The Tragically Unhip

As we learned in parts one and two, Magnus and Natalya, two cosmopolitan singles on the move, had found each other in a flurry of internet dating that would put the paid actors in those hookup.com commercials to shame. These two heavenly bodies had fallen into orbit of one another, and with the ensuing communication they will have reached their periapsis. Would the friction between the two be enough to cause orbital decay and send their planets on an explosive crash course? Or, would one fly off into that final frontier, leaving the other behind in the vast coldness of space? What is the escape velocity of a broken heart?

Hi Magnus. It is very pleasant that you studied my ideas in the last message. Magnus, I usually don’t tell anybody about my deep ideas and thoughts, but I wrote about it to you, because I believe you and eager to open myself to you. I consider myself to be rather independent woman but probably sometimes I wish there was a man who I can trust. Now I should say that I am so glad that I has found you. Because you understand me and I understand you. :-)
Thank you my dear Magnus, that you have written to me some information about your life, I studied it closely. It helps me to understand you and your life more. I should confess that you became closer to me.

Magnus It’s high the time to go to do some affairs.Have a good day. I wait for your letters.
Your Natalya.

I have to confess that this was getting a little one-sided; it seemed to me that my Slavic scampignon’s responses were becoming more and more cut and pasted from some anthology of scam scripts. However, after closely inspecting the photo included, I noticed that “Natalya” was wearing no pants in this latest photo. Maybe I’d get to see a boob or two out of this whole thing. And with those thoughts in mind, Magnus dipped his quill into the virtual inkpot and began a new note:

Dearest Natalya,

I am confused, you ask of me more letters, but your picture you cover your lips as if to say “silence”… is there some silence between us that confusing you? I am very pleased to see more and more of you, maybe one day I will carve your likeness from soapstone and leave it in a forest of a thousand mosquito birds, each singing a song prettier than the last.

I fear there has been some bad news today, my cat, Belinda, has gone missing. I let her out two nights ago and she has not returned, I fear that an antelope has perhaps stolen her away for dinner. But maybe I am wrong and she will return with a missing ear or lopey gait from some hot cat on car crash action… I don’t know what to think…

Natalya, you are like a mystery box wrapped in surprise paper, I wonder what could make you happy? I would like to photocopy those thoughts a hundred times and send them back to you in realization of great passionate reproduction.

I received the nested dolls that I ordered through the i-net and they are exactly what I was told they would be. If only life were as predictable as a 4-star eBay auctioneer.

Tell me more about yourself, ask me more questions, I want to see deeper inside of you like an x-ray would, or an MRI… let your email be that magnetic resonance image of your soul, and your beautiful skins, I am enraptured.

More is greater than less, wouldn’t you agree?

I hope to see your pretty face again, it is the highpoint of my long days in the swamp aka office, you have very lovely blue eyes, like a steel heron in japanese watercolour paintings.

Adieu my fair, your Magnus, whom you can call Magnie.

After sending this last note, I found myself checking my email every 20 minutes, I was genuinely looking forward to hearing from her. I realized this, and it made me a bit sad. After all, here I was, communicating with a scam artist, bearing little bits of my soul between long passages of absudity, hoping to see a bit of boobie.

Hi my dear Magnus! I’m reading your letter and iI find it rather intetresting to learn your oppinion in your last mail. We exchange our oppinions in the letters and I think I learn you better.

I write to you from the Internet of cafe, it is convenient, but unfortunately is not cheap for me. I do not have own computer, therefore I am compelled to write to you from this populous and noisy place!

Magnus, I am sending you my new picture. I informed you about my work earlier. You know I work in a children’s hospital. Usually I work with children. It is more work in therapy, than in surgery. I work with the therapist together. She the skilled woman. She already works for a long time. I very much respect her. She helps me in all. I measure temperature basically, I write out some recipes. Some days I should remain at night on work to watch children in an accident ward. It really very intense days for me. But when I have a free time I spend free time by reading novels. I am very romantic. I like to dream. I hope you like my picture. I would be very glad to see your new pictures. I would like to to know how you spend your free time. I like to make life interesting for me and for my friends, so I like different types of entertainment. I like to dance, go to the cinema, different parties and of course I adore to spend time on the air communicating with nature. But now I more and more think of a romantic evening with a man. Do you like evenings with your family/friends? I love very much to spend holidays with my girlfriends and when we gather together at the table. How do you like to spend your holidays? Tell me please about it, I am very curious! I would like to ask you a very personal question, I hope you won’t be angry with me. :) Do you have any woman now?

Please write me more about yourself: your feelings and desires. I am ready to read it. Wait for your messages.
My hugs. Your Natalya.

