EPISODE 91: IMPORTANCE

Welcome to my sort of blog which presently seems curious about focus and importance.  Exercise 10 of Harry Palmer’s ‘Resurfacing’ is called ‘Emotion and Importance.’  In a sidebar he defines ‘importance’ and the synonyms consequence, moment, weight, and significance. The objective of the exercise is ‘to determine the existing order of importance in your life’ and you begin by making a list of ten people, objects, events or projects in which you have recently invested attention.

Last week my attention was split between a worry about my health and answering messages on an international chat line, particularly those from Eli, an Iranian woman who owns a dress shop in Rasht which is on the Caspian Sea. Now, one might think that because I learned a certain amount about life in modern Iran (and also developed a desire to visit the area) that this had a level of importance and maybe I was developing a friendship that could have beneficial consequences in the future. But no, I wasn’t. The thing is I was posing as a different version of myself.

What happened was this.

On the site you put a picture of yourself and write a blurb. You also put your age. Having done that I found I was ‘visited’ mainly by women of a certain age (and the Ghanaian women who I have written about before). I also feared that if I clicked on the profiles of younger women I’d be thought some sort of pervert. So, alongside my fairly honest profile I put up another one with a picture of my 25 year old self - the bald wrinkled behatted old hippy transmogrified into a long haired bearded pretty boy with intense eyes.

To say the younger version was an instantly popular babe magnet would be stretching the truth beyond even my capability to lie. As time went by, however, he scored a couple of hits, one of which was Eli who contacted me with the smitten message ‘you look frightening!’ As she herself had no photo displayed, it was easy for me to come up with a teasing response based on the avatar provided by the site - a faceless person wearing a pink cardigan. She gave me an lol to that and so followed a sequence of messages in which I continued to make her laugh. Somehow we developed a play in which it was my job to play the fool and make her smile while she gradually revealed more of her actual life with her unfunny but adoring husband which, I might add, she seemed to be enjoying immensely.

Almost two weeks went by and the messages were becoming a torrent and an obsession. From early in the morning to late at night we were in contact and my day was spent thinking of smartalec responses to her urgings. She admitted I was exceptional, that she hadn’t corresponded like this before and that when I didn’t reply for a few hours she would become ratty.

All this time I didn’t get to see her face although at one point she was about to send a picture. She didn’t do it, not out of shyness I think, but because she liked the idea of my creating her in different ways in my imagination. At first I wanted a picture but as time went by I saw us as two friends bitching happily each other in a Persian bazar and I didn’t need to create a specific face for her.

Last Friday I became both frustrated by the inevitable shallowness of the interchanges and keen to undo this latest addiction.  At this stage Eli was having me as Tintin - or Tantan as he is known in Iran. To subvert her image I found a number of pictures on google of Tintin with women and also one called ‘Tintin in love’ in which you see him crying. Out of these I created a narrative supported by the photos which concluded with Tintin waving goodbye as he sets off on an adventure.

With this, I deleted the account.

I also deleted an incipient but impossible love affair with a rather gorgeous Mexicana 22 year old who had sent me, no, not me, the past me, a message promising sweet loving should I ever go to Mexico. Of course I replied enthusiastically on behalf of my younger self. She then sent me some very deliciously erotic photographs. For more than a few moments I prepared myself to fly to Mexico to join her both in bed and at this year’s Day of the Dead festival. And then of course the truth dawned. To make matters worse, my Mexicana wanted some more photos of me and to chat on skype.

So that, sadly, was the end of that.

***

The health thing last week was probably all a bit dumb and my strange way of reacting to a half-thought that I should make an effort to improve myself. I didn’t expect a former partner to have hysterics because she thought I was about to die. (Actually it was her present partner’s father who died so she was in some sort of ballpark.) I certainly managed to sabotage the chi kung class that was to be my symbolic gesture and the chances of my turning up this week for class 2 are already minimum. I still get to feel dizzy and I still sometimes feel that there is a pulse pulsating rapidly that shouldn’t really be doing so. The doctor seemed mostly disinterested in these symptoms although she did suggest I could have a 24 hour ECG. I don’t actually know what that would entail but because it sounded discommoding I just said ‘oh’ and we left it at that.