She was sitting in the new fashionable cyber cafe, chatting to several people from the net whom she had never met before. At that stage of her life, the cyber communication and relationships were taking a bigger portion than the rest.
Someone passing the street from the cafe’s outside window would see a funny picture. People sitting next to each other in front of monitors were typing on keyboards and changing the expressions of their faces. But the most important is that none of them noticed anything around and if needed, would not be able to describe their equally cyber obsessed neighbors.
Places like that are supposed to make people like her realize how lonely they really are, but no matter how paradoxal it may seem, she thought she was escaping her loneliness that way. What she really did was locking her in the cyber world with her cyber friends. She was spending all her free time in front of different monitors instead of looking around and seeing how wonderful the real life was.
She was flirting with a new nickname and it was just starting to become exciting when boom! The lights were gone. Monitors smiled back with their black screens and sighs, annoyed words and disappointed moans came out of the cyber zombies.
She looked at it lighter so she turned and looked surprised at the middle age man who said “fuck” in a low voice. She looked at him; he looked back and felt embarrassed.
She was surprised to see a man 15 years older look so embarrassed. She could do nothing but smile. The man felt easier and smiled back. She realized that a real life genuine smile is more precious than hours of conversations and confessions in a chat room.
“So what now?” the man asked.
She had an internal fight between “don’t talk to a stranger” and “So what? I’m young, free and adventurous”.
The latter won and being crazy enough she replied, “I don’t know about you, but I need a beer, so I’m going to the nearest Irish pub”.
He was so startled that he couldn’t say anything for a few seconds. She felt stupid but looking very confident she picked up her bag and went downstairs.
She didn’t lie, she really needed a beer and without caring that it was already late, that she was alone and she had to go home, she opened the pub’s wooden door. She went to the bar and climbed the high chair. Someone came behind and she instinctively turned around. It was the middle age man.
“I felt stupid to hesitate. Is it too late to buy you a beer?”
She didn’t care anymore so she said ok.
They drank and spoke, joked and laughed for hours.
He was on business trip and it was his last night.
They were two people from completely two different worlds and the fact that they will never meet again made things easier and lighter.
Her last bus was going to leave in 15 minutes, so she stood up, shook his hand, wished him a better “real” life and left. Both were happy they didn’t have to drink alone.
She climbed the empty bus, took a seat and with a smile on her face decided to limit her time spent in cyberspace from now on.
When she got to her apartment, the Chinese roommate ran to her with a worried look.
“Your class was over 4 hours ago, what happened? Are you drunk? Hey, what’s going on?”
She told the story in few words and the narrow eyes of her Chinese friend became wider with each word.
“Are you crazy?” Lu asked almost shouting.
“Maybe…. “ she replied.