Border Patrol

Sometimes a man really can be just a friend. Mr. Canada has indicated that no matter how smitten he is, he has no intention of meeting me. He says it's because he never again wants to suffer the heartache of the constant parting that goes along with a long distance relationship. I told him I think it's because he probably looks like a troll and nothing like the guy in his profile pictures.

As much as I enjoyed our email exchanges for a few days, I wondered why we would keep them up if we were never to meet. I have plenty of wonderful friends, flesh and blood women who keep me afloat. But he was insistent; he admitted to checking constantly for my next missive, and his responses have been immediate (to the extent they can be on work days), thoughtful, and funny. When he compliments me, I'm skeptical, having been betrayed by men more than a few times; by nature, now, I am prone to wonder what the ulterior motives are. But you can't really have sex if you're not even in the same country, and, honestly, what other motive is there?

Over the past five or six days, I've amassed a collection of emails from north of the border -- for the most part chaste -- full of wit and caring and hopes and dreams and even some painful secrets, and I, in turn, have sent a good share of my own. I'm revealing my warts -- a little bit at a time -- and I have yet to scare him away. Puzzling, very puzzling.

I'm almost positive I'll wake up to a sweet email from Mr. Canada in the morning, one that might even help to keep some of the demons that kept me awake most of the night at bay. And if I don't, I'll feel perfectly comfortable emailing him to demand my morning dose of sweetness, without fear that he will be feeling stalked or pressured in any way. After all, we will never meet.

I have assured him that, just as he is no doubt a hideous troll, I am nowhere near as stunning as

the Mrs. Potato Head in the picture. I am, rather, like the burly German haus frau from the old Saturday Night Live skit who irons in her torn housecoat while she makes a living offering up phone sex. It just doesn't matter. With each passing day, our budding friendship has less and less to do with pictures and more and more to do with our written exchanges. Old fashioned letter writing. Sort of.

And there's no reason for him to know I'm still pricing out tickets to Toronto. Just in case.