Love Virtually Read Online Free

that you’ve betrayed something extraordinary to me, your “virtual character,” your “identikit fantasy.” That’s what you might call “private life à la Leo the Language Psychologist.” I’m far too tired to give you a useful answer today. But tomorrow you’ll receive a proper analysis, if that’s O.K. with you. You know, with 1), 2), 3), etc. Sleep well, have some meaningful dreams. But I suggest you don’t dream about Marlene.
    Emmi
    The following day
    Subject: Marlene
    Good morning Leo.
    Do you mind if I get a bit tougher with you?
    1) So you’re a man who’s only interested in a woman at the beginning and at the end: when he wants to get her, and just before he’s about to lose her for good. You find the time in between—which some people call “being together”—either too boring or too stressful, or both. Am I right?
    2) By some miracle you managed to evade marriage (this time), but you’d be quite prepared to saunter up the aisle to get a Spanish airline pilot out of your soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend’s bed. That testifies to something of a lack of respect for the wedding vows. Am I right?
    3) You’ve been married once before. Am I right?
    4) I can almost picture you wallowing in self-pity, sitting there reading old love letters and looking at photos instead of doing something that might make a woman believe you were capable of anything approaching love, or that you had even the slightest desire for something more permanent.
    5) And then MY fateful email comes flying into your in-box of destiny. It’s almost as if I chose exactly the right time to say what Marlene must have had on the tip of her tongue for years: LEO, IT’S OVER, BECAUSE IT NEVER EVEN STARTED! Or to put it more subtly and poetically, more atmospherically: “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, from Emmi Rothner.”
    6) But then, my dear Leo, you do something pretty special. You reply to Marlene. You congratulate her on her decision. You say: YOU’RE RIGHT, MARLENE, IT’S OVER, BECAUSE IT NEVER EVEN STARTED! Or in other words, more subtly, more energetically and forcefully, you say: “Dear Emmi Rothner, we don’t know each other in the slightest but I’d like to thank you for your warm and highly original round-robin email! One thing you should know: I just adore round-robin emails. Rgds, Leo Leike.”—You’re a phenomenally good loser, dear Leo—magnanimous and classy.
    7) My final question: Do you still want me to write?
    Have a good day,
    Emmi
    Two hours later
    Re: Marlene
    Hello Emmi!
    Re: 1) It’s not my fault that I remind you of some man who has obviously let you down—quite stylishly even, the way you describe it in point 1. Please do not presume to know me better than you can! (You cannot know me at all.)
    Re: 2) As far as my most recent evasion of the wedding vows is concerned, I can only call myself a “complete prat.” But sarcastic, sanctimonious Emmi with her size 6 1/2 shoes goes one better to save the honor of marriage, presumably with eyes tightly shut and slobbering at the mouth.
    Re: 3) Sorry, but I’ve never been married! You? Several times, am I right?
    Re: 4) Here’s that man from point 1 again, a man who prefers to read old love letters to proving his undying love for you.
    Perhaps there have been many of those men in your life.
    Re: 5) Yes, at that very moment when your Christmas greeting arrived in my in-box I felt as if I’d lost Marlene.
    Re: 6) I replied to you back then to distract myself from my failure, Emmi. And I still consider my correspondence with you to be part of my Marlene therapy.
    Re: 7) Yes, by all means feel free to write to me! Type away all your frustration with men, from the depths of your soul. Unleash all your self-righteousness, cynicism, and gloating. If you feel better afterward, my in-box has done its job. If you don’t, then just