HEAVEN: Unemployed, but the sex is great

I started online dating not for the possibility of meeting "that special someone," but instead to get over the unrealistic expectations I'd set for dating in general. I figured I needed to learn how to date -- to go out, meet up, have coffee or cocktails and conversation, then just go home, alone. I did learn how to do that, but the most important thing I learned (after 20 dates over 18 months) was that I was happy: Happy with my life, happy with my friends, and happy being single.

I was just about to call it quits -- mission accomplished, a successful experiment -- when an e-mail landed in my Salon personals in-box, short and sweet. This guy even gave me his phone number up front (generally a first-time online-dating, gotta-be-a-stalker no-no). I read his ad. My immediate thought: No way; he's much too cute. A friend persuaded me to do the polite thing and at least answer his ad. I hesitated -- I was burned out on dating and ready for a return to my happily single life.

But he was persistent. And so cute. Everything looked good on paper -- the requisite love of cooking, moody music, appropriate literary choices, no fear of sexually emboldened chicks like me.

We started e-mailing and finally made a date. As the day approached, I realized one of three things would happen: we'd far exceed both of our expectations; meet them; or fall tragically short, and things would end in freaky, sideshow horror.

It turned out to be a beautiful evening, followed by a very nice breakfast.

Six months later, we've got the solid, earthbound reality of a great relationship, dusted with a light and fluffy heavenly coating. The earthbound reality: being unemployed, money struggles, putting the toilet seat down, and meeting each other's families. The heavenly stuff: great sex, general goofiness, and the silly joy in discovering mutually stupid but meaningful things like the realization that you are not the only person on earth who loves liverwurst on dark rye with mustard.

Maybe we got lucky. Maybe it will all end tomorrow, and I'll write about this as a match made in hell.

But I don't think so.

-- Maria Hecht, Boston

HELL: "A bed I'd never know"

A lifelong journal keeper, I ooze confidence on paper. I write concise verse concerning dreams to save the world and woo girls with kisses, pruned roses, and a nice chicken marsala. In reality, though, I ramble, forget to recycle, buy flowers infested with bugs, and cook chicken lined with bloody veins. In other words, I'm marginally less frightening than a drunken clown is to children.

But on Nerve.com I was a dreamboat! I selected a rugged photo. I wrote sassy blurbs about gin-and-tonics and Alaska travels. I smiled as I uploaded my pitch: My nerves were steady and no one knew my breath stank. A few days later possibility visited my in-box.

Jenny was enamored of my wandering through NYC and sticking my head out taxis. I liked that she adored gin-and-tonics and listened to Built to Spill. She thought my job writing pornography was hilarious. I liked that she ran psychological experiments on children. "Sometimes I beat them when they're really naughty," she wrote in one of our dozens of e-mails. Her photograph was fuzzy, but I thought the pixels revealed supreme cuteness.

After several weeks of techno connections, we made a date. Saturday. A dive bar. Ten p.m.

Jenny and I had, for all intents and purposes, bonded. We shared intimacies. That I kissed a boy in Israel. That she dreamed of loftier goals than running CT scans on 8-year-olds. Jenny and I had exchanged pillow talk without the pillow. Or talking. And for that I was a jittery mess.

How could I replicate my elegiac essay about Romania's orphans? How would my inept conversational skills compare to caffeinated e-mails? I'd shot my load online and left little for reality.

Saturday. Dive bar. Ten p.m. We met. The pixels lied. Her hair was darker, eyes smaller, waist larger. And though a fierce proponent of substance trumping looks, I needed looks to shore up the substance.

We bought our favorite drinks -- gin-and-tonics -- and tried to talk. I stumbled. She fumbled. Our one-sided missives that had said so much were quiet. We purchased another round. And another. Our conversation grew louder but went nowhere. The barkeep poured us another round. Now we were drunk and unable to make conversation. So we started making out.

Her tongue slid where mine didn't. My hand traveled where it shouldn't. Her breath tasted bad. Mine must've been worse. We kept making out, though, searching for some physical connection to justify those heady weeks of electronic communiqués.

But no connection existed. We stopped making out. We stopped drinking.

"I think I better go," Jenny slurred.

I agreed. It was growing late. "I like getting up early," I said.

I know," Jenny said.

"I'll call you," I said.

"No, you won't," she said, and staggered home to a bed I'd never know.

-- Joshua M. Bernstein, New York City

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