In May 2009, I was procrastinating my studies for the International
Baccalaureate. I hated the people at my high school, so instead
of drinking 40s in Dolores Park, I turned to the internet.
I learned of omegle. I went to the site. And on the first day that
I tried it out, I met a lot of interesting people. Plenty of skips, but
one of them really got to me. And we started talking on AIM instead.
And then gave each other the actual gmail addresses we use. And kept in touch.
This person is one of my best friends, and I have never heard his voice
in real-time or seen his face.
Once, I told my mother who I was talking to. She was appalled, citing the
many dangers of the internet. I never let her know again. Once, my father
asked who was making me laugh and I lied, saying that it was a new pre-frosh
Columbia friend. I suppose that I could have been making a stupid mistake,
leading myself into some elaborate and life-threatening lie.
Perhaps the greatest risk was when I allowed him to send me a song of
his composition. It could have been a virus. It could have been heavy
breathing. It wasn't, though. I listened to him sing as he played the
guitar, and felt that this person really wasn't deceiving me.
He had told me about high school--he held himself to be two years below me.
And this track, and the others that followed, gave me proof.
His voice was still cracking. They could have been old recordings by
some creep, but these could not have been. And I returned his words with
some of my own faltering lyrics. Luckily, neither ever sang about the other.
His words, mostly written, followed me at high school graduation,
past my first boyfriend (a bad one), through my mother's 1-0 score
against cancer during the worst summer of my life, and into a supportive
relationship. Mine have seen him through his years ending high school,
a bad breakup that gave him one of his most beautiful songs, his mother's
death following a car accident last fall, his acceptance to U. Chicago,
and his own high school graduation this month.
Sometimes, we have talked about actually meeting in person, but each fears
the other's reality too poignantly to allow it to be. Some things are
more real than can be seen.