All it takes is a user icon. That’s how it begins: a tiny picture, no bigger than a postage stamp. It’s happened for years, always the same process.

I find a photo, somewhere on the internet, of a stranger. And in that photo, I see something that plunges a fishhook into my heart-meat. It can be a form, a face, a profile. Blurry-soft or headshot crisp, it doesn’t matter. But I know my weaknesses.

Pale skin calls out to me. That quality of white, unmarred skin that gives the appearance of innocence or perfection. Flesh that looks like a cool, still bowl of milk or coffee dabbed with cream.

Eye color hardly matters, but quality of gaze is essential. A direct look into the camera can tell many stories, looking away from it tells others. Striking beauty that is both memorable and malleable, a look that haunts people who imagine that the shell contains something worth mining. 

Most of all I am drawn to something rarer and harder to detect. A glimmer, like a fish gliding through a murky pond, only noticeable for a millisecond as a flash of silver. 

That flash of possibility is what I crave.

My heart instantly goes out to these men gazing dramatically at nothing.  Every time I see a wandering gaze, it’s like a fortune teller showing me my future. This man will always be looking elsewhere, she murmurs in a husky, all-knowing voice. I abandon reason and run at it with arms outstretched, thinking only of trapping one of these wandering souls in an uneasy embrace.

The last time the cycle began, I was drawn in by a photo of half his face, his lips parted in a way that invited me with impossible power. His blog carefully concealed his identity within references to early ‘90s computer games. There’s no trace of his name, but he tells me later in one of our first chats. It’s the name of a man lost in the dunes, hiding his face with a cape. I hold it close like a talisman for many nights after.

We both love music. He is a human Wikipedia when it comes to bands I’ve never heard of, and I make lists of their foreign-sounding names on bits of scrap paper. Many years of meeting people online has taught me that intimacy can be very easily feigned, or even worse, imagined. I know it. But I enjoy the fantasy anyway.

Despite our mutual interests, these conversations have no real meaning. Our interactions follow the inherent rules of internet meetings – casual chats, in public spaces instead of bars. It’s all too easy to participate with just a few keystrokes. We hope for these chance encounters, as we hope to catch a real glimpse of someone, if only so they might look back at us.

The real intimacy comes via private messages. In these small white blinking squares, life transpires. When he initiates our first one, I shudder with overwhelming desire.

“I haven’t talked with anyone like this in a long time,” he says.

I hear: “You’re special.” But he doesn’t actually say it. They never do.

***

Our chats increase in frequency and length, becoming a part of my daily routine. The better I get to know him, the more I understand that he’s impenetrable, a fortress built rock by rock. Our newfound closeness is deceiving, because even though he speaks the same language I do, it may as well be his native Korean.  

Whatever emotions he has, they are either locked up in an airtight citadel, or they are simply incomprehensible to me. He tells me the last time he had a crush on a woman was seven years ago. He’s only had one sexual partner, and he says she forced him, that he didn’t want to do it. He’s been celibate ever since. He likely won’t kiss a woman again, he says, until the day he marries. The only reason he would want to date again would be for “research.”

I collect these pieces of his life like shreds of fabric, piecing them alongside mine on a cool tile floor. I’m not trying to sew us together. Rather, I hold his pieces up to my own, to compare their size and shape. I rub my fingertips across the textures, trying to understand.

I explain to him that my friendship with him only represents half of me – the part that wants to be an adult, and do responsible, grown-up things. I want to leave my childish self behind.

“That means that I’m your future, then,” he says. 

I pause.

“Symbolically,” he adds.

***

That night I dreamt of him for the first time. Emerging from a rosy fog, he smiled as soon as he saw me. It was overwhelming to soak in that warmth, those dark eyes like pools I could flounder in, an underwater world where everything drifted in crystalline slow motion.

I awoke quickly, my legs tangled in seaweed. The thick fronds were fabric, choking, claiming. I fought them, heart pounding, disoriented.

There’s a pain in my chest, a dull warmth. Disappointment. He was that close. I wanted to hold his hands, understand his temperature, touch the shell that housed the person.

Alone in my bed, I knew. I’d always imagine him that way, walking towards me, offering everything. When you choose to use a real human being as a placeholder, everything they do and say has a pristine, stunning beauty. No matter how clearly we see that it’s a temporary fix, we still reach for it. It’s the antidote to the disappointment that real life is so consistently determined to serve us.

