David was one of the first men I met on and off line. David and I were made for one another. He was just a year younger than I, divorced two years and father of two children. He liked opera and backpacking -- two of my passions. When I met him online, he had recently been backpacking in Ukraine and had been to the opera in Moscow. He was a geologist who also liked polishing stones and his mother threw pottery with the Navajos in New Mexico. My interest in Native American was evidenced in the pottery collection in my Southwest themed bedroom and in the many pieces of silver jewelry with multicolored stones which I'd acquired -- mostly in New Mexico. I'd also recently taken a course in silver at the lapidary school.
I invited David to go with me to The Flying Dutchman. I had a subscription to the opera and always liked to introduce new people to opera, but Wagnerian opera is not for cutting teeth. We emailed back and forth for a couple of weeks before the opera, choosing not to meet before the opera as I was fearful that if an initial date prior to the opera was a bust, I'd have no companion for Dutchman.
Email was always bright, informative, communicative, fun and warm, but whenever I would chat with him, I felt I put my cyber foot in cyber mouth. I learned in chat with him about the loss of his sister in a drowning accident and about the celebration of his birthday in Dallas at the parade on that fateful day in November when JFK was assassinated. I was extremely uncomfortable chatting about death as I had not really experienced loss of anyone close at that point in my life.
About that time, a neighbor was working on producing a movie and looking at other scripts. He gave me a copy of a script for which he had purchased the rights. The main character in the script was David and figuring prominently in the script were hummingbirds as symbols of the spirits of departed loved ones. The hummingbirds led David to find love in that story. I read the script the week before my date with David.
David made 5:00 reservations at one of the nicest restaurants in Houston. He wasn't much taller than me, wasn't much bigger than me, wasn't quite what I'd expected, but as we sat outside on the deck overlooking the bayou and drank wine and dined and talked, there was an easy flow of conversation. We had so much to talk about that before we realized it we were running late for the opera. somewhere in the conversation on the deck, David showed me a ring he was wearing. It was Navajo jewelry he told me. His sister had picked it out for him. It was a hummingbird. I had a little shiver when he said that, but I did not tell him of the script I had read.
After the opera, neither of us wanted the evening to end. We went to a little bar and drank Guinness and leaned up against one another and talked and watched people until the bar closed at 2 AM. He returned me to my car and gave me a cd he had made for me of some choral music and we made plans for another opera at a local college the following weekend. The evening seemed almost perfect -- the stuff of which dreams and movies are made.
He called two days later with little to say and seemed very nervous. He canceled the plans for the following weekend, saying he had to go to Dallas as his father was ailing. He would call me when he returned to town.
On Tuesdays I was involved in a tutoring program for 2nd and 3rd graders at a local elementary school. The program was sponsored by my church and most of the others in the program were older retired volunteers. There was one woman about my age. Her husband sang with me in the choir and I had done a charitable home repair project as a part of his team. On that Tuesday, before our hour of volunteering began, she lost an earring down the front of her sweater. They were not particularly valuable earrings, but they were hummingbirds that her husband David had given her for their anniversary. Very strange...David and hummingbirds three times in less than a week...
I never heard from David again. I saw him on the dating site about a week later, but he logged off when I tried to chat and he never again returned my email.
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lacyvsq
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Jul 3 @ 2:11AM
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I posted this story first a couple of years ago. There is a part to this story that I left out previously however.
When David dumped me after what seemed to be such a wonderful evening, I obsessed for several weeks over what had gone wrong, what I had done wrong, what was wrong with me... (Notice that I did not put any question marks in there. That is because I created a dozen answers.) A wise friend suggested that I might write David and ask him directly, but that if I received a reply like "...your butt was too big" or .-- well I can't remember what other insulting explanations he suggested I might get in reply -- that I would only feel bad about myself and that if I did not get an answer like that, I would likely not believe the answer and I would still feel bad about myself.
I know rationally that people will sometime behave in a manner which I do not understand, which makes no sense to me, which seems totally out of character. When those actions feel like a rejection or abandonment of me, it drives me nuts that I have no explanation. I am a creative person and I will conjure up all kinds of reasons and mostly want to "fix" any rift. I can acknowledge that the behavior may have little or nothing to do with me, but if a person has interacted with me, s/he owes it to me to let me know why I am cut loose.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors...
The scars (and sometimes open wounds) of childhood continue to cripple me from time to time. When a child is an emotional orphan in a household with two living adults, the illusion of family juxtaposed with the reality of abandonment can be very confusing. Abandonment by people who seem to care at all mimics that old familiar "love". I chase after it trying to reclaim what I missed in my childhood. The allure of the one who has left is like the stolen cookie -- somehow so much sweeter than a proffered box.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, thought as a child, understood as a child, but when I became a (wo)man, I put away childish things...
It just seems I cannot help but take them out to play at times. I wish the play were more fun...
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TroutFishing
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Jul 3 @ 2:27AM
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You are perfectly who you are supposed to be and anyone that
cannot accept that has the problem.
We can only control ourselves - not others.
Just always be you and you will have friends galore.
Maybe not the ones you would have picked out - but friends anyway.
  
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Slohand_47
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Jul 3 @ 9:50AM
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Just about everyone who has been online any length of time has their own "disappearing" story. It's hard to believe that knowing the reason could have been more painful than knowing nothing.
I did have one long distance friend pass away and I would never have known her reason for vanishing..... except her sister in another state was also a chat friend and she let me know.
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redtigr
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Jul 3 @ 10:53PM
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I remember this blog.
I also remember thinking how many, many people play at relationships as if they are trying out for a part in a play (or an opera?), shedding the facade or taking up a new one and seeming unable or unwilling to be a whole and complete person outside the "theater" of online.
~*~
What he did has nothing to do with who you are.
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Somerled
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Jul 20 @ 1:48PM
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Lacy, it's just a theory -- not a dogmatic statement. David may have been married and for whatever reason was contemplating an affair. He liked you on the date and felt inwardly bad for several reasons: he was betraying his wife; he was misleading and attempting to exploit you; he sensed that he would feel committed to you. You saw him online later, because he was still contemplating an affair. He may have decided to find someone less engaging that he could be more superficial with and less enamored with.
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Loinlee_Sole
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Sep 30 @ 5:53PM
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Its nice to know why you never hear back from some one after you go out and have a really great time......I have lost track of how many times that its happened to me...........but you never get that explanation.....so I gave up on wanting it.......their loss I figure
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