Virtual Romance

While I generally look for qualities like funny, smart and interesting in potential dates, there was a period of time when all I cared about was finding someone who gave good e-mail -- and gave it often. I would share the most mundane details of daily life with near strangers with whom I'd shared little more than a so-so Italian dinner in the brick-and-mortar world.

But danger lurked. After many mishaps, miscommunications and dating disasters, I began to see e-mail less as a handy tool and more as a high-speed way to put my foot in my mouth. "Internet time" has come to mean not only how fast a company can grow and make one an IPO millionaire, but also how quickly a new relationship can sputter, stall and fall flat, or flourish quickly out of control.

My problem started out small -- as such problems are wont to do -- and didn't interfere too much with my work life. The first guy on the other end of the communiques (I'll call him Minute Man because of his high-speed e-mail prowess), had an extremely lenient boss (himself), leaving him much time to e-mail -- say 10, 15, even 20 times a day. Whatever it took to satisfy my urges.

Although it became clear about 10 minutes into our first date that we had next-to-nothing in common, every time that electronic life-support system chirped I raced like a little kid to click, click, click, until I was staring at the contents of his latest gift. Never mind that the message generally went something like this:

Minute Man: "Hey, what's up? How was your Sunday? I spent most of it hung-over hanging out at 'Ye Olde Sportsbar watching the Niner's game."

Stimulating reading it was not. And while I generally prefer the tormented-artist type to the overgrown fraternity boy, I had made the switch to the latter a few months before, due in no small part to the fact that most of the former exist on temp jobs, causing impaired e-mailing regularity. And since e-mail expertise took precedence for me in those days over cerebral stimulation, this guy fit the bill.

After a number of dates and hundreds of messages I admitted to myself that the two of us shared little more than a need to cop a little e-lovin'. Friends intervened and I finally kicked the nasty habit.

But it only took a couple days of uninterrupted work life until I was jonesin' for a fix. When I met my next soon-to-be paramour (a friend of my friend's boyfriend) I couldn't help but notice that he sounded distinctly like a cast member from "Friends" (That is SO not cool.) and he giggled like a schoolgirl. But I couldn't hear that through a computer and I focused instead on the fact that he was a tech geek with almost intravenous e-mail. When he asked, I gave him my @.com and when he e-mailed to ask me to dinner figured "How bad could it be?" and I agreed. (My mother had commandeered my brain.) But before I even went on that first date our relationship shifted into high gear and we were e-mailing back and forth like fiends.

Me: "Get this, today my boss asked me to send personal e-mails to all 453 users who sent us messages about our Back-to-School chats. Fun stuff." Send.

His missives were equally enthralling. I wondered how a new relationship could possibly be so boring, but he was virtually attentive and I figured things would improve after we had a real-life date. I continued in that state for a week and a half, anticipating our in-person rendezvous and hoping I imagined his giggle.

I didn't. I even got to hear it when we kissed, hee hee hee, which we did after splitting a bottle of wine. I realized that despite the hours of online entertainment Mr. Primetime had provided, the only attraction I felt for him in person had to be fermented to exist.

Now I had to end things, which I figured shouldn't be too difficult since I had the benefit of e-mail, that wonderful enabler of passive-aggressive behavior, and we had only gone out that one time.