Free Love Virtually by Daniel Glattauer

following day
    Subject: First answer
    Dear Leo,
    Do you know what I really can’t stand about you?—the words you use when you talk about my husband. “In spite of your marital bliss with Bernhard”—tell me, please, what do you mean by that crap? “Marital bliss” sounds like: “Performing one’s conjugal duty by having sexual intercourse with one’s partner.” I’m sure you intended it to sound like that too! Or how about: “A regular consummation of sexual intercourse, blessed by marriage, with a corresponding exchange of bodily fluids.” My dear Leo, you’re mocking my marriage! I can be extremely sensitive on the subject, so please desist!
    Forty-five minutes later
    Re: First answer
    Emmi, you can’t stop talking about sex. It’s pathological!
    One hour later
    Re: First answer
    I haven’t even started talking about sex, my friend. A few of the remarks you made yesterday are worth picking up on, for example the thing about the “erotic thoughts” where you use a double negative to say that it’s not that you never have erotic thoughts about me. Typical Leo! Anyone else would have said: “Emmi, sometimes I have erotic thoughts about you!” But Leo Leike says: “Emmi, it’s not that I never have erotic thoughts when I think about you.” And then you wonder why I can’t stop talking about sex. It’s not me who’s pathological—you’re the one who’s so “original” with your sex talk, my dear Leo! In short, I don’t buy your lofty meditations on sex. And what is our saintly Leo doing with his double-negative erotic thoughts? I quote: “I’m keeping them well away from you; I want to spare you these thoughts.” But doesn’t he want to disclose them? Now Emmi’s wondering what these unspeakable thoughts might be. Maybe he’ll tell me a little more about them?
    Twenty minutes later
    Re: First answer
    Oh yes, and another thing, Mr. Leo. Yesterday you wrote: “We must not start intruding into each other’s private life.” I’ve got something to tell you: what we’re doing here, the things we’re talking about, they already belong to our private lives. They’re private and nothing but, starting with our very first emails and steadily escalating until today. We don’t write about our jobs, we don’t say what our interests are, or our hobbies. We behave as if there’s no such thing as culture, we completely ignore politics, and by and large we get by without even mentioning the weather.
    The only thing we do, the thing that makes us forget everything else, is to intrude into each other’s private life; I enter yours, and you enter mine. We could hardly have been more intrusive into each other’s private life. You should start facing the fact that you’re intimately acquainted with my private life, if not the part of it that you call my favorite subject. I might even say that the situation couldn’t be more different.
    Have a nice evening,
    Emmi
    An hour and a half later
    Re: First answer
    Dear Emmi,
    Do you know what I really can’t stand about you ? Your continual “Mr. Leo,” “Maestro Leo,” “Professor Leo,” “Mr. language psychologist,” “professor of moral theology.” Do me a favor. Leave it at “Leo.” Your sarcastic messages will be just as acerbic and to the point.
    Thanks for your understanding!
    Leo
    Ten minutes later
    Re: First answer
    Yuck! I don’t like you today!
    One minute later
    Re: First answer
    I don’t like me either.
    Thirty seconds later
    Re: First answer
    That was very sweet, I have to admit.
    Twenty seconds later
    Re: First answer
    Thank you.
    Fifteen seconds later
    Re: First answer
    My pleasure.
    A minute and a half later
    Re: First answer
    Are you in bed yet?
    Three minutes later
    Re: First answer
    I hardly ever go to bed before