Elsewhere: AOL, Catfishing, and Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

by editor Michele Catalano

It’s fall 1996, I’m newly separated and I’m staying at my parent’s house with my two young children while my husband gets his shit together long enough to pack up and leave our apartment. I don’t sleep. I don’t eat. I exist on a diet of coffee, mini Snickers bars, cigarettes and vodka. I ghost-step my way through life, existing in a wavy haze, not sure where I’m going or even where I am.

At 1AM, the house is quiet; everyone but me sound asleep, my kids sprawled on the pull-out couch in the living room. I walk quietly to my father’s office, close the door, sit down in front of his computer and stare at the AOL icon. My hand hovers over the mouse, excited for what awaits me inside this new-to-me frontier. I’ve been toying with this technology, experimenting a little with chat rooms and websites and I’m fascinated by the idea that a new uncharted world exists, awaiting my fingertips. I double-click the icon and wait for the squeal of the modem to kick in, hoping it doesn’t wake anyone up while it tries to connect to America OnLine.

I’ve been listening to a lot of heavy metal. Pantera, Slayer, things of that nature. I have this vague anger hanging onto me that I can’t shake — and honestly, I don’t know if I want to shake it. Everything else inside me feels hollow, carved out, a void now filled by an adrenaline rush that keeps me from sinking into myself. The music feeds the rush, plays off of it, gives my emotions some desperately needed urgency. I want to punch walls when I listen to it and that’s ok, I tell myself. It’s better than the alternative, which is to get into bed, pull the covers over my head and maybe emerge days later.

The modem connects, finally; I sign on and navigate my way to a chat room called Movie Quote Trivia. It’s a game room where people are supposed to take turns throwing out movie quotes while everyone else in the room guesses the title, but there’s plenty of conversation between all the Godfather lines and I feel a sense of place when I enter the room. I slide easily into the conversations, people say hello to me, welcome me into the chat. I’ve made some friends here. I relax. I am at ease. Occasionally, I guess a movie — but that’s no longer what I’m here for.

I’m here to escape.

This is where I meet Xavier. Years later, I would realize — long before the word appeared in our lexicon — that I was catfished into a friendship by Xavier. But then, when it was happening, when we could spend hours in private chat rooms just talking, when he became a platonic soulmate, when he gave me something to look forward to every night, it didn’t matter. It was always in the back of my mind that he wasn’t who he said he was, but what I was getting out of the relationship was in essence saving my soul and my sanity — so I went with it anyway.

“I want you to listen to something, keep an open mind please.” He knew what kind of music I liked, and Sarah McLachlan was not something that was on my plate at the moment. He had sent the CD to me by mail — this was before music sharing was so easy — and I hesitantly opened it up and put it in. We stay in a private chat room together through the entire CD, Xavier talking me through each song, discussing lyrics and what it all means to him.

Despite my current penchant for metal, I fall for Fumbling Towards Ecstasy hard, and I’m not sure how much of that is the music itself and how much is the connection to this time and place and circumstance.

And I believe, this is heaven to no one else but me.

It doesn’t matter what she’s talking about; for me, there’s the here and now, the feeling that this — sitting in a darkened room at 3am, the only light the computer, the only company someone who lives thousands of miles away yet is somehow right here with me — this is heaven. This is my escape. This is taking me away from everything awful about my life, this is my lifeline. This is Elsewhere.

There are other songs, and they are all beautiful in their own way and they will each come to call back to fall nights with cool winds and an emptiness slowly filling me up in a way no one understands. The internet is new. Chat rooms are new. Making friends with strangers from other places by means of modern technology is something frightening and full of danger to those who haven’t embraced the experience. The internet is elsewhere to them, a foreign land. For me, that elsewhere is a savior.

I initiated the separation. It was me. But the decision to do so was born of many years of frustration, of a persistent loneliness, of an all-encompassing despair. I held on longer than I should have, always hoping that things would change, get better, but they never did. Despite the fact that I was the one to finally end it, I was sad about it. Oh, I was bitter and angry — but I was deep down sad, as if the wind had been kicked out of my heart. This is not what I wanted for me, for my children, for us. But there it was.

