this highly entertaining (not to mention emo) article reminded me a bit of bridget jones, but the best part is that a GUY wrote it! here’s an excerpt:
Almost a week later, on my birthday, as I was finishing a magazine profile, I received another e-mail note:
Hope you’re having a v. special day!
Is the story done??
xoxo
I spent that afternoon and evening deconstructing the text. Two lines —
not good. Eleven words on my birthday — not good. The “v.” instead of
very — not so good. But perhaps I was misreading. Perhaps I was
bringing my own insecurities to bear on a sweet, loving signal from
cyberspace. I cross-referenced her word usage with all her other
e-mail, which I had saved in a special file, and made a startling
discovery. She had used the v. abbreviation before! Obviously it was a
literary affectation, or just a communicative tic. I had been entirely
too eager to see in it proof of withered feelings. And it would be
blind, and horribly unfair, would it not, to ignore the “xo,” a clear,
unambiguous indication that she was ready to drift with me in the ocean
currents again?
I called her to clear things up. I didn’t want to misunderstand her, I said. Did she want to date or not?
She suggested I not call again.
Oh yeah? Well then, I suggested she not call again, And that she lose
my e-mail address. And furthermore, if she ever saw me on the street,
she had better . . .
She hung up.
I stewed. I composed bitter letters about how she was incapable of
love, how she didn’t recognize the gifts I had given her. I did not
send the letters. (Thank you, 10 years of therapy.) I did not
technically stalk her. I did ride my bike by her apartment building one
evening, but I didn’t stay for any legally significant amount of time.
I drifted through the photos of her in my computerized slide show,
accompanied by Rebecca Luker singing, “Till There Was You” over and
over and over again. I lost 10 pounds in two weeks.
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