She sent this exact note and photo again the next day and she hadn’t called me Magnie—something was definitely wrong. I needed a second opinion, so I called up one of my best friends and began to let her in on the story. I sent her an email with excerpts from the Magnus-Natalya exchanges. She thought it was kind of funny, but also brought up the fact that “Natalya” could just as easily be some dude in a room full of dudes copy and pasting email messages all day, trying to reel in a sucker. I had known this all along, but the thrill of writing love letters had removed some of my good sense. While I was nowhere near sending a cheque to her, I was still making an emotional investment in the relationship, and it was proving to be a bit too costly. Still, I tried to keep appearances, but was my heart still in it?

Dear aka.Natalya, You have asked the question I dared not to ask.. do I have a woman in my life? Let me answer your question this way: “Mary, mother of Jesus”. Mary is in my life and I ask her for guidance often, I have forsaken jebus because of his poor grammar, and backwards views on gun control and the gays right to assembly, but I still hold my lighter in the air for Mary Mag… Other than my spiritual lady friend I have no lover in my life, no beautiful angel with wings of fetid complacency as your golden showering beauty shines adequate lighting to read such passionate words upon my nested doll heart cavity. Indeed you are the filling in that cavity. These few weeks, days, we have spoken in email with each other have been so enjoyable I can’t quite keep down my supper, I am tempted to spill my guts to you, on you, with you! Why does she ask me about if I have a woman, is what I ask, and the answer is uncertain as the sound of a tree falling in the woods with no one within hearing distance. Could it be true, does Natalya want to take this relationship to “the next level” and send me nude pictures? I don’t know what to say, your offer of naked pictures is appealing but I am also afraid that you take me for a one night hot dog stand, a simple gigolo… that is not true… I am looking for a girl with true intentions, who can appreciate my Nancy Kerrigan earring collection and love of the artwork of Michael Godard? What I am trying to say, in my shy and awkward sprained ankle kind of way is: Do you have a man? Could that man be me? Magnus the magician, who will pick a card any card and it will always be the 2 of hearts if you are the assistant on my stage show called: “our life together on paradise island”.
Natalya, do not keep me waiting, I must hear more about you and your wonderful worldview, your tender words are like ambrosia to my inner ear cavity, sweet waxy ambrosia, let your words be the Q-tip that brings that to light. I love to hear from you and will better once I get all the damn ambrosia out of my ears… I swear, it must be the humidity, there’s like a cubic pound of wax in these babies. To quote Micheal Diamond, “I want to butter that muffin, serve it on a platter with thanksgiving stuffing, stuffing.”
To you and yours, good health, my dear Natalya, I must run, pressing matters at the agency keep me from writing more, I think of you before I sleep, kisses, Magnie.

Less than 12 hours later:

Hi my honey Magnus! I am very glad to news from you. Magnus, yesterday I could not send you the letter because I had no opportunity to enter into the Internet. I don’t have computer at home. Sometimes I use a computer of my girlfriend, but often I use Internet cafe. I am very grateful my girlfriend, that she allows me to correspond with you. But yesterday she was absent at home. I hope, what you Magnus did not lose me. I missed without yours e-mail. Today on work I thought of you and, it was pleasant for me to know, that there is a person, which which thinks about to me, reads my ideas and writes something for me. And how you Magnus You these days missed on dialogue with me? Today we with friends plan to have some entertainment. It will be possible it is club or a disco. It is a pity, that now not there are opportunities to invite you there because you it is far. I think, that we with you could carry out perfectly together evening. I hope, that we shall make still it in the future and we can well have fun. I am sure, that it will be good time for us Magnus! We shall drink easy wine, then to dance, while our legs can maintain it. And after that we probably shall reach somewhere else….., and where I shall make with you some things. Ideas about it me beforehand raise. My imagination very much advanced and I can represent for myself many details of ours appointments. Probably, dear, it is time to me to finish this letter, and I now shall write that a lot of superfluous and I shall have then confusion before you. I wait for yours e-mail, my lovely. Hug and my kiss!!!

Yours Natalya.

PS. My girfriend Olga & I

My initial reaction was that I would do one of three things:
1) Tell her that Magnus is actually Margaret, but that her feelings are the same.
2) Rejecting Natalya in favor of Olga.
3) Writing a letter that was total gibberish with the exception with a “dear Natalya” at the start and a “love, Magnus” at the end.

I chose to do neither. Days went by. These letters had been fun to write, but the fun had faded. She showed no concern over my missing cat, my wax filled ears, my work for “the agency”—the thrill was gone. Try as I might to write another amusing response, I had nothing funny left to say. Breaking up is hard to do, but I felt it was the best thing to do. I took several long pulls from yet another bottle of 14 dollar red, and wrote:

Dear Natalya, I fear all is not good, I am done with disappointment, I am tired of rejection. I am far too simple a man for this. I am like a wind-up robot, whose springs and cogs are soiled. The coat of paint is peeling off of the aluminum, it glows dully in the sun. My fingers leaden. I have run myself out, others have run me out. I am manic-depressive, mute and coated in veils of cheery platitude. There is little hope for me. I see people in the street and wonder how they do it, I am sick of being empty. I am full of sugar water, styrofoam, and modeling glue. My veins feel like empty balloons, my heart stings from time to time, I don’t sleep well but am tired all the time. I run on caffeine and distraction. Empty gratification. I don’t want to joke around anymore, I don’t believe you, I don’t trust you… I don’t trust anyone much, I let them let me down. I sometimes try but give up so easily. I am the butt of my own jokes, I stradle a dead horse, the whip is loose in my hand and slipping. I would rather feel this way, apparently… I keep having dreams of failure and not measuring up, I can’t really drink anymore, I thought I could clean myself, I’m thick with parasites, I cling to filth, detritus, abandon… all is not well.
Goodbye, M.

