Joe D’ Mango, Salonpas and internet love

Dear Joe, 

I hopped into the internet craze sometime around 1996. And with just a little under ten years of experience in composing cute little messages off to total strangers thanks to the wonders of mIRC, you’d think I would’ve known better. Several years back though, I ended up in an eyeball with a really dainty young lass who lived in Valenzuela. She loved the webpage I made about a Brit-rock band called Bush, I admired her sense of humor and writing style and we really hit it off. I’ve never felt like this before and it excited me. A few email messages a day turned into more than twenty a day, and over the course of three months, we came to know each other rather well. We spent hours talking on the phone, we exchanged pictures, and sometimes even gifts; the whole enchilada.

Our euphoric correspondence continued on to Christmas season. You know how it is; Christmas season has this tendency to make you do crazy things; your mind is brimming with thoughts of warmth and fornication to the point that even your pubic hair began to hurt. Well, apparently my pubic hair didn’t hurt badly enough as I was able to convince myself to drive all the way up to Valenzuela one beautiful December afternoon.

We met at a cramped Chinese restaurant inside the local mall. She picked a table in a far corner and she looks exactly like she did in the pictures she sent me. Images of a romantic weekend getaway rushed into my mind as I smiled my way through the tables towards her. But as I took a seat across her, I realize how utterly naïve I was; and naïve is just a cuter way of saying stupid. Yes Joe, I was so stupid.

I’m not sure how to explain this to you Joe, but here I am in front of this woman I had been exchanging correspondence with more than twenty times a day for three months, both online and over the phone. Here’s this woman I had shared my every cognition, every emotion with day after day for three months. But Joe she just wasn’t the same woman I was sitting in front of. Did she send her cousin? Was this imposter her friend whom she sent to fill in for her because she was too shy to meet me? I don’t think so Joe. I’m sure it was her.

Joe, I couldn’t express how much I wanted to get up. I wanted to get up and run. As a matter of fact, had I not spent two hundred pesos on gasoline I would’ve done just that. I would’ve made a mad dash back to my car and never looked back. Joe, she wasn’t aesthetically challenged, in fact she was easy on the eyes and I wouldn’t have met up with her in the first place if she didn’t look good on the pictures she emailed me.

I just couldn’t believe that she was the same girl I have been communicating with for the past three months. And I suppose she couldn’t believe I was the guy she was conversing with either. This whole ordeal came off as such an obvious mistake that neither of us had to acknowledge it verbally and risk adding to the mutual embarrassment of the situation. We were both polite enough to talk for at least an hour. Joe We ate our siomai and shook hands as I sat up and started walking back to my car.

“”Thanks for the closure.â€? She said before I hopped in my car.

“Thank you too.� I answered. “I’m really sorry things didn’t work out between us.� As hokey as this might sound, her last words rang hollow in my ears the entire drive home. By the time I reached Fairview that evening they held a little more meaning for me. ‘Thanks for the closure’ she had said. Joe, on the internet, nothing is certain. You can go meet someone and bare your soul to them; it’s a very uncommon yet wonderful experience to get acquainted with somebody in that fashion and I’m not going to delve into that because I’m pretty sure everyone has done it at some point.

Joe, I’ve learned my lesson, regardless of all this new technology, people meet with our senses. This was how it was done since Cro Magnons dwelled in caves and shit. ‘that female looks pretty’ our prehistoric ancestor thought to himself. ‘I think it’d be a good idea to hit her over the head with this here club and haul her by the hair back to my cave.’ And I’d like to think that cavemen were more sophisticated than that because other senses were involved as well. Olfactory stimulation was important too you see. Joe, there was even a time when I fell madly in love with a girl because of her scent. She smelled like milk Joe—I can’t describe it to you exactly but that’s how she generally smelled like and I fell hard for this girl.

Benjamin Velasquez, my classmate back in the University of the East med school, once dumped this drop dead gorgeous girl she had been dating to all of our mutual amazement.

�What on God’s green earth are you doing dude?� We used to all ask him. “She’s hot!�

�She is, but she smells like liniment.� Big Benjamin would reply.

“What?! Are you crazy?�

“Seriously, she has this weird menthol-like odor going on.� He said. “She smells like Salonpas; she reminds me of arthritis. It’s horrible, I couldn’t take that shit anymore so I decided to stop seeing her.�

Olfactory and visual stimulation aside, primal sexual attraction comes into play as well. I mean Joe, I’m a nice guy. I’ll donate to charity. I’ll have lunch with your parents. I’ll buy you a fruit platter and say cheesy things but that does little to change the fact that I want to hump your brains out on the next instance. Admittedly, it may seem uncivilized to fall in love using our eyes, nose and genitals instead of our emotions but face it pal, we’re animals more than anything else. We all are. It’s just the way nature works and nature, last I checked, had nothing to do with iPods, computers or the internet.

It’s very romantic to think that it’s possible to meet your soul mate through amorous chatting and exchange of emails but love is bound mostly to physical attraction. It’s intertwined irreversibly like a phone cord on a busy office day. If it weren’t I’d probably fall in love with my best friend Jay Lingan, get married to him and god forbid, have kids with him because hey, he digs the type of music I listen to, loves porn magazines and hard liquor like I do. I’m sure he’d treat me right too but however tempting that might be Joe, I’m not physically attracted to him. I’m sure he’d be very much relieved to read this too, because otherwise, he wouldn’t let me sleep on the same bed with him next time we go out of town with our friends again.

I’m not denying that meeting people on the net is a thrill Joe, Especially if you’re a geek like me who’s sitting in front of the computer, with a hand bracing my chin to keep me from hitting my head on the monitor when I doze off and all of a sudden I get a flirtatious Instant Message from my girl Anika in Moscow; or my bitch LaToya from east Los Angeles. But I’m wiser now Joe and I just want to say that before people should start entertaining silly thoughts of having an online love affair with the Anikas and LaToyas, they should meet them in person first. Eyeball to eyeball, face to face mano a mano or something.

P.S. I love your voice Joe; and I’ve always wondered how you looked like in person. Do you have Yahoo! Messenger? If you do chat me up; my Yahoo! ID is v1ll4r.