Failing to email Girlfriend 1

Girlfriend 1 was Wife's girlfriend. Back in the early 1990's, or almost 30 years ago. In my first Movie Meme post, she is the one I cast with Elizabeth Taylor, the only one of Wife's lovers that really seemed to have infinite possibilities.

Of course, time has marched on and now she's 30 years older. From time to time I have looked her up on the Internet -- hey, it's only stalking if you try to make contact! -- and she's still luminously beautiful. She has also made a career genuinely helping people. I won't go into the details, just for the sake of anonymity. But over the years I've found plenty of pictures online of her being applauded by crowds of people for the work she's done, or of accepting awards with her team. You don't find any of those pictures of me anywhere. (I'm actually not sure there are any pictures of me on the Internet at all, come to think of it ...?)

And for all that time I've wondered to myself about trying to email her. I've never done it, or not until today. Partly I've always been pretty suspicious of my own motives. Girlfriend 1 was (and is), as I've said, luminously beautiful. Thirty years ago she was also blisteringly hot, and I'm sure if I ever met her in person I'd think she still is today. (If I ever meet her in person, I assume she will still look 18 to me.) Not that my admiration ever did me any good; she was in love with Wife but never had that kind of interest in me. How much of my intermittent thoughts about contacting her were just residual lust, even though I'm an old fart now and I don't get it up as easily? If I'm totally honest with myself, probably some of it.

I was also sweet on her in a way that wasn't merely sexual, and that didn't go away when she dropped suddenly out of Wife's life. So of course I've carried this fondness around with me ever since then, and that has encouraged me to think, gosh, if I could find her email address somewhere online, just maybe I could think of something non-embarrassing to say. Just maybe I could strike up a conversation somehow. Maybe?

A while ago I did find her picture and bio online, on the website of an organization which (according to LinkedIn) she still works for. Not that LinkedIn is necessarily up to date: I know one guy I used to work with who died 15 years ago, but his LinkedIn account is still there and still shows him working at the same place all these years later! Still, this website included an email address. I copied it down to later and went back to telling myself, "No, Hosea. Stop. Don't even think of it." 

Lately I've been thinking about it more again, possibly because when I look at Twitter in the age of COVID-19 I keep seeing notices of young, healthy people who have dropped dead of the disease. And given Girlfriend 1's line of work, I can't be certain that this wouldn't be her too. So over the last week or two I've been figuring out what I wanted to say. I kept it light -- mostly talked about an author she introduced me to, way back in the day, and very briefly mentioned that Wife and I had split up. I re-read it two or three times, added the email address I had found, ... and clicked SEND.

Right away I got back an autoreply telling me the message was undeliverable: this-address could not be found at this-server.org. Of course not. What was I even thinking?

Interestingly, the message said something about how Office 365 couldn't find the address. Is that different from the address itself not existing? I have no idea.

More likely, of course, is that she stopped working there ages ago and they just never updated their website. Or they gave everyone new email addresses and didn't bother to set up the old ones as aliases. Or maybe the pandemic got her (God forbid!).

I have no idea what really happened. But somehow it seems entirely on-brand that when I finally quit dithering and make up my mind, when I finally get my ass in gear ... I fail because it's too late or I just addressed it wrong or some mind-numbingly stupid thing like that.

It figures. Oh well.