Love Virtually by Daniel Glattauer Page A

there like idiots, shrugging our shoulders, and one of us will say to the other: “Really sorry, for some reason nothing’s happening.”
    And then what?
    One minute later
    Re:
    That’s a risk we’ll have to take. So do come over, Emmi! Be brave! Let’s both be brave! Let’s trust in each other!
    Twenty-five minutes later
    Re:
    Dear Leo,
    I find your urgency strange, and it’s beginning to get on my nerves. It’s not your usual style. I have a hunch that you know exactly what might happen. You’re probably still feeling the effects of last night. Are you still on a bit of a high? You’re looking for intimacy. You want to forget Marlene, or rather, you want to make her forgotten. And you’ve read enough books on how this works, you’ve seen plenty of movies, last tangos with Marlon Brandos and so forth. I know those scenes, Leo: he sees her for the first time, preferably in semidarkness, so that everything looks beautiful even if it isn’t. And then not another word is spoken, and the only sound is of clothes dropping to the ground. They fall on each other as if they’re about to starve, they stop at nothing, rolling around for hours from one end of some designer apartment to the other. End of scene. In the next shot he’s lying on his back with a self-satisfied smile playing across his lips. His eyes wander lasciviously across the ceiling, as if he even wants to get off with that too. She lies there with her head on his chest, satiated like some doe after a herd of rutting stags has passed through. One of them might be having a cigarette, exhaling smoke through his or her nose. And then there’ll be a subtle fade-out. But what happens after that? That’s what most interests me. What happens after that???
    That’s not the way it’s going to happen, Leo. Just for once you’ve been behaving like a stereotypical male. We could have got past all this, of course. That blindfold fantasy you let slip yesterday when you were drunk—we wouldn’t even have to see each other. You open the door to me with a blindfold on, and we fall into each other’s arms. We have sex blindfolded. We say good-bye to each other blindfolded. And tomorrow you’d write me more sanctimonious emails about fidelity and I’d write you bolshie emails back, like I always do. And if our night together was good, we’d do it again, uncoupled from our other lives, entirely independent of our correspondence. Sex with the minimum attachment possible. We’ve got nothing to lose, nothing would be jeopardized. You’d have your “intimacy,” I’d have my little extramarital adventure. It’s an exciting prospect, I must say. But let’s face it, it’s a bit of a male fantasy, dear Leo, and we should run a mile from it. Or to spell it out, you can forget it with me! (And I say that very gently, I promise!)
    Fifteen minutes later
    Re:
    What if I’d just wanted to show you a few photos of me when I was a child? What if I’d just wanted to drink some whisky or a vodka sour with you—to our health and our groundbreaking achievement of having met at last? What if I’d just wanted to hear your voice? And what if I’d just wanted to breathe in the scent of your hair and skin?
    Nine minutes later
    Re:
    Leo, Leo, Leo, sometimes it sounds as if you’re the woman in this set-up, and I’m the man. But I’m convinced it’s just a game we’re playing at the highest level. I’m trying to think like a man so that I can understand you, I’m trying to see things from a man’s perspective, I’m downloading all my mental files that relate to the way men think, including glossary—and all I get is you telling me that I’M the one who’s obsessed with sex. I expose the classic male motives for an urgent midnight rendezvous—and you turn it all around and say they’re mine. Aren’t you