I had so much fun on my afternoon with Lee I could have pawed the white out of the moon (and, in fact, it was a fullish moon that night)!
As others who have done it may agree, it is strange to meet in person someone you know only through disembodied words. Frankly, I was a tiny bit nervous. But five minutes into it, I knew it would be great. If most lunch meetings with "strangers" start with step 1, I felt like we were starting at 4, or 6, or 8. We already knew bits about each other's backgrounds and how we felt about certain things. We could jump right into subjects I might not normally talk about until I'd known the other person for years. We talked about Brokeback, about BetterMost, about politics and movies, about our families, our work, our pasts, our futures ... the only topic we tactfully avoided was Lureen, as we've disagreed about her in the past!
We wondered if maybe there are other qualities (in addition to fish tacos -- see polling place!), that Brokies unwittingly all share, besides our obvious obsession. What else explains this amazing bond we all have?
After a great lunch Lee and I walked around, she gave me a ride back to my brother's, we sat in the yard talking, decided that wasn't enough and went back into town for a beer, talked a while more. Lee showered me with Western hospitality and even gifts, including a little spatterware coffee cup -- which I later properly broke(backed) in with a shot of whiskey from my brother's liquor cabinet (Jim Beam, not Old Rose, but close enough -- I said an Ennis-like "thank you" when my brother poured it). She showed me photos of her beautiful children. She lent me her copy of "Story to Screenplay" to read on the plane, which I did.
I described my encounter to everyone I talked to that weekend, but I'm not sure how much they really got it. To say that you had lunch with someone from an internet message board sounds so disembodied and impersonal. What's hard to convey -- and I can understand their confusion, because I probably wouldn't have believed it myself -- is how close you can feel to someone you've never "met" except online.
I hope to meet many others of you someday soon (and one of you in particular, very soon!
).
PS Lee, that's nice of you to be sensitive, though actually I am not so much photo-shy as I am photo-inept (I don't have a current pic of myself; I lost my camera charger months ago and
for some reason haven't had time to get it replaced). Anyway, next time I'm there, let's definitely get a picture together; you're pretty darn photogenic yourself. Meanwhile, one of these days I'll replace that charger and post my own.
* Edited, for lucidity, this morning.