Tomb

My friend, Ivan, told me that the greatest gift he received from living his adolescent years in communist Sarajevo was the retention of innocence.

“If I dated a girl now for three months without sleeping with her, people would say I’m gay,” he says. “Man, if I was a teenager now I’d be covered in tattoos, sitting on the Internet all day writing love letters.”

I didn’t take this personally — I only have four tattoos — but I do spend a great deal of time on the computer, keeping in touch and exchanging soppy love letters with globe-scattered friends and ex-lovers I’ve amassed in travels.

I sometimes wonder if the international Internet community with which I’m so engaged is a crutch or an escape that validates my existence and keeps me from facing the reality of being single and sub-optimally employed. These friends always take my side and remember me at my best.

“Both are designed for idealists,” Ivan says of communism and long-distance relationships. “They are the promise of something better, something you are imagining. They’re your own design of a better future.”

There is also an element of control in electronic correspondence that’s alluring. Conversations are started and stopped at your will, and distance blankets the heart-melting and honest things you write. Correspondence of this type offers the opportunity to think and to proofread before something damaging or exaggerated is sent.

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Jo, 27, has been seeing Tom, 31, for 10 months. Tom works on the rigs, and spends a month away in the North for almost every month he spends in town. Unfortunately, the time away has most recently included Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Jo’s birthday.

“When he’s gone you forget how to connect,” she says. “It’s like you have to start over every time to get that rhythm and then, once you have it, he’s gone again.”

Jo doesn’t see herself avoiding anything or entertaining illusions in her current relationship.

“I know his human elements,” she says. “Calgary is his hometown. That makes it easier.” In Jo’s prior relationship, a two-year long-distance bond with a man in Vancouver, Jo saw things differently. She says it’s easier to ignore any negative aspects of a person when they don’t live in your city, and she idealized both the man and the relationship.

“Until we lived together there was never any disappointment when I saw him,” she says. “He couldn’t deal with the real me.” Though her current relationship gives her time to work without guilt on her artistic endeavours, Jo would eventually like Tom to find work that doesn’t involve going away.

“This isn’t a career or a lifestyle for having a family,” she says.

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Lucy, 31, met Amari, 35, on a beach in Cuba. Amari is a Cuban lifeguard with a son and a Cuban ex. Now, a year later, what started as a vacation romance has blossomed into an engagement.

“I’m aware that there could be an element of illusion because I’m always on holidays when he’s in his day-to-day life,” she says. Of the 12 weeks she has spent in Cuba over the last year, however, seven were spent in one block where she became close with his family and immersed in the culture. “The worst aspect is when you’ve had a bad day and you wish he was going to be there when you get home. I want him to meet my friends and family,” she says.

Cubans are not allowed access to the Internet in their country, so Lucy and Amari communicate primarily by phone. “Sometimes I wish I could email him but, because I’m in school, I’m glad to not have the distraction,” she says.

The couple plans to wed sometime after October of this year, and then the paperwork to enable Amari and his son to move to Canada will begin. Lucy says some friends and family are pessimistic, but ultimately she feels this future is right.

Although I can agree with Ivan that innocence of a sort isn’t as prevalent in this country as it is in communist states, romantic correspondence and calls made on calling cards — planning a life together that defies the odds — definitely resembles it. Even Ivan can agree that the general principle of dating is universal.

“Shit man, life is boring,” he says. “What do we have if we don’t have kissing? It’s entertainment for the masses.”