Tuesday, February 23. 2016

Michael John Beaulieu. Mike. I met you five years ago, in the late fall of 2010. You had posted online on a dating site, Chemistry, which matched you as one of my potentials. You were an Executive type, I believe, with Explorer tendencies, and I was labeled a Nurturer/Explorer. I will admit now that you looked very much like someone else that I had dated, down to similar life facts. A military guy, take-charge job. Several children. Gray hair, clean-cut look, easy smile. I in fact labeled you his look-alike.

But your written profile was you, although not about you. It was sincere, so sincere. You wrote what you wanted out of life, out of a relationship, out of a person to be with you. It wasn’t flowery, or witty, or particularly exploratory. It was not all about trips to Paris or similar tastes in wine. It did come from your heart. And it showed that you really wanted someone to really be with you. You described a person who would listen, who would be kind, who would be open to working with you. You described a partner. You set a very high standard.

I read it through, several times. It struck me, two points. I noticed that your voice wasn’t quite like mine. It wasn’t the voice of a writer. Your thoughts lined up…rather in a row, forming a memo, not a letter. There were no catchy little anecdotes that brought a quick face to the words. This confused me, a little. I had been reading many profiles of many erudite men, and I had gotten a bit giddy with the richness of their words. Your profile made me stop and rewire the way I read your words.

The second thing I noticed was that, after I read your profile again, and stared at the spaces between the words a to be sure they really were as sincere as they seemed, was that I understood it. Very well. I believed that I was very much like the person in the profile. I read each point. Yes, I listened well. I cared about it. Yes, I felt I was kind. That was important to me. Yes, I felt I had always put a high priority on working well with others...(what was that life in the college co-op about, if nothing else?). It wasn’t a quick recognition on my part, to see myself there in the description of your relationship outlined on your page. But when I saw it, I also felt it. It made me feel like a sincere and loyal person to respond to you. It made me feel good.

So I wrote something of that nature to you in one of our first emails. That I understood your profile, and what you wanted. That it made sense to me. That I felt I was what you had described.

Mike, five years later, with so much behind us, I know that I was. And that experience, of stopping and seeing myself in a sincere and quiet place? You gave that to me.

I’m going to stop writing now. I’m not going to cry. It’s 11:33, as you would say it, for you always told me exactly the minute of every message you ever left. Army time. Time for bed. You’d be long asleep, or asking me to come in. I’m going to picture you now brushing your teeth over in my bathroom, because I don’t want to forget how you would do it. Hand on hip, right hand straight in, maybe a little brushing upward of the gray hair at your crown. Look at yourself now, handsome cheekbones in my mirror. You see yourself. I see you.