omg wtf tmi

Erin kind of slid into it accidentally, unnoticeably. She ate lunch with Kevin almost every day, because he was friendly, non-threatening in a kind of goofy way, and never had anything else to do at lunch. She’d sit at the table with him at the Wisconsin Student Union, with their sandwiches, or whatever- sometimes he’d get french fries- and he would often share the details of this chat scene that he had joined. He’d pull out his laptop and then try not to get french fry grease on the keys as he’d answer his friends on there. “lol”, he’d say (laugh out loud). “omg,” - Oh my God. “wtf” – What the f-! Or, “tmi”- too much information.

But as Erin read over his shoulder, she noticed that he was kind of a wimp. People were lively, but he had little to say, or said it in such a wooden way that basically their social scene hopped along with him as a kind of background, watching, noticing, yet not really participating. In fact he was kind of like that in their class- they were in an English class together- and it bothered her. When he’d complain about not having any dates, or many friends, she felt like slapping him. It’s your own fault, she’d like to say. But she was patient with him. He was a nice guy. And she didn’t have that much of a social life anyway, besides this other guy, Mark, who was always calling her in her dorm room. The lunch hour would pass, often with her reading over his shoulder, drinking a slow cup of coffee. Then they’d go off to afternoon classes.

On Friday, though, something strange happened. A saucy girl known only to them as “Rose” was chatting with Kevin, and Kevin was doing his usual wimp thing. Erin grabbed the keyboard with his permission and started talking to Rose herself. In her mind she was showing Kevin how it was done: how one would flirt with a girl, and actually attract the girl; how one could be a little more aggressive, get what one wanted, be successful. She saw herself as shaking Kevin out of his doldrums, showing him something useful. She carried on a lively banter with Rose, all under Kevin’s name “Kev”- and this carried on for much of the lunch hour. They talked about classes, Wisconsin football, Halloween, drinking, driving on I-94. She was unexpectedly good at pretending to be a man- she could feel a kind of joy in acting out the aggressive male role- though it occurred to her that she had no more certainty that Rose was a woman, than Rose had that “Kev” was a man. Very quickly she was into territory where she didn’t know how Kevin would react; for example, Rose asked if she/he had ever been to Chicago. She had, but didn’t know if Kevin had. Kevin was right behind her, but at that moment he wasn’t even paying attention; he’d become engrossed in a football game on a nearby television, so she just blithely answered that he had. And he loved shooting down Lake Shore Drive in his convertible, she said. And, in fact, he’d be there in eight days, she said. Going for a Shock Monster concert. Shock Monster was a popular band at that time; this would give Rose a little jump, she was sure . Time for class, she told her; “c u” later, she said, and logged off.

But something about the chat climbed under her skin and stayed there. Something about Rose’s persistent interest, flirtatious nature, or something; she wanted to talk to her again. She met Kevin later in the weekend for a study session for the very English class that they shared. She tried to get a sense from him whether these chat friends meant anything to him; they didn’t, as far as she could tell. He had no girlfriends, but didn’t seem to care. With the exception of Erin, there wasn’t anyone he even talked to about it. He was sad, kind of pathetic. But he knew most of the answers on the English study sheet.

On Monday, after the test she looked over Kevin’s shoulder again and there were all the chat friends, Rose included. She practically jumped on the keyboard and started chatting with Rose again, inviting her into a private room where they could have more privacy. Kevin watched over her shoulder for a while, noticing perhaps the lively banter, the spirit of the conversation, but soon wandered off, even though it was his laptop. He didn’t seem to mind; he trusted her, and wasn’t going far. But in that short time the conversation got even livelier. They had very little in common, “Kev” (Erin) and Rose, yet they got along well and spoke quickly, covered a lot of ground. Rose, it turned out, would be at the Shock Monster concert also. Rose had a husband/lover who was domineering and didn’t want her to go. This guy would slap her around and get loud and mean when he was drunk, which was often, including now. But it’s only noon, Erin thought, and then she thought, she needed to save this woman from a very bad situation. She knew none of the important details- Rose’s true name, her true location, her age, her marital status- yet she was ready and willing to find her straightaway and get this guy out of the picture.
There was a garden in the story. She’d grown all these beautiful tomatoes, and squash, and a pumpkin, and spent a lot of time out there. She could see the garden from where she sat at her computer, in a small house in a small town not far from Chicago.

I need to talk to you sometime this evening, Erin told Rose, around eight (when Erin would be in her room, safely by her own computer). They set up a time. It was easy enough- she knew Kevin’s logon and password, from watching- and could do this easily, away from the noise of the Student Center. Rose agreed. At eight, the husband would be at work, apparently. At eight Erin logged on, and there was Rose- they took up where they had left off. Rose lived in terror of the man, whose name was Jeff, it appeared; he was her husband; he was now at work but was expected home later at night, around 11; he could very possibly be still drunk, or drunk again, when he arrived, as he often was these days. Rose was 19, had thought she was pregnant, but wasn’t- that’s what set Jeff off on this drunken rage- and, impulsively, Rose sent Erin her picture. She was redheaded, beautiful, but young, like Erin. Erin gulped as she looked at it; she also was 19. Her heart felt like it was in her throat. In love with a woman- this was not something she would have predicted for herself. Impulsively she blurted out the whole story to Rose. She was not “Kev” but was Erin. Erin, who had taken the computer out of Kevin’s hand, and had pretended to be Kevin not twice but three times. She sent her own picture.

