"Todd," came a squeal loaded with excitement. My name could be heard all over the Orlando Airport terminal building. I turned to follow the voice and there she was: a beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties with shoulder-length blonde hair running straight at me. She nearly flung herself into my arms and, if I had not backed up a half step at the last second, she may have knocked me off my feet. Instead, my body seemed to absorb her momentum as she wrapped her arms around me and held me for several seconds in a tight hug, feet dangling six inches above the floor, and squeezing all the breath out of me. And I returned her hug with all my heart.
Finally she let go just enough to get her feet on the ground and kissed me, and I was convinced the kiss heated up the entire terminal building. Lots of lip, a little tongue, a serious amount of passion - definitely a kiss between more than just friends.
We parted lips and just looked into each others' eyes for a few seconds. Then she exclaimed, quietly this time, but with a great deal of feeling, "We made it!" She backed up out of my arms with reluctance, while maintaining the same excitement, holding both of my hands in hers.
Feeling totally at a loss for words, which was extremely rare for me, all I could muster was a weak, "You're here."
"Yesssss!" she almost hissed. Melany was so clearly excited that she actually jumped up and down for a few seconds, still holding both my hands in hers. Her joy at seeing me was affecting me, making me want to jump up and down with her, but I was a little too old and way too male for jumping.
Then she looked around and spotted two girls her age, just as blonde and almost as beautiful, standing slightly behind her.
"This is Joy and Lynda. You already know them from the website."
So I guess I need to make some introductions. My name is Todd, as you have already guessed. I am fifty years old, tall, and have brown hair with a tint of red and a smattering of gray. I am tall, just a hair beyond six feet three inches (yes, that was a pun...), with medium build and average physique. I used to work out a lot and my body clearly showed an aging but fit physique with just a hint of a belly. Nothing great to look at, but nothing to be embarrassed about, either.
Melany, on the other hand, was about as perfect as any man could want. She stood about five feet seven inches. Her eyes were so penetrating that it was difficult to look into them and then away in just a few seconds. And this was saying something, because the rest of her was so awesome it demanded attention. She was slender with a thin waste widening into incredible hips, and with a trim and tight ass that received a lot of attention from everyone around her. Her breasts were a beautiful and pert C-cup that both jutted and hung ever so slightly. All in all, she was every bit as gorgeous and hot as a center-fold model, wrapped, I was only now noticing, in a dark blue short skirt and tight white cotton blouse that clung to her figure enough to get tons of attention from everyone in the building, men and women. She wore white sandals with two inch heels and lots of straps wrapped in all kinds of ways around her ankles, adding to her height but still leaving her short enough for me to bend over when I kissed her.
We had met over the Internet on a porn site advertised in one of the dozens of junk emails I received every day. You know the type of website - a girl in front of a camera engaging in sexy activities, where the guests could type comments or requests and the girl would type back a response or perform whatever action was requested. But this particular "room" had two beautiful blondes enjoying what seemed to be very pleasurable activities on the camera. As I hesitantly joined in the typed exchanges, I noticed that the girls on cam would type on a keyboard without even looking at it. It took me a while, since this was a first for me (I had never visited a porn site like this before), but I finally realized that there must be a third person in the room who was typing what we read on the screen, while one of the "cam girls" faked typing the messages.
"I know the other two girl's names - what is yours?" I typed. There was a long pause, and then a small window opened on my screen with a label across the top saying "Private Message", and I read, "My name is Melany. What is yours?"
From that moment on, Melany and I typed each other for hours several times a week, often chatting so much that I didn't really see the show that was being performed on cam. For the next two months, we developed something of a relationship. By that I mean that I fell in love with the woman in our "private chats," which were separate from the public chats to which everyone could contribute.
The first thing that caught my attention in the early days of our relationship was the fact that Melany could type to me in private while typing to the other guests in public. She was keeping both of the conversations going so quickly that I was intrigued at her speed. And she never confused one conversation with the other, which was good because we were to the point of typing some things to each other that we would probably not want to share with the other men (and maybe women?) watching the show.
The second thing that I noticed was the fact that Melany could spell. What I mean is, almost all my Internet messages and emails with women, old and young, until I met Melany, showed that American women were horrible at spelling and grammar and writing complete sentences. Of course, American men were even worse, but I didn't spend much time texting or emailing men in my Internet relationships. Suffice it to say that standard electronic exchanges over the Internet demonstrated what appeared to be a complete failure of the American educational system.
