Missing Connections

Contributed by Nicolas Papaconstantinou on 06/01/10

Green-Eyed Gent on New Years Eve – w4m – 22 (Maywood Park)

We met at a mutual friend’s party, and I got too drunk. You walked me home and to my door, and didn’t try anything. You had sweet green eyes. I was wearing a Klimt print dress and was looking cute. I think we got on well.
I’d like to thank you with coffee. How about it?

Jared hadn’t really spent any time on the net before, but a moment of idle curiosity a few months back had led him to a local listings website, and that in turn had led him to a section where citizens posted ads to each other.

Bedford Fri night – w4m

We exchanged glances a few times when I was on the dance floor. I was the redhead surrounded by blonde friends. I was having a bad night, and your lovely smile made me stick around until it got better.
If you think this is you and you think you know who I am, I’d love to hear from you!
please tell me who got married that night to avoid spammers.

The ads fascinated him. The individuals in them were trying their hardest, in the long dark lonely of their human existence, to capitalise on the briefest of connections. In a world where finding love was more often a war of attrition than intention, and relationships generally evolved by accident, these people were trusting in a momentary impression, and putting faith in their own instincts.

Either that or they were so desperate to find something that meant something that they were throwing pride to the wind and trying to capitalise on a flicker of potential that they had seen in an ephemeral moment.

Whichever way he looked at it, Jared found it endlessly illuminating. He felt like each new ad gave him a new insight into the human condition.

sparks last night – m4m – 24 (Midtown)

Last night at sparks on midtown around 11:30 or 12:00 u had orang shirt green pants black hair and green eyes… Please tell me u r in to dudes…

It took Jared a while, blessed as he was with a complete absence of self-awareness, to recognise himself in any of the posts. A couple of times he had seen descriptions of the writers that sparked flashes of the familiar in him, but they had been easy enough to dismiss. Finally, though, one girl had referred directly to some un-ignorable detail of their encounter, and he realised that she was actually trying to find him again.

He didn’t expect her to succeed. For one thing, a city is a massive place, with far too many humans for any one to really stick out, no matter what these people might hope. And Jared knew from experience that people saw what they wanted in him, and each other. They thought they had an image of a person burned into their mind, but generally they remembered a specific detail that made an impact, and built their own picture around it.

This was a bigger issue with Jared than most.

Running in Lake Park, We Collided – w4m – 32

We nod hello most mornings but today for some reason we tumbled into each other instead! I was clumsy but you were really cute about it! I should have asked for your number but I didn’t, so I’m doing it now!

It wasn’t Jared’s job to directly solve people’s problems or fix their lives, but in the path of his remit to maintain a balance, he could take certain liberties with how that job was supposed to work. For example, there was a strong likelihood that the girl on New Year’s Eve was going to make a bad decision regarding an ex-boyfriend if left to her own devices that night. The lady in the park was distracted, and on her way to jogging in front of a bus.

Jared didn’t know these things for sure – that wasn’t the nature of his gift. What he did have was an instinct for looking at the people around him – the way they behaved, the way they interacted with each other and their surroundings – and deciphering the possible outcomes of their actions. If he chose to, he could nudge them along a slightly better path.

My hero! – w4m – (Mckinley Ridge North)

If you hadn’t come along when you did, I’d have ended up walking into the party on my own. I didn’t know my ex was going to be there – it would have been awful.

Thanks for rescuing me, you gorgeous man!

Sometimes he did push things a little further than he should, but he hadn’t gotten in trouble for it so far.

To be honest, Jared didn’t really know who he was working for. He’d been doing this work for what felt like forever, and it’d been such a long time since he’d had any contact with the people he worked for. Had any sort of feedback about how good or bad a job he was doing.

He knew it was pride, or ego, and that was probably frowned upon, but the messages – as misdirected as the sentiment tended to be in them – felt like a vindication of sorts. A pat on the back from the universe that wasn’t forthcoming from anywhere else.

You Saved My Life! (Downward Heights)

I don’t know who you are, but yesterday I woke up in the wrong place with no money or phone. It was cold and nobody on the street believed I was trying to get home. I found your coat at the bus station, with just enough money in the pocket for bus fare.
Please get in touch so I can give everything back!

Jared wasn’t actually sure what the job was any more, really, but he didn’t know what else he could really do. He wasn’t even sure how long he’d been doing it.

He guessed that he had a divine purpose, but he hadn’t ever talked to God. Come to that, he hadn’t ever met anyone who had. He didn’t think he believed in God. He thought that he might be the only atheist angel who ever lived.

Maybe he wasn’t an angel. Maybe he was some sort of alien. Or a being from another dimension. An imaginary creature of some kind.

Jared looked at the sites, and read about how the people saw him, and quite often that made him feel almost human. It seemed like enough.