Rose, oddly, did not appear to feel betrayed, or even the least bit hurt. She continued telling about life in the small house, bad marriage, drunken husband, car with persistent muffler problems, motorcycle gang in small-town bar, her life as she saw it from her keyboard. Erin told about her two boyfriends in high school; one, Roger, had felt like her life match, so perfect in every way, but apparently he had a mean streak in him, and he’d done something sadistic to her dog, so she dumped him, even as she was crying, for several days even; the next, Rob, had broken her heart, made her jaded, angry, resentful toward men, unwilling to reach out, really, to anyone, even harmless Kevin. She told Rose also about Mark, here at Wisconsin, a young business student, who was calling, even now as she chatted, calling somewhat persistently. Omg, wtf, these were flying back and forth as they discussed men, chatting back and forth rapidly, getting more and more involved in conversation. Finally, she told about the real “Kev,” who, of course, Rose at least had met, albeit online. All four of them meant nothing to her, she assured Rose, nothing. She was going to Shock Monster on Saturday in Chicago. That’s all that mattered. Rose, on her side, told of falling in love with Jeff, how she was never good enough for him, how he always compared her to another girlfriend he had, one he liked better; how she lived in fear, her poetry stained in tears and her laundry stained in blood. They poured out their hearts to each other; they told everything.

As she typed quickly on the screen, though, it went unexpectedly blank on the other end. Rose stopped, absolutely, completely. One minute the “omg”s, “lol”s, and “wtf”s were flying, the next, absolutely nothing. Erin froze in horror. The husband: she looked at her computer clock; it was past eleven. She pounded away at her screen: hello? Hello? Nothing. She was crushed. She couldn’t sleep that night. She imagined all the worst things, all the violence Rose was worried about. She waited a while, checked her Facebook, and her email. When she went to bed, she tossed and turned, and had bad dreams. In the morning, she had a hard time concentrating on her classes, and was distracted when people spoke to her.

At lunch, of course, she could look to see if Rose appeared in Kevin’s chat. She looked over his shoulder but resisted the impulse to grab the laptop again. Kevin chatted blandly to other people, but noticed her obvious agitation. At night, still no Rose; Erin went online, bought Shock Monster tickets, and planned her short trip. Her parents lived in Chicago; it wouldn’t be hard to stay there. She had an old car that ran well. It woudn’t be complicated.

Wednesday night, like Tuesday, she logged on: nothing. She’d lost interest in her classes, though there was an English test on Friday, and Kevin kept talking to her about it. She still couldn’t sleep; she took out the picture occasionally, still not believing that she was in love with a woman, a woman who accepted her completely and without reservation, and then disappeared entirely.

On Thursday though, Rose got on for just a few minutes. There she was; it was her; Erin could tell by the patterns, with the “omg”s, “lol”s, etc.; it was clearly her. But she was considerably less lively. There had been a fight, she said. Jeff crushed tomatoes all over her, threw the pumpkin through the window, cut her lip, hit her. He did some other damage also; she (Rose) was now at her mom’s house, while Jeff, as far as she could tell, was in jail or worse. She couldn’t talk. When Erin asked if she would be at the concert, she didn’t answer. “c u” later, she said, and she was off. It took all of a few minutes.

Erin went to the concert, alone, in spite of everything. The music was too loud, and pounded her eardrums. She thought about Rose, and all she knew; she tried to let go of it. Toward the end of the concert, she was near the entrance of the place, on her way out, when who did she see, but Roger, her first boyfriend ever, Roger the sadist. A dry, arrogant character, he walked right up to her and said hello. But then he said, “Rose says hello; she couldn’t come;” he said this, turned on his heels, and walked off into the crowd. This totally rattled Erin, and she practically broke down in a rage against him. But, as he was almost gone, disappearing, she would have had to run after him, and she didn’t. He had given no indication of who she was to him, or how he’d known her. Perhaps he was Jeff? Or he was Rose himself? Or, he had just known her, casually, as a friend? She never found out. She ended up just going back to Wisconsin, getting back to her life, moving on. Kevin was understanding, as usual; if he was in on it, she never learned how. “Rose,” he said, never reappeared in their chat. Years later, she found the picture she had kept, in an old box, but she threw it away. She heard from a friend that Roger had been in trouble with the law, and she wondered about that week; she was sure he was involved. But by then quite a bit more had happened to her also; she was different, and wondered how she’d ever come to fall in love with a chat partner, or feel the way she did, about someone she had never, in fact, even seen.

9-09