In that essence, Sarah McLachlan spoke to me more than any pissed-off Pantera or Korn song could. I listen to Fumbling; I no longer want to punch walls. I want instead to feel everything, every emotion, every piece of sadness, misery, joy, love, hate. I‘m thirsty for emotion and I’ve found my oasis. From the opening notes of “Possession” through the very end, I’m drawn in enough to drown in it. I break down occasionally and cry on the phone with Xavier. He comforts me, he’s there for me. I don’t care if he’s someone pretending to be someone else, he’s what I need right now. In a way, we fulfill certain needs for each other. It’s a mutual understanding. I think he knows I suspect something, but we don’t talk about it. Instead, we continue chatting, listening to Sarah McLachlan on the phone together, crying.

Xavier has cancer. At least he says he does. He tells me this matter-of-factly, but says he hesitated to tell me before because he didn’t want to worry me. I don’t know what to do with this new information; I don’t know if it’s real. I sense it’s his way of maybe leading himself out of the conversation, and my heart breaks a little at the thought of this friendship not existing anymore. I don’t need another heartbreak. I don’t need another separation.

I take to staying long hours inside Movie Quote Trivia and its companion chat room, Guess Song By Lyrics. It’s a lot of the same people hopping from room to room and I’m glad to know them, glad for the 3AM levity, glad to call these people my friends, odd as that may be to people unfamiliar with the online world.

I’m slowly removing myself from Xavier not because he has cancer, but because I know. I know in my heart and my soul that there’s no cancer, there’s no Xavier. Tell-tale signs have come up, his stories too elaborate. His name alone — he’s a huge X-Men fan — is just too fitting. But our talks, our relationship, our shared moments, they are real and part of me clings to all that, still lights up when he signs on to AOL, when he enters the chat room and throws a quote out. I prepare myself for the inevitable, the disappearance of Xavier.

I listen to Fumbling Towards Ecstasy non-stop. It’s become a part of me. Each song pokes at my soul, making me feel melancholy and despairing at the sound of its first notes. I’m punishing myself by listening to this, punishing myself for allowing this to happen, for opening myself up to hurt so soon after the pain of my marriage ending. Sarah’s voice resonates in my head all day, all night, even when I try to shut it out by listening to something else, usually some fierce metal. It’s there — it’s always there — and even though months have gone by at this point, it’s always fall, always 3AM, and Possession wrecks me like it did the first time I heard it, with the October wind blowing around the curtains in my father’s office.

A friend from the lyrics room offers to prod Xavier for me to see if she can get him to slip up and admit he’s not who he says he is, but I decline. I know. I don’t want to know, but I know. She does it anyway, reporting back to me that she’s pretty sure he’s a guy named Robert who also frequents our favorite chat rooms. He’s doing double duty. He’s pretty deft at it. I sign off after she tells me this and I listen to “Elsewhere” and reminisce. I don’t feel cheated. I don’t feel bad about anything but losing Xavier, fake as he may have been.

I’m managing a restaurant, working the day shift. The restaurant uses a reel-to-reel service for its music and we just got in a new reel, new music. I load it up, open the place for the day; the third song is “Possession” and as it plays I am overwhelmed with a sadness I haven’t felt since that night I told my ex it was over. I turn over managerial duties to someone else and go home. I cry the whole way home, listening to… well, you know.

When I get home there’s an email waiting for me from Xavier’s best friend James. I know what it says before I read it.

Xavier is dead.

I listen to “Hold On” twice before I decide I’m not going to respond. Xavier is dead. I knew this was coming, knew Robert had built this lie as his way out and it was only a matter of time. I’m not mad. Xavier filled a need. I used Robert as much as he used me, but I mourn Xavier as if he were real. I get in my car, drive to the beach in silence and then sit on the boardwalk on a freezing cold March day and give one full listen to Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. When it’s done, I take it out of my discman, walk to the shore and throw the CD into the ocean.

More than twenty years pass before I listen to that album again. Someone mentions it in passing online and I decide to go to Spotify and seek it out, see if it still stings, still resonates. I hesitate when I get to it. Do I want to know if it still devastates me?

And when I do eventually listen, it’s 1996 again, it’s fall, and “Elsewhere” still pokes pointedly at my soul. I immediately order the vinyl and when it’s delivered, I caress it like an old friend. I watch it spin around the turntable, mesmerized by the connection that still to this day pulls me in. I play it on repeat for an entire day before I get my answer. It doesn’t quite devastate me, but that melancholy feeling still lingers. Fumbling is a beautiful record that needs to be enjoyed on its own merit. I extract myself from the past, from Xavier and Robert and a part of my life that needs to be left alone. I’m able to play the record and listen for what it is, and not what I projected it to be. It’s dread and beauty and it’s perfect.

Let’s play it again.

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