Purveyor of Iniquities

We have (had? more later) a close friend who was ahead of us in school and thus set out into the world ahead of us as well. She was also a bit more adventurous than we, which meant that she really did step out. Or maybe she was reckless; it doesn’t matter. The point is that we had some interest in maintaining contact with her because she was interesting, funny, adventurous, reckless, etc. And, coming from a certain Northeast school, she was plugged into email in a way that others are not. That is, it was her primary means of communication.

Our friend, however, is too good at email. Many times over the two years after she left her school, our friend sent us emails. Many emails. It’s not that there were too many emails (having come from the same school, we like email, too) but that they were too long. Pages and pages and pages each.

And every single email racked us with guilt because how could we possibly reply in kind? Sure, we like to write, but the blank screen is intimidating when we have that much space to fill and so little to say because our lives are languid and empty. And we rejected out of hand simply addressing each of her points and thereby building up bulk because there is no substance to that. We want substance, a thematic push of some sort, in each thing that we write. Point by point discussion is not the way to achieve it and would feel like cheating a friend. Also, that often leads to interminable back and forth exchanges that soon become a chore to continue.

And so, at a loss, we wrote short emails, extremely short, in which we apologized for our lack of time (right!) and promised longer emails in the future, just around the corner, maybe next week or something. But we were just buying time, and every time we saw our friend (in person!) we were embarrassed and forced into pleading our busy-ness to excuse our poor email etiquette, our virtual cold-shouldering. She was nice and excused us and we got along famously.

After a while (and it did take quite a while), we just couldn’t bear to respond to our friend’s massive missives. Each would linger in our inbox for a week or more until we would become so disguisted with ourselves that we wouldn’t even check our mail for a day or two or a weekend. People send us a lot of email, and it piles up when we don’t check it. So the message we were avoiding would get buried and then, along with everything else, stuffed into an archive. Out of sight, out of mind; we could check email again so long as we didn’t think about it too much and remember our irresponsibility.

But eventually, our friend’s long emails stopped coming. We can’t say now whether they petered out or halted because we’ve blocked the matter from our consciousness so well for such a long period of time. We do know that we haven’t received one for a few months, maybe six months. Maybe shorter, maybe longer; something like that. When we noticed, we called our friend; we had not heard from her or of her in some time. She didn’t answer, which is hardly unusual, but we tried her many times during different parts of the day and week. We even left a few messages with our own number.

But we have heard nothing back. Our friend might have gotten a new phone or a new number. More likely, she could be out of the country (we once had a close mutual friend who would have alerted us of such developments, but that friend is mutual no longer) or driving around somewhere or something like that. She could be busy, like we once were and might be again someday. But it’s been a while and we haven’t heard anything. We are concerned. Did our silence over the wire offend her? Is she in trouble or depressed or otherwise out-of-commission? Has she joined a cult? Or has she picked up our once-mutual friend’s antagonism towards us (not that we expect him to champion such a thing)?

We just don’t know.

And we are afraid to email.