"Merrily, merrily, merrily,
merrily..."
Consensus molds reality. Why isn't
there a manifest God? No consensus! For every Baptist sure of
Christ's divinity, someone else fervently believes the opposite.
Even two people who sit together in church don't worship the same
God. They may suppose they do, but ha! Six billion unique concepts
cancel each other out. But you can game the system.
I decided to create the perfect partner
for myself. I didn't worry about official records. No one really
cares about those. I made a Facebook page, Twitter account,
LiveJournal, personal website, even a couple of T-shirt designs at
Café Press. I invented a small business complete with everything
except a product. (She's a consultant; I left it vague.) Building a
girlfriend from the bottom up, so to speak, kept me occupied. I
posted elaborate descriptions of our dates. Natalie was so busy, I
told my friends, that she didn't have time to meet them in the flesh.
She confirmed this in stressed-out posts on her blog.
Soon I was the biggest problem,
because only I knew she wasn't real! As time went by, more and more
people added their increments of belief. Then my sister emailed.
"Invited Natalie for lunch,"
Charlotte said, "it was so nice to finally meet her."
Um...what? I hadn't even answered Charlotte's invitation. That
night my mother texted that she and Natalie were planning a joint
shopping expedition. I stopped writing messages "from Natalie."
Didn't matter. Everyone kept getting them, except me. I suspected a
joke, even thought about ways to catch the perpetrators.
Then I realized I'd fallen into a trap.
I couldn't believe in a conspiracy. I had to believe all
these messages were from the real Natalie. Only then could that
become true. I took a few days off. I didn't eat or sleep. I posted
reminder notes from Natalie all over the apartment. I dug out unused
Christmas cards, addressed them to Natalie and myself, and put them
all over. I constantly repeated things like "don't forget
Natalie wants low-fat milk." Pretty soon I was so hungry and so
short on sleep that the distinction between reality and myth almost
completely disappeared.
--
I woke up on the living room floor,
dizzy with hunger. The TV mumbled. I smelled pizza.
"Dinner's here," Natalie
called. "Hurry up, I have to be at the airport in an hour."
"Coming!" I struggled to my
feet. Better wash my face for our first date.
Publ 2009 Daily Cabal
No comments:
Post a Comment