Did you ever lose someone?

I don’t mean lose in the sense that someone dies. It’s not as big as that, but neither do I mean in the Wildean, “To lose two parents..” sense, I mean (well, now that I think of it, maybe I was, indeed, careless) the sense where you really didn’t want to lose them and they went anyway.

I did this once.

I suppose, with the attitudes that people have towards the nebulous internet, that no-one’s going to think much of my losing someone when it is revealed that I had never met them.

Yeah, Marc (Marc Garnier was his name – and now that I’ve typed it here, this page will appear on the Google searches I do with alarming regularity) was one of the people I’ve developed a connection with on the internet. It’s becoming quite fashionable now, this internet relationship business, but back in the day such an idea was regarded as bizarre – bordering on perverted. I talked to Marc using an instant messaging service called ICQ (who uses that any more, hey?) and through vigorous email exchanges.

I really liked this French-Canadian mechanic. (Yes, we all know what ‘really like’ means.)

One day he stopped talking. I think it was for a good reason, I know it was actually. And this stopping has continued ever since.