Angel, Demons Pt. 07

Ah well, almost everything.

Maybe I know more about the girl than she knows about me, but then again: I only know what she told me. I know part of her 'real' name and where she lives (lived?). I have photographs she claims are of her. I know about her childhood, her family, her marriage and divorce. I also know about her business and most of her 'true' friendships and love relations.

I guess I know her better than most people I meet in 'real life.' But it might as well have been all made up.

The girl knows a lot about me too, but she also won't ever be certain if it is truth or fantasy. I told her my name and that I was born near Brussels, Belgium, in 1981, about 24 years old when we first met.

Even though I gave her a wealth of details about my physique, my past, my business and the place I live, she might doubt them just as I doubt hers. In her own words: I could as well be 'a man...or have some horrible disfigurement...you might be some archbishop or king or prime minister or whatever...'

I'm none of that, but I guess that is beside the point.

What has always been very much to the point was the fact that the girl considered our relation in cyberspace as a fantasy - incomplete and therefore inferior to 'real time.'

My love had no credibility for her.

She often told me she loved me and I guess she did, but to her it was an abstract kind of love. Pledging her love was like a turn of phrase, I guess, part of the game. And to my shame I must admit that it took me years before I understood.

You see, I never wondered who she'd be in whatever 'real time' there might be. I fell in love with the girl I met in cyberspace, fleshing her out in my imagination; not with the girl (woman? man?) whose fingertips typed her into life.

When I once tried to convince her that true love could very well exist in Cyberia, in fact that it didn't need the stamp of reality to be true love, she showed me how very much more down-to-earth she was.

"You see," she answered me, "despite your saying you love me, you don't really. I don't see how you can expect me, who can breathe and move, to just sit here and type all day."

By now you may start to suspect that my true fantasy with the girl didn't end the way the story did. You're right, of course. So maybe from here on we'd better call it a true nightmare.

It was only towards the end of our affair that the utter futility of my love became clear to me. The girl told me she could no longer accept whatever it was we seemed to have.

To her it was just 'typing words and masturbating to it.'

She insisted that I'd give her my identity; it wouldn't affect her opinion at all, she promised. She even assured me she would get on a plane and come over to me 'to be your wife, your slave girl, your whore. To care for you and to pleasure you. I am also an excellent cook, you know?'

I stalled, desperately clinging to the virtual straws that remained.

Then the inevitable moment arrived when our relationship became a farce. It was when she casually told me that she had taken her life to 'the next level.'

In our virtual journey, she had by then cleared the fictional Gate of Hunger, an episode where I whored her out to a lot of people - in public and in private - to train her in every way a girl could please men and women, be it one-on-one or in groups.

It obviously inspired her to act on that in 'real' life.

She'd made an appointment with a man and spent an evening with him for money. (Again, all I have is her word - so remember: I can't vouch for truth or fantasy.)

I was devastated.

Not because she did it - I was proud she'd found the courage to realize a dream she'd been sharing for quite a while. I'd always insisted there shouldn't be a barrier between her wonderfully free 'virtual' being and the rather inhibited, guilt-ridden creature she was in 'real time.'

What shocked me, though, was how she went about it.

In the three weeks before her casual remark, she'd avoided me, making lame excuses about being 'busy.' Then, only after she'd prostituted herself for three or four times, she dropped her little bomb, telling me she was very proud of it.

She was honestly surprised when I told her I felt cheated because she had done it all without me and behind my back. We'd been talking about it, I'd even say that I might be instrumental in her decision, but now, when she at last decided on doing it, she never involved me.

She never consulted me or shared her emotions. She never even told me about her plans, making it clear that I had no claim on her 'real' life; I didn't even exist there.

Which of course was a very sane attitude.

Just to show how incurably blind I was where she was concerned, let me show you a snippet from our final e-mail correspondence on the subject; first mine.

"Honey, you know very well how we worked on this together for more than two years. You feared the things you needed to do to become who you really wanted to be. I had to force you. In the process, you broke my heart maybe four times, running off, panicking. I picked you up, swallowing my pride.

"I dragged you all the way to this moment. And then, when you at last found the courage to go where you needed to go, you left me in the dark. You were 'busy'. Things were 'crazy.' But in reality you set up dates with guys and sucked their cocks for money.

