You can only look at affirmations so long before losing belief in yourself. I know--it happened to me day after day. Being trollishly unattractive and attracted to the weird doesn't hurt either. It leaves you feeling weary and alone. So you turn to someplace you really can't be seen. Your computer. yes"> You can call over the telephone lines to other places with your computer, havens for other whacked-out crazies like you, lonely people looking to share their fractions of lives in hopes of a few minutes of kinship. You can make a lot of friends that way, friends who'll never meet you, and never *see* you, which is important when you're as homely as I am. So you turn on your computer one night, planning to dial in.
That's when it happens. The keyboard slips out of your lap, tumbling to the ground, keys popping off and scattering amongst your debris-ridden carpet. I forgot--you're messy as hell, too... What's the point in being neat if nobody else is going to see it, anyway? I mean, *you* know where everything is.
Well, almost everything. What's it matter, anyway? Most of it's not *too* important. The 'Hello Page' you put in your boot-up program blithely gives you the same messages you got the previous day, and every other day you've logged on since you installed the damned thing. The messages are affirmations. That's why I mentioned it earlier... Things to remind you you're a good person at heart, things to remind you what you deserve, and what you desire.
You ignore it, scrambling on the floor for all the missing keys you lost, like sifting through the alphabet soup, past the unwanted vegetables for a letter here and there. As you find them, you snap the letters back into place. You curse at your clumsiness, continuing a search for the last key--the backspace. No go. You claw through everything... rats' nests of cables, fallen pens, crumpled papers, but it's gone.You curse to yourself for a while, then shrug. It's a big loss, but you can still dial in. You just won't be able to erase the things you wrote.
Hours pass, but you have a bitch of a time trying to call up the system where your 'friends' hang out. It seems that the host computer's down, so you won't be able to meet up with them in the private space that makes you feel a little less lonely. The 'hello page' comes up again as you leave your dialing program. Frustrated, you curse, going all hands-and-knees again as you quest after a little plastic key. Nothing left to do, really.
That's when you feel something tap you on the shoulder. You turn around, expecting a parent or roommate who's watching you. It isn't. You're stunned.
You can't believe it... It's her. You somehow know it instinctively--the fairness of her face, the bemused sparkle in her eye, the ever-so-slight trace of wickedness in her otherwise open smile. You turn briefly towards the words still flickering on your computer screen, the ones describing the person you most desire. It *is* her.
"Looking for something?" she asks.
You stare at her, fumbling for words. "Um... yeah. The backspace key for my keyboard."
"As opposed to the one for your foot?"
Dumb silence. "Huh?"
"Nevermind. I'm kidding. Forget about it... and the keyboard, too." She turns off the computer, motioning for you to sit down next to her. It all seems so unreal to you--impossible. Mechanically, you find yourself sitting back down in your chair. She's in the one that's empty, the one you save for company that never shows.
She guides the conversation, telling you about herself, letting it all unfold as easily as something you already knew. There's a rush of *intimacy* in knowing she's what you've always imagined you wanted, and that she knows she's there because of you. She doesn't explain *how* she knows, or even how she got there. Just that she'll stay as long as she can, and for you, with what little you have, that's enough.
A year goes by, and you haven't used your computer at all. Each day, your search for that backspace key is interrupted by a loving caress and a romantic summons to something--not necessarily sex, but what turns into a loving event of some sort, shared moments and experiences that bring people close. Trips to the beach, picnics, art shows, sailing... The world seems so much more 'whole,' somehow, as if it made sense seen through *her* eyes as well as your own. The days themselves become almost tangible--hulky solid things of real mass and power, as opposed to airy things that flitted by in an instant, like they were *before* she miraculously appeared. For some reason, you link the missing backspace key with her arrival; it's as if when you find it, she'll disappear.
Despite this, you keep looking for it, knowing how your luck has always been... If you *didn't* actively search for it, you'd run across it accidentally, pick it up, and that would be that--but when you *lose* something, and you *try* to find it, it never surfaces. Murphy's Law works overtime on you.
When she's around, though, Murphy's Law gets bent. Things go wrong, but they become pleasant surprises; car breakdowns become romantic walks down a sunset-streaked road, burned dinners become nights out on the town. She's like alchemy for your life. Time alone leaves you stunned with your own happiness.
One morning, after countless days, you look into the mirror at yourself, a goofy grin on your misshapen face. You ask yourself, "How did I get so lucky?" You shrug your shoulders and walk away, headed off to get dressed... and something sharp sticks in your foot. It's the backspace key that fractured off so long ago.
Time slows to a stop as you pick it up.