Not so with Melany. She could spell and create complete sentences that belied the fact that she was born and raised Hungarian, and English was a second language to her.
So I enjoyed typing to Melany for hours each week. And she apparently enjoyed typing to me. So much so that it was in our fourth week that she used the "L" word in a sentence just as naturally as could be. I nearly gasped, paused mentally, and then continued texting as if nothing important had happened. But, or course, something important HAD happened, and no one could take it back.
You see, both Melany and I had broken the rules of a sex-based relationship. At the local strip bar or on a sex-site over the Internet, one thing no one does is get serious about feelings. All sorts of feelings can be expressed and every kind of promise can be tossed around and everyone took it for what it was - a statement made to get a sexual reaction. A man could say that he loved a dancer as long as he said so at the same time he was requesting that she turn around or bend over in some way. Expressing feelings in a strip bar has the same weight and carries the same impact as a campaign promise. As long as you took it as a dishonest claim to get something from you, no one would get hurt. Only the stupid took sex talk or campaign promises seriously. And any individual who took seriously that statement of feelings, or that promise during a campaign, was destined for disappointment. It is just that simple. Only the naïve or ignorant didn't understand that about sex talk or campaign promises.
So when I heard Melany make the claim, "That's why I love you, Todd. You are always such a gentleman," I paused long enough to remind myself of the rules. She is free to express love or any other feeling because everyone knows it results in more tips. That's cool; I can deal with that, I assured myself. And then I continued the conversation. But try as I could, there was no way I could ignore the fact that my heart beat faster when I heard her say the "L" word. And over the next several conversations, she used the "L" word again. Three times in about four hours of texting, she used the word "love". And each time my heart would beat faster.
And then it happened.
I was texting a response to something she said as we were ending our conversation for the night. Then, without thinking, I typed, "I love you. Have a good night and great dreams.' Then, just as I hit the SEND button, I froze. But it was too late. I had sent my own declaration of love.
And after a moment of panic, I realized it was true. I had fallen in love with the woman portrayed in our conversations; a woman less than half my age. I had broken the rules. I had no idea what she looked like, but I already knew so much about her that I was clearly in love with what she had allowed me to know about her. Oh, was I in trouble, now! I was in love with a young woman who lived about 6,000 miles away, and I hadn't even seen her face! I was destined for disappointment, and there was nothing I cold do about it.
Over the next few weeks, we were more and more free with statements declaring our feelings for each other. I was sure she was aware of the unspoken rules about feelings based on a "virtual" relationship, but that did not seem to stop her. Further, and even more important, I was aware of those rules and I didn't seem to hesitate breaking them. Often.
And then one day she gave me the address to her FaceBook page. When I visited it (almost immediately, of course!), the first thing I noticed was her picture. It was beautiful! After staring at the picture for quite some hours over the next couple of days, I sent her a text.
"The more I look at your pic, and I look at it a lot, the more I see a story there. You are at an airport - no, a train station - and you are waiting for someone you care deeply about to arrive, but he is late. Perhaps so late that you have given up on him. You are deeply disappointed with the idea that he has decided to not come. You are sitting at a table with a drink in your left hand and your head resting on your right. You are looking down, thinking about the plans you had that were now trashed, when you hear a voice. You look up and recognize your friend has arrived after all. Your face is just beginning to show the joy and excitement your heart feels, and a smile is just BARELY touching your lips, and someone snapped a picture of you."
As I read what I texted to her just after sending it to her, I knew I was in deep shit. I was truly in love and feeling very romantic about it. In fact, I felt like a teenager in love. My feelings were clearly out of control. There was no turning back, now! I HAD to meet her and see if this was real!
And now we were deep into our third month. I finally brought up the possibility of her visiting me in Orlando. She admitted that she and her friends sometimes talked about visiting America, and Disney World was at the top of their list to visit. I told her that I lived less than thirty miles from Disney World and that, if she ever came to visit me, I would take her to Disney World.
We talked several times that week about her visiting me. I told her that she should be cautious about accepting my invitation, and should take seriously the issue of her safety. She typed back that she didn't understand what I meant. I told her that I could be typing anything I want and she really didn't know what was true and what was a lie. I told her that if my sister ever expressed interest in visiting a man that she had never met except over the Internet, that I would do everything I could to dissuade her from making the trip.
Melany replied, "But you love me and I love you. What is the problem?"
