straightforward in what I present here. I use Live Journal to interact with a wider group of people than I otherwise would have the opportunity to talk with. I try and give you “the real Bennie” here, so if and when you actually talk with me in person, there shouldn’t be any major surprises. Maybe Alena can let me know whether that’s true or not! 
At any rate, I kinda felt that Alena does much the same thing in her journal. I didn’t get the feeling she was faking or exaggerating anything, so I was pretty confident that I would enjoy the words coming straight from her mouth as much as I enjoy the ones that flow from her fingers.
The first trick would be to find each other on the opening night of one of the biggest pop events of the summer. Not necessarily an easy task when we’ve never set eyes on each other. I had seen a picture of her and Ted when they were in New Orleans, dressed up quite nicely! But it had been a while and she was in costume. She’d seen the picture that’s put up on my online Magic column that I post periodically, but that’s a tiny close-up of my face. Luckily, we both rather stand-out physically– she tells me she’s only 5′ even, with short black hair. I’ve been described as a big teddy bear– I’m certainly big, round and huggable– and I’ve got black hair and a moustache. I tell her I’ll wait by a street sign across the sidewalk from the movie box office.
As luck would have it, as I wait I make eye contact with two girls with short black hair and each of them very short even with really tall heels. Neither of them are Alena. One of them yells out to some friends right before I say anything, and the other looks at me like I’m a freak when I call out “Alena?” Finally, I see another small woman with short black hair hurrying along the sidewalk, catches my eye and smiles at me. “Bennie?” Ah, the real Alena is here! Hopefully she won’t mind me saying so, but she’s even shorter than I expected! Five foot even is quite small, and while some of the other girls I saw tried to make up their height with heels, Alena wore just regular shoes. She doesn’t come across as petite, tiny, or fragile. And while so many women of her stature evoke the description “cute girl,” Alena projected differently. This was a lovely woman, dressed attractively and comfortably, at ease standing in a semi-strange city meeting someone for the first time. Unfortunately, we were running a bit late for the movie, which has already started, so there wasn’t any time for small talk. We nabbed our tickets from the box office (thank you Fandango and Alena!) and rushed to find two seats in the packed theater.
One of the things we’d found out about each other over Live Journal was a mutual affection for bourbon, so we had hoped to be able to have a drink or two afterwards and talk about the movie and whatever else moved us. There was a bar next to the theater where I’d last drank a few bourbons after seeing Lost in Translation at this very theater, but they’d closed by the time the movie let out, so I had Alena follow me over to an O’Charley’s restaurant/bar that was on the way to the interstate and her eventual return home. Here we actually got to the getting-to-know you stuff. We drank our bourbons, hers over 7-up, mine over ginger ale, and talked about the movie, politics, life, love, friends and family. At midnight I lifted a toast to her birthday, which was on the 26th. We closed the place down at 2:30am in the midst of a pouring rainstorm and parted with a hug.
As I drove home, I reflected on how cool it was strike up a friendship virtually, and then have it confirmed in reality. Alena and I had peeked enough into each other’s world through our Live Journals that we could pretty much just leap into conversation like old pals. There weren’t any awkward pauses, or trotting out canned questions or topics to keep the conversation flowing. We’d already staked out a clearing of common ground to which we could always return and hang out. I wondered how our meeting might have been different without Live Journal; being friends with Ted and living relatively close, it was highly likely we’d have met eventually anyway. I’m fairly certain we’d have gotten along well even so, but I can’t help but think LJ made a difference.