"You'd finally dared to become the slut I helped you to be, and you enjoyed every minute of it. But you did it without me, behind my back. You excluded me, knowing very well how I wanted to be part. How I yearned to be close and feel your feelings, your nervous butterflies, and enjoy the incredible triumph with you.

"But no. No word. Three full weeks of silence. Then just a few bare facts. Just a good bye, I guess. Be happy, girl. Be happy on your own as you so obviously want to be. I'll find myself a new girl. She won't be better than you and I certainly won't love her like I love you.

But maybe I can trust her."

Ah well, did I say: 'final correspondence?'

I succeeded in forgetting her for exactly one month. Just to see if she'd closed her account, I sent her a short message: "Honey, I don't know if you'll read this, but I want you to know that even if you chose not to be my girl anymore, I love you and always will."

Her answer, which came a full month later, showed clearly how far apart we'd drifted.

"You chose, okay?" she wrote. "I didn't. But anyway, I am hardly ever there anymore. Everything is happening real-time for me now. I hope you are happy.

"I've looked for you sometimes to tell you about it, but you're never there when I look in. I just hope you are happy, okay."

For your information, the more often the girl uses 'okay,' the lesser okay she is.

And of course, I had to answer, denying that she'd left me a choice, "but after all these weeks of contemplating I guess you are right: everything for you happens in real time. I think it has always been like that between us; I was just a ghost harassing you with my silly notion of virtual love (smile) and my shying away from meeting you in so-called real life.

"I do hope things are great for you and that you are happy... happiness has always been what I hoped for you. I also hope that your bold initiative at being a whore works out."

We bravely plodded on.

I guess we both desperately hung onto our fragile construction of misunderstanding and nostalgia. We kept missing each other in both meanings of the word. She blamed her flourishing new business, but I was often at our virtual apartment, waiting in vain.

I decided to pretend that I was interested in her new lifestyle. To be true, it was just a pathetic way of getting her attention, however sparsely.

Quite often, she was drunk.

She also started telling me about sharing coke with fellow-whores she met in bars. And then she fell off the radar yet again, this time for two months.

Of course, I was worried.

When she never responded to e-mails and they even started to bounce, my worries became nightmares that featured rape, murder and overdose.

Then, as casual as always, she slid the final knife into my back.

"I must apologize to you," she wrote. "A Master took me. I lived as his slave for about six weeks. He ordered me to cut off all contact with others. But now I am no longer his slave. I apologize for not letting you know, but I couldn't. I hope you are well."

I found her the next day in our virtual apartment. I told her to leave.

I would let her know my thoughts, but I had to think them over. Her response was yet again an exercise in misunderstanding. She didn't see what I had to think over, okay. If I didn't want to be in touch so be it, okay.

It was up to me, 'as always.'

"Honey," I wrote her the next day, when my adrenaline had subsided and my fingers didn't shake too much to find the right keys. "Honey, so you think I should have nothing to think over? You amaze me, as usual. Six weeks, you say? And never a moment to let me know? You call me mistress. I trained you for years. You tell me you love me and then one miserable real-time would-be master asshole tells you to break contact with me and you obey?

"On August 8 I was back from my travels and let you know at once. No answer. I tried and tried, both here and on Hotmail. On September 13, my mail finally bounces; you'd cut me off. From August 8 until now is two months of not one word, not one response. And now you wonder why I have to think things over?

"You amaze me, as usual."

"I was ordered," she answered, unperturbed. "I'm sorry. I was obedient."

"Yes," I wrote back. "And now he dumped you and suddenly I am your mistress again? Lovely."

The girl never got it, I guess. Or was it I who never woke up until it was too late?

"You don't have to talk to me, okay," she wrote me later that day. "You don't have to. I mean, what was I supposed to do????? Not ever write to you again because I didn't for a few weeks?????"

"Great suggestion," I wrote with all the swagger and sarcasm I could muster. "So, I won't anymore. Have a good life."

Two days later I read what would prove to be her last lines for quite a while.

"You don't see how crazy you're being, do you?" she asked. "See, if I hadn't written you, you would still love me. But because I wrote you, you hate me. Nuts."

