Josie

Amber believes it is unfair to ascribe to Josie a profound, nonspecific personality deficit sight unseen, simply because she was keen to meet me in person, having not so much as heard me speak.

This is not the entirety of why I assume Josie is possibly a monster. On paper, that she was on OkCupid in the first place was suspect given that she is a worldly medical who farms alpacas and is, one must admit, far from hard on the eyes. If the photographs she had chosen to represent her are fair testimony, she possesses penetrating dark eyes, creamy tan skin, and long straight hair. She was born in Sao Paulo and could be their poster girl. Women like her are the sort of comically ideal that should be single only long enough to look around once. Then, if there is any justice in the world, they were beset by their pick of suitors.

This returns me to the suspicion that there must be something crippling in her to counterbalance how impressive her "Pro" column appears in the celestial ledger. Why wish to meet your humble narrator, even given his platonic disposition? (Don't think that I have not found a few too many occasions to shoehorn in Amber, my wife, to whom I am married and have been lo these past seven years. It pays to be unambiguous. It arrests any possible misunderstanding.)

I sent Melanie a basic dossier of Josie, as this seems to be my current friendship with Melanie. She pronounced Josie "excellent but plausible." High praise indeed.

I had been putting off telling Josie a time and place but decided that she would lose interest in the potential of friendship if I kept ignoring her. She might assume I was a fake, as I suspected that she might be after so quickly offering her number. I googled that number in case it was part of some overseas scam or embarrassing hotline. It brought me to her full name and street address, the former which led to her social media, which immediately corroborated most things she had told me. If Josie were fake, she employed intense effort and admirable years of practice creating this charming identity. As an author of fiction, I could want to know a deceiver purely on what a fabulous character she had conjured for her scam.

I suggested a coffeehouse near me, though she lives only a town away, an industrious bike ride for me. It seemed enough like neutral territory, and who doesn't like a coffeehouse for a first meeting?

She finds me at the door to the cafe as I fumble with my phone and ever-present mask. She wears a sundress and looks as I imagined, which is not always the case for internet meetings. My immediate instinct was for a hug, so thoroughly were my defenses agnostic to her.

This is not to say that I am without the awkward first encounter jitters. It would be a more straightforward matter if I were unsure of Josie, but she seems lovely to the bone. I was convinced of her within half a minute. I know that I want her for a friend and have the nerves that I might not manage this, having created over days and discarded at once a thin version of her that was nothing more than a catfish balloon.

I've forgotten my anxiety after a few questions about her alpaca farm -- all female but for the baby, whom she may geld if she does not give him to the fame from which she bought the girls. (She also has six chickens, two geese, and a llama to mind the flock.) Beyond making conversation to foster a friendship by keeping her talking, I am curious about the particulars of alpaca husbandry. She tells me how a certain number of breedings is included in one's purchase, after which it is a thousand dollars a pop.

One of her girls will be going to the stud farm soon, but there is some concern that, by dint of the beast's sassiness, she may psychologically scar the virgin stud to whom she is matched. Alpacas are selective ovulators, meaning that they decide when they drop their eggs. If the stud isn't up to snuff, that egg is staying put. One knows that an alpaca is pregnant when they spit in the stud's face, signaling that they are done with him -- otherwise, males and females are kept far from one another. The sassy girl might spit in the stud's face immediately out of sheer contrariness.

I confess to Josie that I had a concern about her reality. She says that I should have added her on Facebook when I found it, then amends that she might not have met me had I. We talk about her dating life -- an inevitability given where we met. Great sex aside, men are either too emotionally or physically distant for her. She is seeking something real and lasting. One might think that would come easier when dating in one's late thirties, having sown wild oats then mown them down to build foundations. Perhaps not. Maybe the men on the market now are self-selecting failures at monogamy, having spent decades of practice being teenagers. If I were ever single again, I hope I would behave better, but I would prefer not to be tested on this point.

I tell her of my loves: of Melanie, the collegiate lesbian whom I loved for the first time without reservation; of Daniel, whom I adore (I showed her a picture and she agreed at his handsomeness); of Hannah, who was like a sister and then fled the Hudson Valley to have a real life (with a stopover in the Navy). Of course, I spoke at length about Amber -- about meeting her at a backyard ritual and trying to resist her, of touching her hand and knowing beyond words how much I needed her. I want to give Josie a crash course in my life because, I suppose, I anticipate her being a part of it.

Amber will adore her, at the very least because Josie dyes alpaca wool using flowers. They can be fairies together.

I sit close to Josie, occasionally touching her arm or knee for emphasis. I twinged my neck doing pullups days before and am thus incapable of anything sidelong. I look at her intently and with strange wistfulness, as though she resembles someone whom I had once known and cannot place who. She smells light and powdery. Though our touches are brief and minor, I will catch her perfume's ghost for the rest of the day.

It is an hour before Josie remembers that she has not had lunch and orders something. I take the excuse to use the bathroom and confide in the mirror that I think this is going well.

She eats her sandwich, holding the buttery croissant roll delicately between her thumb and forefinger in a way that makes the sandwich appear more delicious than it might be worth. She confesses it is better than she thought, so her accidental modeling may be accurate after all.

Outside the alpaca farm, her job situation is strange to me. She has a prestigious job title for a major medical company (you know them), but it seems that they told her to set up a private practice of only a few hours a week and otherwise essentially leave her to do as she pleases. She can retire within a few years, at which point she may involve herself in the private practice. Noble darling that she is, she does not want to be unable to see clients if they cannot pay. The alpacas and their wool are more a hobby; she makes no money from that effort.

I explain my job situation in sufficient detail. Josie asks if I like it. I admit that I essentially have. I am good at working with traumatized juvenile delinquents and can name only two instances of it being too much. (One, I found out that a student's parents had murdered his little sister, and he did not know. With the other, a charming child had asked where he could find the books about living with AIDS. These were likely the release valve for accumulated vicarious traumas, but I bawled for them when I got home.) I express reservation for transitioning from kids caught with drugs or after fights to kids caught raping children or after murders.

After two hours of talking (so much that my throat feels hoarse after), she excuses that she needs to return to her chores. I walk her out, then ask if I could hug her in parting. I am, it's clear, platonically infatuated with her.

Then, awkwardly, we must walk in the same direction for forty feet before she can cross the street to her car.

Soon in Xenology: A new job.

last watched: Venture Brothers
reading: City Magick