Hunte* and I continued as friends- meeting for regular domino and chess battles on Yahoo messenger.  The incident with the other woman on the telephone was long forgotten. Well, not really “forgotten”- just neatly tucked away in that side of the brain we humans must use the least. He shared with me the story about his ex-wife and how he had divorced her after things got sour in their marriage. According to him, she challenged that he didn’t have the guts to get a divorce and he decided to prove that he was nothing but all guts.

Every now and then, Hunte would send me pictures; particularly pictures of him and his daughter. For all the tough that he wanted me to think he was, he was just all mush whenever I took to commenting on what a pleasant child she seemed.  Sometimes, I would return the favour and send him any random pictures I had managed to get taken of me or my surroundings.  He would tell me about the next show or race he was off to and I would wish him luck. We got along very well.

The rules of our relationship were unspoken but simple and very well understood. We were still very active members on the dating site. From time to time, we would even share tiny segments of stories about our online adventures.

Now, I don’t remember when or why, but, very suddenly, we agreed that we would attempt to take our relationship past friendship. Maybe, we got tired of sifting through all the strange strangers on the dating site. Maybe, curiousity finally got the better of us. I remember asking: “how do we do that?”  His response was something along the lines of: “well I say you are my girlfriend and… we are together.”

It seemed so neat and tidy- so devoid of all the unnecessary rigmarole that regularly plagues the beginning, middle and end of offline relationships. We were both sensible. We knew we would not rush off to get married the next day or next week or even the next two years.  After all, we hadn’t met each other in person yet!

We began spending even more time online together. We soon began talking about meeting in person in the near future. And naturally, that led to the inevitable. Little by little, I began realizing I had made a huge mistake.

There was the matter of my prudishness- it didn’t bother him  too much. But still we'd have small fights because of it. We also had small fights whenever I typed or said something he didn’t understand.  He wouldn’t get my jokes because my references were alien to him. Sometimes, he wouldn’t know the meaning of a word I’d just used and so would misinterpret the entire sentence.

Now, I can’t claim to be the smartest feline within any block of any jungle. And, it really wasn’t a matter of intelligence- it was more about so many things being lost in translation because we were from two very different worlds.

I began noticing other things- like what a quick temper he seemed to have.  Or the subtle way he’d always be reminding me that other women wanted to date him. We had quite a few fights.  I kept thinking that things were so much better when we were just friends. I began wishing we hadn’t taken that leap from friends to dating each other….