Ingrid

I would not deny that it is nerve-wracking beginning to care about someone whom I have only ever encountered online. Once we meet in the flesh, things have tended to fall apart. Our bonhomie may last for an encounter or two, maybe as many as seven. A few, I have met only once despite my hopes. As I tend to be too open about my wants, status, and expectations, I have theorized that the problem is that the other person had not been as forthcoming initially. Otherwise, it is entirely possible that I was not what they were looking for in a friend, which is no great crime. Left too long, an online friendship can become a faint, insubstantial matter.

Years ago, I had the overdue realization that meeting people for friendship and meeting them for romance is not dissimilar. As my single friends can attest, most of the people they meet for a date or two do not last to three. I should not be surprised that chatting online (involving as it does my preferred modality: writing) and physical interaction do not always mesh.

This is an overly long preamble to Ingrid. I do not recall a person in years with whom I more felt a sparkling connection online. I suggested a meeting sooner than may have been prudent, a gamble to be sure. I knew well that it could skunk the whole endeavor if I waited too long to meet. She needed to be cemented as more than words on a screen, which meant that there could be the mutual disappointment of not being as our words had portrayed us. (This would not be through anyone's fault, only that we build up these mental constructs out of half-acknowledged tatters of others we have met. These do not always best represent the truth. Or it could all be pheromonal; humans are weird.)

I used as a transparent excuse that I had been duped into a one-month, unlimited car wash package in Kingston -- which was true -- and had better use it soon so that I could cancel it. The meat of it, which was left unsaid because we both knew, was that I decided I exceedingly liked her and wanted to confirm that in three dimensions.

There is a fair chance that I had been in the same room with Ingrid more than once and didn't realize it. We share mutual friends in the New Paltz literary/academic scene, most prominently Jacki, with whom Ingrid worked at the writing center until it ceased and may now collaborate in a play. I find it reassuring that Ingrid is a friend with some context. If not now and here, we might have still met significantly enough to have realized we would hit it off.

I know little about her. For example, I know that she has a child but am oblivious to their age or gender. Ingrid and I corresponded at length, but it was not so fixed on autobiographical details. I did not brush up on her profile before meeting at the bookstore, nor did it occur to me. Once we matched, I looked at it in detail and commented in my second message (I found my first short message too glib and amended it minutes later). We got along in writing, which I cannot say often. My tendency in writing to strangers online is effusive strangeness to test if they can put up with me and follow along.

Ingrid is taller and thinner than I imagined, but I had not put much energy into picturing Ingrid. Her clothing, complementary but not wholly matching layers, suits her career as an artist and author of a solitary comic novel. (Guys, it's excellent.) She knows how I looked based on photos taken in easier and freer times. In plainer words, unmasked. At the bookstore, I snap a selfie of myself, masked and hatted, and accidentally sent it before I could retake it. It is difficult to dislike one's face while most of it is hidden, but I have somehow managed.

Her purple hair peeks out from under her hat. Her college roommate stated that it was so cool that she could be Christian and have purple hair, so it may be a trademark. The hair color outlived her Christianity, as she is now agnostic.

I introduce Ingrid to Amber as my "new best friend," a sentiment meant as an affectionate joke but one I have not yet earned. Ingrid does not take it too badly, which is points in her favor. I cannot say that the joke doesn't have more than a few grains of truth. Even at first blush, I know how much I like her.

She acknowledges in minutes the awkwardness of this meeting, the difficulty in finding topics, which makes me more partial toward her. We passively follow Amber as she flits from book to book, moons in the orbit of a butterfly. From the section heading, titles and subjects stick to our hems.

We pause near a book I don't recognize about UFO sightings in the Hudson Valley. I don't know what possesses me, but I point at people in the books with whom I have had interactions or who are in some way important to my books.

"Yes," said Ingrid. "I am impressed that you know people in a book's index. Is that what you are going for?"

As I realized that it was, I put the book down, gave a warm shrug, and we caught up to Amber. Ingrid later assures me that she will bring this up often and for a while: that I know people in indices. As this implies that there will be an "often and for a while" in our friendship, I am delighted to accept the mild mockery.

At last, we sit in a back corner for want of a sofa, which we all agree should be obligatory bookstore furniture. The topics come molasses-slow at first, but they build with intensity, each quiet lull less a reason for panic than the last.

I had promised Amber both that she could study for the duration of this meeting and that I would buy her dinner after. She falls quickly to the former, taking detailed scientific notes from her textbook, housed on a well out-of-date Kindle Fire. (I've offered to buy her a new one or give her the one I no longer use, but she has declined repeatedly.) My wife pipes up as the topics find her, but this is not her friend to make; she would have been more content to do chores and study at home, though I know she likes Ingrid well enough. Amber did not join me in meeting the last three people, which might contribute to two of them being social media friends and nothing more.

Ingrid is astounded (aghast?) by my stories of adolescent gregariousness and romantic looseness as she numbers her boyfriends in the low single digits. I have an Excel file of what amorous act I did with whom, mostly in order and with only a few gaps. (The last fifteen years feature three names, the last decade one; I am a well-reformed and self-aware former slut.) Ingrid would not be the first introvert whom I have adopted. When it comes to lasting friendships, they are my type.

Ingrid grew up in such a conservative Christian household in New Jersey that she spent a year and a half at a Christian college. The students were not permitted to dance except under the following conditions: they must be away from the college for twenty-four hours before boogying, no one from the college may see them dance, and they must spend a solid day more after these sinful undulations before returning to campus. It is an entire, three-day weekend for a bit of rump-shaking. I don't know that Ingrid is the type for dancing, but she is not the sort who would find it welcome to be prohibited much. To a greater degree, the students were forbidden from on-campus fraternization with the other sex, so they would sneak away to the forest to rut like woodland nymphs, a far less safe way to explore sexually, though unquestionably more picturesque from all concerned.

Ingrid shows us pictures from her wedding. (She is amicably separated from her ex and seems content with the co-parenting, but I know nothing else of their arrangement and see no reason to pry.) The officiant wore a puppet head Ingrid had constructed for the occasion. She also made the fairy-lit crowns for her wedding party and the pipe cleaner hats for the guests (many of which went unworn but would not have if I had been invited). I would insist upon trying my hand at her friendship for her wedding alone. I can swing the next one.

Ingrid said that she likes me, sotto voce, as though she were not saying it to anyone present. I was amid some digression or other, both provoking this declaration that, yes, I would do for friendship but also denying me the memory regarding why. I will say that it was cumulative, then, to not tax myself. I reached some tipping point and plummeted over into the possibility of continued contact with her.

Our conversation rarely flags after an hour, not in the way of people who have just met and should not want for topics, but in the way of those who have much to say and, I estimate, might continue to. (Replanting ourselves before a window, though it only shows the sunset over storefronts beyond the parking lot, does help ease some pressure to look at one another.)

On exiting, I ask if it is appropriate to hug her. I am given to gesturing, which provoked two flinches before I learned my lesson. (In her defense, one of these did involve explaining my students' crimes. It is prudent to recoil from the words "stabbed in the face," even when the knife is only notional.) She deigns that she is okay with hugs, merely not surprise ones. She offers Amber one after.

Hey, have you met my new best friend, Ingrid?

last watched: Brooklyn Nine-Nine
reading: Harrow the Ninth