How Paul Fits In - Part 2

After a few days I for some bizarre reason decided to mail him and thank him for admitting that he would like to meet me, even though he seems to be living on the edge of the world and then agter that one mail, forgot all about the blond in the Grey (6 out of 10, as he now refers to that jersey after reading my blog on Friday) jersey. A few days after that, I received a mail back from him. Something I didn’t expect at all. But he was very polite and somehow we started chatting. Nothing serious at first. One mail a week was all we had between us and it was enough. He was a very nice guy, but that was it. Then one night, in early April, I was at my sisters house chatting online to Facebook friends of mine when suddenly up pops Mr. Joubert and for the first time we chatted in real time. It was about 9 at night, if memory serves me, and when I looked again it was just about 3 in the morning. But it felt like ten minutes. The dialog we had that then in those early hours before going t bed went something as follows:

The Airline that brought my Paul to me

Paul: “Tell me do you have Mxit?”

Zeo: “Yes I do”

Paul: “Please add me as a contact.”

Zeo: “I have no idea how to do that. You will have to add me. My number is ……….” (Because I really don’t know how to do it, but I don’t have that chat thing anymore. I didn’t even set it up on my phone originally. I am really techno challenged)

Paul: “hahahaha, wel this was an easy way to get your number”

Zeo: “Yea, whatever, I am tired. Goodnight. Chat soon.”

And so we started chatting, every day and every night. I remember falling asleep at night and when I woke up some mornings I still had my phone in my hand. Before I knew it I was falling in love with a guy that I had no idea who he really was. I started falling in love with a personality and a photo.

About a month into our chats he told me that he wants to come for a visit. I was overjoyed, but at the same time kakking myself. We had a good thing going. We chatted and that was it. Why come here? Why complicate matters? Yes part of me was jumping up and down and another part of me was in complete fear and horror. What I didn’t know, (something he only confessed a year or so later) was that he just thought he was coming to Cape Town for a holiday and to hopefully make a new friend. Maybe it’s good I didn’t know that, because in my state of falling in love with a Facebook/Mxit man I decided to try and help him to come to Cape Town for a visit.

A regular thing!

I phoned every Airline and bus service. I checked the train prices. He admitted that he wants to fly, so it was back to the drawing board. When I had all of the prices for the various airlines I decided to phone him. This would be the first time that we would speak over the phone to each other. The first time I would hear his voice. Sweat dripping down my face, I pick the phone and dial his number. We speak and even though I didn’t know what to expect I was shocked at his voice. I phoned my sister immediately to tell her that he has a gay voice. She was like “really?” What I meant was that he sounded gay. His voice sounded like a gay mans voice.  Let me just tell you, before we carry on, Paul sounds completely different over the phone. He doesn’t have a deep voice or anything but he sounds completely different. Back to my story. So my sister decides to phone him. She phones him from her work number, because that way he won’t get a caller ID and when he answers she tells him that she has the wrong number. She phones me back and tells me that he has a gay mans voice.  But gay phone voice or not I am smitten with my Facebook/Mxit man. (Please note that I don’t mean gay voice as in he sounded stupid. On the contrary, his speech was perfect.) I still have the piece of paper on which I wrote all those airline quotes for him. We now carried on chatting online but we also had a daily phone conversation, one that easily lasted for an hour or three.  He wanted to book himself into a guesthouse and I naturally told him to come sleep at my place. Knowing that I only had one bed. A Queen size yes, but he would have to share a bed with me. Now in Cape Town lingo that means “We are gonna have sex” but apparently in Burgersfort lingo it means “you are going to sleep and it just happens to be the same bed”, a fact that I also didn’t know, until much later. He chose a day to come down to Cape Town. It was going to be 9 July 2008, late afternoon. It was all very real for me suddenly. I was going to meet the man that I started to fall for over the internet and part of me felt like a complete fool. I felt like a complete hypocrite, since I now became the Internet dater that I warned all my friends not to be. Also I was scared, scared that he wouldn’t like me. But be that as it may, on the 9^th of July in 2008 my sister and I together with one of her work friends, Raveen, went to Cape Town International Airport to wait for a man that did not turn out to be Mr. Right but Mr. Abso-fucking-lutely Perfect! But to hear how it happened, you will have to wait some more.

Mwah!!