Later, I feel weak and small. It’s not just the dream’s residue. I’ve given him my power, and I know it. I’ve been trying to avoid him, if only to give myself some space between his grasp on me and this actual life where I stand on the ground, walk from my car to my job, and sleep in my bed. He isn’t in it, as much as I feel like he is. 

One evening, I’m about to shut the computer down and go to bed when a message pops up and he asks what time zone I’m in.

“Central,” I type. “Why?”

“I guess I could have just Googled that, couldn’t I,” he types, seeming scattered. “Can I call you?”

We’ve never spoken on the phone before, and I never expected it as he has talked about how he dislikes the phone. I have no hesitation, and at the same time, I’m sure that I’m going to cry the moment his voice rushes through the receiver. I’m terrified of getting any closer, that he will sense the fear in my voice if I say yes. 

I type the number into the chat box anyway.

He calls, and it happens like I thought it would. Tender words. I don’t have to explain anything about how talk of time zones relates to tears. He knows, somehow. His voice is a bit crooked, his laugh slightly awkward. I can distinctly hear a wobble in tone that tells me he’s been gawky in formative years. I attach to it immediately, the nuance of the syllables. I want to crawl into that warmth, gather myself in that kindness. 

Can a stone radiate heat? 

I know inside the slender frame, beneath a chest I’m sure is smooth and thin, lies that impenetrable rock that even he has confessed he doesn’t understand. I think I can understand it. I adore him, against all rationality. I love an idea.

***

The more we talk, the more I enjoy his company. As a disembodied voice, he is a being that will never threaten me, never come into my world and require real attention, no adjustment of schedule or effort of consideration. He’s there when I want him to be there, and he goes away when I close the chat window. I tell myself this.

I want to believe it feels like falling in love. At one time, I could envision a future around the tones of a voice, the color of pursed lips, a hastily snapped picture. Now, I know that the stranger in the chat box is just a stranger, and I’m just a woman who prefers intimacy at a distance.

I always think that if I could grow up and become a real adult, I wouldn’t be fascinated with this digital playground where I can scamper in the sunshine and hand boys flowers. Instead, I’d go out into the real world, go on dates at nice restaurants, get married, adopt a dog. I’d buy property. I’d stop being frightened. 

Once, I made the mistake of choosing a stranger that lived in the same state, only a two hour drive away. The connection followed the same tune – the picture, the long chats, the messages. He got in his car and drove to me. I spent the night lying by his side, fully dressed, too restless to sleep next to his warmth, his realness. We were both exhausted. He stroked my face and neck in the dark, trying to lull me into security. The hairs on my arms stood on end.

The terror after he left lasted for two months, and I rarely slept.

***

The next day, when the messages begin, I watch the chat box blink, the pull of desire so strong that I understand why it’s been so hard to turn away from. His face, diminutive in the user icon, is so lovely.  I longed for it before we ever started speaking, because I don’t see the man. In his place, I see a soft piece of aida cloth, immaculate, never needle-pierced. A canvas which you can paint anything on. 

It’s a beautiful idea, isn’t it? The genesis of every creative effort starts here, the blank page, possibility unrestrained. You look at it, and any one of hundreds of ideas spin out in front of you. 

When the phone rang that night, I thought that it was like winning the first skirmish. The battle of weary spirits, across miles and miles of empty fields. I thought that what he wanted was to reach across that expanse and grasp me, a tiny, sobbing voice strung taut across a telephone line. I thought that he felt my fear and wanted to hold it close, to reduce its size. The intimacy of it was deafening.

I knew I could be no one again, if I chose. I could look in the mirror and see transparent eyes. When you’ve handed yourself over to another person to do with you as they will, and you look at your reflection, your eyes become empty. It sounds awful, but it’s so easy to do. You hand them the package, and wait to be told what you’re worth. You take commands. You obey.

I look at the greeting he’s typed in the box, and all at once I understand that these men will always be running past me. They can wear any face, be anyone. The men that live inside the icons have nothing to do with their own mythos. They are all just inventions. The man typing into the other side of the chat box is not the same person I think I’m talking to. I am typing to a pencil stroke on paper, an outline, notes scribbled into a margin.

I close the chat box without answering.