Dear Evanline,
Let me drink from your sacred glass
My mouth filled with your wine
The taste of ambrosia on my tongue, so sweet
I am your servant of love
Your messenger of desire
And that’s when it happened. My iPhone ran out of juice.
“Crap,” I said.
It was 2AM. I was drunk, in bed, writing my love poem to Evanline on my iPhone. You see, like many of you, i do everything on my phone. And I mean everything, from making movie reservations, to Instagram, to trying to get Siri to talk dirty to me. I even sleep with my iPhone on my pillow.
I plugged my iPhone into the charger, but it wouldn’t charge. This was serious. My IPhone was dead.
And for the life of me, I could not remember one word of my poem.
The next day, I woke up early, took the subway to the Apple Store and waited on line at the Genius Bar, my iPhone in hand. I was assigned Ed, a friendly hipster dude in his early thirties with curly hair, thick tortoise shell glasses, and a goatee.
“How can I help you?” asked Ed.
I told him that my iPhone had died at the most inopportune time, and I was desperate.
“I’ll see what I can do.” he said, but added a warning — “I might have to reboot everything and you’ll lose your data. Is that OK?”
My heart stopped.
I pleaded with him, “You need to recover my poem!”
I told him about Evanline, and how this was my only chance to woo her.
I told him how I met her, oh so accidentally, in the bookstore at Grand Central Station. She had just stepped off the Amtrak train. It was her first time in New York. I was on my lunch break. We talked about books, about our common admiration for Charles Dickens, John Irving, and Curious George, or George Et le Camion, as she said in her cute French-Canadian accent.
Man, I love Canadians.
I lied to my office and said that my grandmother had died, an excuse I’ve been using since grade school, and spent the rest of the day with Evanline. It was a day I’ll never forget.
We did uptown, downtown, and then, right on 6th Avenue and 52nd Street, not far from the halal meat cart in front of the Hilton, we kissed.
But, alas, as in many lover’s stories, there’s the moment when the star-crossed lovers must separate. She had to return to Montreal, where she had a promising career as a neurosurgeon.
I waved to her as her train left the station, knowing that this might be the end. But maybe… maybe with a poem, I could change the course of history.
“Dude, ” said Ed. “That is the most romantic story I ever heard. I’m going to recover that poem, and after you win her over, I want to be invited to the wedding.”
“Deal, Dude!” I said.
As Ed went to work on my phone, I fantasized about the future. Evanline and I were in bed together, and I was reading her my poem.
“Read me your poem again!” she would say.
“Again?” i would ask.
“Yes, I never tire of it. It’s why I moved to New York to be with you. Read it to me over and over again.”
Ten minutes later, Ed returned, my iPhone in his hand. His expression was difficult to read.
“I have some good news and some bad news,” he said. “First the good news. I fixed your iPhone and was able to recover your poem.”
“That’s great!” I shouted. “So, what’s the bad news?”
“Well, I read the poem.”
Ed said he was a graduate student in the Columbia University Writing Program.
“This poem is awful!” he said, shaking his head in dismay.
“The taste of ambrosia on my tongue”
“Do you even know what IS the taste of ambrosia?” he asked.
“Uh. Is it like licorice?”
“Rule number one of writing — write from experience. Better you describe her taste as a Raspberry Pop-Tart. At least then you have some authenticity. You’re lucky your phone closed down when it did.”
“I see,” I said, wondering if Siri had become so powerful that she could not only find me a restaurant with tomato soup, but close down the phone to prevent me from sending a woman a bad piece of poetry.
“Listen,” said Ed. “Just be YOURSELF. Do what comes naturally.”
“I already tried that with another woman. I did what came naturally. I emailed her a photo of my penis, and she didn’t appreciate it. And it was a very good quality photo!”
“Jesus! Why do men think women want to see a photo of their dicks? To women, our penises look like overgrown one-eyed rats! They’d rather hear language that melts them into putty. Men are visual. But only a woman can have an orgasm from the rhythm of an iambic pentameter.”
“Wow, women are complicated,” I said. “I’m never going to understand them.”
I felt hopeless of every winning the heart of Evanline. And Ed saw the pain in my eyes.
“Listen, I have a solution. There is another way to win the affection of a woman, specifically created for men who can’t write poetry. It’s not as creative, but it is a truly time-honored solution that has been proven to work.”
He slid a $100 iTunes card under my nose and a bejeweled iPhone case.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s called “buying her stuff!”
