How I met The Boyfriend
“What defines a burger?” he asked. “Anything between two halves of a bun” I replied. “Ok, I hold half a burger bun here in Australia, you hold one over in Italy. Everything between us is burger."
[Whatsapp tune] ‘Can I be your boyfriend?’
That’s it. One day he popped the relationship question and that caught me off-guard. After all, it took us a long time to get there. How long, you may ask?
Well, remember the internet well before smartphones and dating apps? That no-man-zone between Myspace and Facebook? In a land of Forums and unsafe downloads, where having cyber friends was seen as a kink, I was very much a ‘girl online’ before it was made popular by our favourite (?) girl-next-door Zoella.
Back then, being online had nothing to do with self-branding and side hustles, in fact, along with my studies, I volunteered as an administrator for a social network. Not a real one. It was more like a small community forum with big dreams. My online life was spent between that and a Japanese street fashion forum.
I liked kawaii before coquette was popular! I am a special snowflake!
That year, the “social network” evolved into a real website, putting us on the map for a larger audience outside Europe. Plus, we finally had a real-time chat. My task was to make sure people were civil, given the expansion to the wild American crowd.
It all started with me, inadvisably perked on top of an otherwise ergonomic Scandinavian chair, with a laptop, a philosophy book, and a cat on my lap.
Yes, that would be the same cat I didn’t steal from my neighbours.
That day, the chat was particularly busy and the future boyfriend saw me ‘in action’. It must have been a full moon because guns were on display, not the muscle type, and square moustaches were crafted. As I said, wild Americans. Between a ban and another, I received a private message from the future boyfriend asking if I was a bot. You know, one of those pre-configured agents who automatise repetitive tasks?
Me: “I’m not a bot.”
The future boyfriend: “That’s exactly what a bot would say.”
That was the first time someone called me a bot, but not the last.
That day, the future boyfriend and I became best-online-buddies. We messaged daily and bonded over our cool and edgy lives and, when I was preparing to study in northern England, we live-streamed Geordie Shore to each other so that I could grasp the local accent.
Did it work? Ehhh… I hung out mostly drinking with other foreign exchange students, so it’s hard to tell. God bless Erasmus of Rotterdam, Saint Patron of students’ exchange of bodily fluids.
My challenged circadian rhythm allowed us to be often awake at the same time despite the distance. You could say we started talking in that chat room and never stopped, from MSN Messenger (rest in peace), to Skype. By then, it was 2012 and I got my first smartphone, so we quickly transitioned to a neverending pocket conversation via WhatsApp. Yes, when you still had to pay an annual fee!
Years later, well after I graduated, the future boyfriend came to Europe for a Summer trip with friends and suggested meeting in person. I invited him to visit my area (I criticise it, but it’s a tourist attraction) and said he could stay at my place, which coincidentally was my mum’s place. By then, everyone around me was used to my random foreign friends.
He planned to ditch his friends somewhere on the Eastern Block to visit me in Italy and didn’t tell anyone he was detouring with an agenda.
Me. I was the agenda.
At the time, meeting like that felt carefree and adventurous but, looking back, I realised it was a pistachio move. I wish he had disclosed our virtual friendship to his friends sooner because he made it seem like he visited Italy and casually returned with souvenirs and a girlfriend. Well, technically he sent that message one week after he left.
I booked my flight to Australia over a year after we met in person and became a couple. He suggested I stay at his place once I got there, which, coincidentally, was his parents’ place.
We’re Millennials, of course we live with our parents until embarrassingly late.
I accepted the offer as I hadn’t thought of any other option because I, too, am ultimately a pistachio. I was also unaware that was the very moment they learned about the extent of our relationship.
He may not have told his family how serious this was despite over six years of knowing each other, still, he assured me that his family wasn’t troubled by the sudden news of an imported D.O.C.(controlled designation of origin) girlfriend. They welcomed me, a virtual stranger, into their home with no reservations.
Exploring foreign cities on an impromptu European Summer trip, being each other’s adventurous pistachios, felt very different from being catapulted into a completely new life while the other was comfortably at home.
On top of that, ‘home’ was an Asian home. Did I ever mention it? So there was an added layer of cultural complexity waiting for me, including but not limited to having to leave shoes outside.
Gentle reminder that ‘outside’ or, as I like to call it: the outernet, is where spiders live.
During the first few adjustment days in Australia, among a list of questions running through my head about SIM Cards and whatnot, I was finally introduced to the boyfriend’s social circle as the brand-new exotic girlfriend who just moved from Italy because of some random lady at a life-coaching workshop.
You’d think there would be plenty of conversation starters and more-or-less socially acceptable questions for them to ask me:
“Do you know Alfredo? He’s Italian!”1
“Are you close to Rome?”2
“Do you drive a Vespa?”3
“Are you from a Mafia family?”4
But the most popular question, less biographic and more gossip-adjacent was:
“So, how did you two meet?”
The boyfriend: “It’s a long story”
Me: “Online”
Followed by a glance of surprise and disappointment between us, lowering our ‘cool and edgy’ self-assessment score.
I should have predicted it. But I was much more afraid someone would corner and interrogate me about the whereabouts of my ex-boyfriends. I have never sourced my partners locally so, after a breakup, maintaining contact pre-smartphone was hard and unnecessary.
Statistically, every time I introduced a boyfriend to my friends it was also the last time they saw each other. That was all poor timing on my part, but I have always been rather pleased with the odds and how it made it seem like all my ex-boyfriends disappeared in a mysterious accident.
I am a cool and edgy pistachio with a dark secret.
Directly from the archives, please enjoy this authentic photographic evidence:
No.
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"Statistically, every time I introduced a boyfriend to my friends it was also the last time they saw each other." ... potentially homicidal pistachio, perhaps?
Such a sweet story. I love romance!! 💘