POSTAGE PAID

(PHOTO: My feet at the corner across from City Light Books, Columbus Avenue, San Francisco)


As Kenny Rogers once sang, "You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run."

I didn't. And now, as penalty for both my optimism and confidence, I have a personal profile on eHarmony.

I never thought I'd sink this low, get so far into personal debt that I'd hock just about anything, including my pride, to make things right. Two months ago, I agreed to a wager with my best girlfriend. I had just mailed a confessional love letter to my best male friend I've ever had and was confident he would respond in some way.

"Even if he doesn't return my affection," I said boldly, "he'll be willing to work to keep our friendship."

My friend snorted.

"No, really," I said, stirring sweetener into my coffee, "he'll understand. I just needed to be honest. I felt as if I were lying all the time."

She rolled her eyes. Tabitha, after a rocky marriage and treacherous divorce, became a love cynic. She has been "Out There" - the mystical space fortysomethings call the dating "scene." I haven't. In fact, I've spent the last four years avoiding that place, with its singles bars and online services, learning all The Rules, only to discover He's Just Not That Into You. I've come to accept my personality as the most effective birth control I've ever used. I know my limitations. Even in casual conversations at the few parties I've attended, I've learned that as soon as a man asks me what I do, I'm off his radar. There's something about being a woman working on her Ph.D. that is off-putting to a single guy on the party prowl.

But my best friend Thomas (not his real name), he never wilted or feigned interest in my work. We talked about writing all the time, invested in each other's creative work, shared similar interests, and laughed at everything. There were a million reasons to be great friends, and over time those reasons made me think we could be more. While he was working out of state, I sat down and wrote him a letter.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have.

Despite the miraculous nature of parcel post, how one can spend less than fifty cents to send a letter anywhere in the continental United States, it seems my Marge Simpson stamp was nothing more than the ticket price of interpersonal disaster. As I sat in front of the main branch in Lincoln, Nebraska, holding my letter in my hands and trying to will myself outside of my car, I knew that as soon as I dropped my letter into the mailbox marked "Out of Town," my life would be changed. It was raining, as I recall, the sort of light misting that rolls in late at night during the last hurrah of summer.

I traced his address with my finger, picturing the land between Nebraska and Nevada, the prairies and deserts, the mountain passes of Wyoming and the expanse of the Salt Lake in Utah. I had driven I-80 between Lincoln and Sacramento many times to visit my mother. I could picture the blue Sinclair flame towering above the refinery at Sinclair, Wyoming. I could see the enormous Chevron truck stop in Salt Lake, where my kids and I once stopped to eat and how we felt that meal all the way to Elko, Nevada. I thought of the Salt Flats, that enormous expanse of white and all the messages we saw carved in the salt along the interstate. We had stopped then, at an enormous metal tree sculpture, just to carve into the sandy salt with our heels, the proof we had been there.

But mostly, I thought of Lake Tahoe, where he was working that summer. It's a beautiful, blooming glacier lake tucked in the Sierra Nevada mountains. While growing up, I had spent many lazy days there, sunning in summer or sledding in winter, usually with my dad. My best friend was living and working in the places I remembered best. Ghosts of who I was were there, where he was becoming who he is.

As mist clouded the windshield, I mustered up the courage to send the letter. Eventually, and with the sort of breath-holding one does before jumping into a swimming pool, I jumped out of my car and ran to the office doors. They opened with a mechanical "whoosh," and I slipped into the tiled vestibule. Without pause, I tossed the letter into the slot and ran back to my car. Driving home, I turned on the radio for company. The song that played, Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle," made me want to cry. I had just sent a message of both confession and solution, knowing deep down he didn't return my romantic affection, but hoping for the possibility I was wrong.

I wasn't.

It's been two months since I sent that letter across the country. I've had many long hours in Lincoln, questioning my decision, wondering how I had become so foolishly romantic, and grieving the loss of my best friend. He was my most supportive writing ally, and I often gave him my essays to read and consider before turning them in for class or publication. It's been difficult for me to work without him, to press on without feeling the loss. Tabitha, though a great friend, doesn't much care for workshopping and the like. She's not a writer. She's also not one to forget anything.

Sitting over cups of French breakfast tea at our favorite cafe, she reminded me of our bet.

"It's time for you to let go, kid," she said, then took a bite of her scone. Chewing and talking - she's the ultimate multitasker - she listed all the reasons she would hold me to that bet. I had been so confident in my assessment of Thomas, that I had stood by him even as Tabitha insisted he'd let me down. I quickly replayed our conversation in August, the one we had the day after I had mailed that letter.

"You'll see," I had said, "and when you lose this bet, you will have to go to the 'Single and Forty with Jesus' class at Berean."

She laughed, nearly choking on her coffee at the time. Tabitha hadn't gone back to her church since her divorce.

"Well, Missy," she had said, "When he puts his head in the sand and leaves you hanging, you're going to get online and dating."

"Fine."

"Deal."

I should have folded right then.

Months later, as I sat in a cafe with Tabitha, knowing the silence I had received in response to my letter had spoken volumes, she had called my bluff.

"You darling," she said with a grin, "are going to get on eHarmony for one month. I'll pay for it. But you're getting on there just to get your feet wet. There are other fish in the sea, you know."

I shook my head. Not one to welch on a bet, I sat with her as she pulled her laptop from her bag. While she created the account and asked me all the survey questions, I sat there feeling the fool all over again. But part of me wondered if the online experiment would help me, in some small way, to rethink my relationship with Thomas. I wondered, too, if I'd get any matches at all. Though I didn't want to be online, I also didn't want another silence. I didn't think I could handle more rejection, this time, of my superficial yet allegedly earnest, digital representation of Self. Just in case you're happily married and don't know: The dating world is a special hell in our Internet culture.

It's been just two weeks since that day, and Tabitha is quite proud of herself. I've received ten matches a day, mostly from men in Omaha who are over fifty. Despite my survey answers indicating that education and reading were very important to me, all of my matches have been men who confess to reading "less than 2 books each year" and like hunting, fishing, and/or football. I have only responded to one inquiry, from a man named Jason. After a few brief exchanges, I learned he was divorced, angry, and certain all women were scandalously unfamiliar with the role God has in mind for them.

I've learned, too, that there are many men lurking online who just want sexual gratification, who aren't, despite eHarmony's advertising about soul mates and marriage, there to find either. So losing a bet has meant winning a view of Internet dating that is downright depressing. Even Tabitha is on the verge of admitting her plan is flawed, even as she swaggers with pride at her ingenious victory, at knowing my best friend better than I did. Tabitha, bless her, is a tad bit competitive.

"You just have to get 'Out There'" she said yesterday.

I chuckled. Thinking of the virtual spaces I've occupied of late, and all the social complexities I've witnessed on my computer screen, I grinned.

"Out where, exactly?" I asked. "The Internet is a non-space, Tabs. There's nothing 'Out There' I haven't seen right here, in the real world."

"Whatever, Books," she said. She's always called me that. "The point is, you're not alone. Everyone who's single is as miserable as you are. There's nothing all that special about your grief."

"Screw you."

"Books, seriously. You're not the first to get rejected. You're not the first to discover the man you cared for didn't care back. Get over it, get over yourself. I say this with love, you know. It's time."

I thought about Thomas and how he has returned to his beloved Rocky Mountain home. I knew she was right. It is time.

And I'm now "Out There." I just wish I knew where "there" was.