By Kim Hayes
My life started in June,1996.
AOL, or more formally, America Online, in the 90s turned into the method people used for internet access. I installed the program on my computer one night in June of that year.
Those first few nights I’d spend a couple of hours poking around. There were channels, or portals as they were called, and chat rooms for every subject one could imagine. The list of chat rooms was overwhelming. One caught my eye: The Book Nook. Aha, a chat room for readers. I clicked on the name of the chat room and entered it.
I sat there for a while, following the flow of the conversation. There were maybe ten people in the room, and from the talking, it was apparent these people ‘knew’ each other and came in to talk about books. Every person there made me feel welcome and at ease. I offered some of my favorite authors and books when asked and watched the chat.
I spent some time looking at people’s profiles. There were about ten people in the room, (chat rooms could hold 25 people) from all over the country, of different ages, backgrounds, hobbies and such. Over the next week, I logged into AOL every night after work and went into the Book Nook.
In the room, a lone individual held my attention with his eloquence and viewpoints. I sent him a message one night, and we spent the next hour over instant messaging sharing our favorite books and music. He possessed intelligence, way with words and his communication style in the chat room captivated me.
Ranydom words served as his screen name, representing a jumbled sequence of letters from his first name. His name was Ray; he lived in Chicago. He was about seven years younger than me, and we discovered we shared similar tastes in books and music.
Ray and I fell into the habit of meeting in the Book Nook, saying hi and catching up with our ‘online friends’. Next, either he or I would set up a private conversation area and talk for a few hours.
We shared our fears, goals, dreams, and what seemed like everything else. I had never experienced being able to talk with a stranger in this way. Within a month of talking to him, I developed sentiments for someone who, in retrospect, I ‘knew’ but didn’t.
There was so much about our personal lives that was left unsaid. But we had this connection that I couldn’t ignore. It was so easy to chat with someone you had never met. We shared some of our darkest fears and secrets. He got me. He understood me. How could a stranger understand how I felt?
AOL back then wasn’t cheap after the ‘free’ monthly minutes ran out. It was cheaper to talk on the phone, even if it was long-distance. By mid-July, we were logging on to AOL, checking in on our Book Nook friends, and then logging off, and one of us would call the other.
Over the course of a couple of months, I’d go into this book chat room; I’d say hi to the people there, and then Ray and I would create a private chat room and spend the rest of the evening talking. About everything. We had a lot in common: books, and we shared the same musical tastes. I also had feelings for this person, who was a stranger, but I felt like I had found a soulmate. Along with the books and music, we both had some retail or food service experience in common and would share silly customer service stories.
By August, meeting Ray felt like a must. I had to know if he felt the same way about me as I felt about him. I asked if he would be interested in coming down to New Orleans for a few days. There was an inexpensive hotel near my apartment, and I mentioned some things about the city I could show him.
On Labor Day weekend, he got a weekend off work and flew down. After taking a cab to his hotel and checking in, he walked over to my apartment. He had sent me a picture of himself, taken in one of those photo booths that were in every mall. I got the picture the day before he arrived. He didn’t know what I looked like.
He stood in the doorway of my apartment, and there was a moment of awkwardness before we both said “Hi” at the same time.
Ray had never been to New Orleans, so I got to play tour guide for a couple of days. September is still a very humid of year, so I tried to keep showing him around to places we could drive to or at least have access to A/C. We rode the streetcar, and I pointed out a few landmarks. We spent a couple of hours at the zoo before heading to the French Quarter. The Quarter was more crowded than usual, and then I remembered it was Southern Decadence that weekend. While the people-watching was entertaining, the crowds in the street had us leaving for a quieter spot. We poked our heads into a few art galleries, and I introduced him to a fried shrimp po’boy. He now likes them as much as I do.
Saturday night, when he had gone back to his hotel room, I went into the book chat room to see who was there. One of our friends from Texas was in the room and (all the regulars knew he’d flown down to meet me) asked me how things were going. “I love him. It’s kind of a scary thing.”
I knew he felt the same way. Nothing happened between us at all that weekend, aside from a lot of talking and sharing a few more awkward moments.
When I dropped him off at the airport, I gave him a kiss on the cheek, and he pulled me into a hug and whispered, “Thank you” into my ear. I watched as his plane taxied off, and as I drove back to my apartment, all I could think about was that my soul mate had left. Would I ever see him again?
Later that night, when I logged onto AOL, he sent me an instant message. “I feel foolish for not mentioning it when I had the chance. I love you.”
Heart melted. I stared at the screen for a minute before replying. “I love you, too.”
Epilogue
Ray moved down to New Orleans in the fall of 1998. We moved to Chicago in 2000. We married in May of 2010.
Kim lives in Chicago, IL., and works for the Chicago Cubs. She has a BA in liberal arts with a minor in theater from Nicholls State University.
She writes various genres of fiction, memoir pieces and personal essays. Her work has appeared in Confetti, The Southern Quill, Suddenly and without Warning, and Bull, among others.
Kim is a reader for Hippocampus Magazine and Fiction on the Web.
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