confession.

life is a game of inches.

a few nights ago i went to my neighborhood internet cafe to check my email. it costs $1 for every seven minutes online there; they have a system wherein you feed as many dollar bills as you'd like into a machine, and it spits out a little ticket with a passcode, which allows you to log onto one of the computers and use it until your purchased time expires. if you're working on something right when your allotted time expires, the computer shuts down and brings the log-in/passcode screen back, but if you purchase more time and log onto that same computer without anyone using it in the interim, it will bring back all the windows and programs you had open, as if you had never left. this is a good system, b/c you don't really have to worry about losing any unsaved work on account of not being wary of when your time will be up.

this is also a bad system.

often times, people unwittingly leave their email accounts open in the above way. not knowing that the computer is not shutting down completely--that it is keeping their work open behind the black log-in screen--they do not sign out of their email account before their purchased time is up. then the computer switches off, and having finished whatever important emails they were working on, they leave the cafe, expecting they'll be automatically booted from their open account. not so. often times, i've sat down, logged in, and been presented with someone else's open yahoo account.

i've experienced this many times, and in the past have customarily just done the stranger a solid and signed out of their email account for them.

not so the other night.

the other night, i bought fourteen minutes, logged onto a computer, and promptly saw the open yahoo email account of some dude named richard s. jagger. i was feeling strange, so i did something strange. i opened the most recent message in jagger's inbox, which i could tell from the customary signs in email accounts had been read but not replied to: a message from 'stern-jagger, monica.' it read (i copied the text and sent it to myself from my own gmail, opened in another window):

Rich,
I'm sorry I've resorted to emailing you this, but I don't see another way. Please stop calling me. We are obviously not able to communicate with each other effectively by talking right now. And at this point I would like to get this over with as painlessly as possible. We both agreed we could do this on our own - I still hope that's possible. I still think it is. For now, I think the important thing is to agree on the list;
Aside from my half of the stuf [my note: i assume she meant 'stuff'] we're splitting 50/50, here are the things I would like to keep, all of which I think were orginally mine:
#The couch in the living room
#The TV stand and the CD wrack [my note ii: why did she spell wrack like that? wack! also, who has a cd stand? i guess they're in their thirties?]
#The architecture/decorating books
#The dresser in the bedroom. I know my mother gave this to us b/c you had always admired it, but since it came from my family, I think it should stay there.
#The photograph in the kitchen
#The bartender's set
#The blue carpet we used to have in the living room

You can come by any time, just let me know in advance and I'll give you some time to gather whatever else you want from the aptarment [c'mon monica, that's thrice] outside of the above stuff.

M

reading this only made me feel stranger, so my behavior only got stranger. i clicked 'reply' and wrote:

M:
I'll just come by one day while you're at work, Friday, Tuesday? But I insist on keeping the bedroom dresser. Your mother and I obviously never saw eye to eye on anything, and when she gave us that dresser I took it as a personal peace sign from the old cunt. It's a good luck item to me now.
Yours,
Dick

i debated this in my head, wondering how big a crime on my fellow man it would be, then, in a flash of indifference, decided 'fuck it' and clicked 'send.'

after sending the message, i signed out of the account. as i said, life is a game of inches. i suspect richard was about to log out himself, when his purchased time abruptly expired on him. he prolly assumed the computer shut his open window/email account down automatically, and simply left the cafe. if he had just finished going through his email a minute faster, he would have signed out and i never would have been able to pull this hijinks.

somehow i didn't think too much of all this at the time, but since then ive felt increasingly guilty. im sure 'richard' will eventually be able to convince monica that he didnt write it, but it seems like he was already lacking some credibility with her, that their relations were headed for being indelibly fractured anyway. still, this was a low thing to do.

although interesting.