It stayed silent for almost a year after those angry words. Then she suddenly reappeared at the apartment, virtually scratching at the door, naked and oiled.

Her whoring days were over, she said, bragging about how much she'd earned, showing an expensive Chanel suit to prove it. On my question why she stopped, I got a disturbing answer:

"It was exhausting, sometimes it was scary. I did so much coke and I smoked too much; things I never did before. One day, in the mirror, I looked haggard."

Asking her if she felt sorry having done it, she said:

"Mostly, I loved it. I am... well... you know... I am a slut. And as a strongly sexed woman I loved it... all the men... any cock is good... it was lovely.

"I just got so exhausted... I can't really explain it... so very tired. I had to stop... I was so tired."

So, I told her I hoped she'd recovered. And I supposed she was happy with her life now.

"I don't know," she wrote, entirely in style. "Sometimes I miss it. That's weird, I know. I had a brief affair with a woman, and I fucked my ex-husband...once, and that has been that.

"Not seeing anyone right now, getting used to not being fucked many times every day.

"Just resting, in a sense, I guess."

Of course, I had to ask her why she'd so suddenly decided to come back to the apartment. A year ago, I reminded her, there hadn't been much left between us.

"And as you may have read in the last chapter of our story (that I had sent her to read) I had quite different expectations all along. Going back might only restore these feelings of misunderstanding, mistrust and pain."

She answered:

"I know you may not want to talk to me. Okay, I know that. But I want to talk to you.

"You can do with that what you want, okay. I am just here and want to talk. If you don't want to, then don't answer, okay? I am tired and my heart is tired, I have had my heart broken so many times (sic), it doesn't feel anything anymore.

"So, don't talk to me if you don't want, okay. I don't care."

Ah well, what is the definition again of passive aggressiveness?

I went on, massaging her ruined ego like in the old days, and the word 'love' soon fell.

"Sigh", she typed, "I don't know what love is. I don't know if I'm capable of love. I do know that I'm a whore; why isn't that enough????"

(Did I mention that she's great with???? and!!?)

Anyway, then there was this message:

"Why did you stop answeing me>>>>>??? I am drunk tonigt ok. but I d0ont indersyand why you diappeatred."

Of course, I never disappeared; how could I ever?

But I was upset.

Soon, she was back into prostitution, and off the radar for another eight months. Just as sudden, she returned with this message:

"I got arrested for soliciting. I was four and a half months inside. I was doing many things. I went into a rehab halfway house. Stopped using the hard stuff.

"Now I'm back at home and glad the house is still here, and what is left of me."

What surprised me most, was that she took up the correspondence again.

She told me she'd been arrested for soliciting and doing hard drugs. She'd been sent to jail, finding 'protection' with a woman as her 'girl.' Then she was sent to rehab.

"It was all so horrible, and my friends and my ex found out. They think it was because of the drugs, but the drugs came after.

"You know it was because I'm a whore. I'm sorry. I know I've been a hopeless case for years.

"So depressed; I don't know what to do. And now my best friend and everyone know I'm a whore drug addict. It is so Peyton Place.

"Now I just stay home as much as I can."

Then came a period of hit-and-misses at the chat-sites, partly caused by power fails. There also was a stream of mails full of memories and assurances of her eternal love and her insistence that she was my slave for life.

Until the 24^th of April, now more than two years ago, when she wrote me:

"Kissssss, xoxoxoxoxo."

It was the last thing I heard from her.

Of course, my dreams turn into nightmares when I wonder if I helped cause what she's become. She once wrote, commenting on women she met in jail: "Horrible dead end people, and I thought, well this is me in 10 years or whatever."

Maybe sooner.

At better moments, I flatter myself that I finally convinced her that my virtual love was as real as the 'real' variety. And maybe her pledges of love were as truly meant.

To quote her: I don't know. And I guess I never will.

I still try to reach her regularly, but my mails keep bouncing. Sometimes I visit the chat site, but no one has seen her in ages. Maybe she reads this. I guess she hates the Internet by now. Or me. Or herself. Or all of those.

At least I hope that is the reason. Other possibilities still appear in my nightmares.

Angelique Sophie Jonckers,

Amsterdam, 2017.