It was over, the only remaining communications came from her, the same message every couple of days for a month, like an echo:

Subject line: Hello again
Message: At you all is good?

It was something out of a sci-fi novel; I had fallen for an android, an AI, a series of 0s and 1s… I had fooled myself. The nights were starting to get longer and I was idling at a crossroads in my life.

November, 2007: Edmonton, Alberta.

The nights were starting to get longer and I was idling at a crossroads in my life.  My hedonistic summer adventures in Cow-Town had chewed all the flavour out of me and spit me back out, curbside, in chilly Oil-Town.  I live in the suburbs in my 83-year-old Great-Aunt Nancy’s basement and I’m pretty much lonely.

One winey night (a $14 bottle of red, most likely), I fired up the computer and fell back on an old crutch: online personals.  I’m looking for a hard-headed woman, I hummed, one who will make me do my best. So I signed up to The Onion’s personals site in the hopes of meeting some ladies who not only enjoy its quippy satire, but who are also interested in dating a bearded video game developer with no driver’s license.

After signing up, it became clear that I wouldn’t be pursuing any of the Edmontoniennes on the site, partly because there seemed to be only two women within 50 miles of me, but mostly because these services are “pay to play”, and come on—that’s just a few steps removed from the oldest profession. I refused to pay; successful courtship would require an enterprising young lady who was willing to make the first move based solely on my profile. (Favorite TV show? Stella. Favorite food? My great-aunt’s leftovers.) Needless to say, I forgot all about it the next day.

Then, a few weeks later, I got a cryptic message from someone through The Onion’s personals, with her email address in code form. See, if you are a guy, you can’t send another member a message without paying, and if you do send someone a message, they monitor it to make sure that you don’t exchange email addresses, but instead continue to use their pay system. It was the first message I’d received since enrolling. She lived in Toronto, so I wouldn’t ordinarily respond, except for the novelty and safety of it all. But is that even a good reason? Her name was Cinderellagirrl.

And so, after a particularly crappy Friday night spent soloing pints at a sports bar, I decided to go ahead and contact this Cinderellagirrl because I really appreciated all the work she put into embedding her email address into her message. I replied to her email through my rarely-used, safe-for-spam email account by saying something like: ”I like codes and cyphers and stuff, am I talking to the right person?”

I got a reply, consisting of the two pictures below, and this message:

Hello! How is your day?

Now I would like to tell you some more details about myself. I’m 24. My birthday on October, 17, my name is Natalya. I never got married and I live alone! My mother has died 5 years ago, my father has died 3 years ago! At me did not remain relatives! Since I graduate from College I have been working in children’s hospital. When I have spare time I go the gym to do sports because I take care of my body, also I like to dance! . I like to travel and visit different places, but my work does not allow me to do it frequently. I have many friends, we spend the time together, play billiard, tennis, and have other entertainment. I don’t have many pics myself, but I try to find some more pics. I send you my picture so you can an idea of me more closely. I want to confess to beeing a sweettooth, I like ice-cream, cakes, candy. But I can allow it seldom because not to be fat. What else can I say to you about myself? I love beautiful clothes and different things of light colours. Light-blue, pink, beige and other colours make me relax and even feel better. And what is your favourite colour? Please Ask me some more interesting things about yourself. How do you prefer to relax? What is your character? What is your preferable qualities in women? Do you want to have a wife? You can also ask me questions in what you are inetrested in. I impatiently wait for your letter and eager to answer all your letter. And of course it will be pleasant for me to receive your new photos and even want to learn about you some more information you. Write to me, I wait. Your friend Natalya.

Amused, but highly suspicious, I went back to review her original message through the Onion, but this is what greeted me instead:

System notice: The body of this message has been removed as this member appears to have been abusing our terms of service. By blocking this member’s message, we reduce the incentive for future abuse and thereby provide a better overall experience for our members – we apologize for any inconvenience.

I knew immediately that this had to be some sort of scam. And I think it may have been brought on by one of my profile answers:

Fill in the blank: _____ is sexy; _____ is sexier.
A fake Russian accent is sexy; a real Scandinavian accent is sexier.

Regardless, I wondered whether I should respond to her email or not, and if I should try to string this along some more. Who would have guessed that by stringing her along, I would be winding myself up instead…?

Next week:  E-Dating a Scam Artist, Part 2: I must tend to my bonzai.