Modern Love

The Yin to My Yang

OR E-Harmonizing: Love in the New Century

Notification: Zack is my match.

Initialize Contact: Request Communication.

Communication Stage 1: Ask closed-ended questions with topics such as how he’d rather spend a Saturday evening: at home, at a sporting event, at the opera, or all of the above. Wait for response.

Communication Stage 2: Choose 10 “Must Haves” and 10 “Can’t Stands” in relationships, on such controversial topics as personal hygiene and racism. Thankfully, we seem to agree that regular showers are good and racial profiling is bad--so far, so good.

Communication Stage 3: Open-ended questions. These are queries where the answers have endless possibilities, and theoretically, they’ll help me figure out within seconds as to whether this guy is worth giving my number. I click on his profile and learn that he is someone who seems to have what I’m looking for in an online (and possibly even offline) partner: a sense of humor, a job, and the ability to form a grammatically correct sentence. He shares my religion and he’s a few years older than I, so hopefully that means he’s outgrown his immaturity phase. Like I said, so far so good.

I find myself laughing as I read his answers. I feel my pulse quicken, and know I need to hear Zack’s voice.

Communication Stage 4: Open Communication (Email Exchange).

Despite giving him my number via email, he doesn’t take the hint and call. Ordinarily, I would read into this, but I’m newly single and not in a rush to get too involved too quickly, and so instead, we continue an email correspondence for a few weeks and continue to learn about each other. Every morning, when I sign into my email account at my new job, there’s a letter waiting from Zack. It’s reassuring and it makes the transition into a new environment with new people much more relaxing and tolerable, as I feel like I’ve known him for years.

After about a month of talking, the stars finally align and we agree to meet. I suggest the place; the ambience is perfect for getting to know someone, play pool, or drown the awkward silences in alcohol.

There are some relationship gurus who swear you can tell in three minutes if you’re compatible with someone (I know some men who claim they can tell in seconds, but I suspect that may be a different type of compatibility). I’m not sure I’d normally agree with this theory, but as soon as I met Zack, I knew we’d be in each other’s lives for more than just one encounter. We had so much to talk about and the conversation was easy and flowing. I felt like I had known him all my life.

Because we felt so natural with each other, Zack and I kissed on our first date. I wanted to feel more, but I never heard the bells or saw fireworks. It was only a first date; perhaps the second would be better. I believe that a good first date means that when you leave, you know you will see the person again; it’s just a matter of when he’ll call to set up a time to meet.

As if Zack is my Dear Diary, I write to him about the goings-on at work and tell him about my family. He tells me what’s happening at his job and discloses personal facts of his own and I read on with interest. We make plans to see each other again. Amazing conversations, incredible correspondence and lots of laughter continue for a long time. We go on dates and he reaches for my hand but I pull away--something is missing between us. Is he just a friend, someone to whom I can tell everything and whose emails and phone calls have become a part of my daily routine? I decide this must be the case and we have the “I just want to be friends” talk. It kills me to hurt him. I don’t want to say those things; I want to feel something stronger.

I consider Zack my best friend. I would do anything for him and I know that he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same for me. I trust him with my life and my deepest and darkest secrets. We talk on the phone nearly every night and continue our daily email correspondence. When something terrible happens, he’s the first one I want to talk to. When something exciting occurs, most people receive a blind-copied email; Zack gets a personal phone call at work in order to share in my good fortune. He is my family.

Is this love? Can true love begin online with nothing but a profile and a photo? A year has passed and Zack is everything to me. I find myself talking about him to other friends constantly, remarking sadly how things would be so different and romance would be realized, if only...

Recently Zack, a screenwriter, expressed his emotions and frustrations regarding our situation by composing a script for Yin/Yang, a short film. I offered to help with the film in any way that I could. Zack is working on the project with a producer friend, and after she learned of my interest in the story and getting it out there to the world of independent film, she was eager for my help. I soon became Co-Producer.

While it’s one thing to help out a friend with a project in which he believes and has worked on for months, it’s an entirely different animal to help cast someone to play you; she shouts words that are yours and is given stage directions to take on your mannerisms, but of course she never finds this out for fear that it would compromise her interpretation of the role. During production, I experienced my own frustrations with Yin/Yang. I booked locations, found a caterer and relived take after take, the most confusing and almost-perfect relationship I’ve ever had. Because of my belief in and loyalty to my talented partner, I lost sleep, carried equipment in the pouring rain and devoted all my free time to the project. Did I do it all for love?

Yin/Yang, currently in the editing room and coming soon (we hope) to a film festival near you, is billed as a 10-minute “slice of life” and doesn’t have a cut and dry happy Hollywood ending. It’s real. It leaves the audience scratching their heads wondering to each other, what did we just watch? Was it a love story? Was it a tale of friendship? Did we just witness a breakup, or a decision to share the secret and never talk about how perfect the two characters really are for one another?

Yin/Yang is not a feel-good story, although the audience understands what draws the characters together while also sensing what is keeping the two apart. The result is blurry. The situation does not figure itself out just in time for the credits to roll. It’s not a reality show with exploding emotions and extreme personalities throwing things and screaming profanities. It’s definitely not a film with gratuitous sex scenes, hence a major reason for the project in the first place. It’s a film short about real people with true emotion that asks honest questions.

Of course I’m not the only one with doubt. Zack asks me if he’s just wasting his time? When will I realize that this is what I’ve been waiting for, after a lifetime of searching? Isn’t love supposed to be easy? Once you find someone who makes it all seem okay—as Zack does for me--isn’t that the answer to everything? Aren’t we meant to be together? What is this chemistry crap and why is it standing in the way or true love and our happiness?

If Zack and I knew what we were to each other, there wouldn’t be a need for Yin/Yang. Perhaps, after you see it, you can let us know how it will all turn out.