I was 14–20s in the 1990s, and guys asked me if I wanted to get a cup of coffee with them sometime so we could talk and get to know each other better, see if we had chemistry beyond just meeting or being friends… I sometimes asked them out if they were shy... We went on dates: coffee, movies, college events, art museums, lots of art museums, lunch, dinner, rented movies once we were boyfriend and girlfriend… sometimes cultural events, lots of long walks talking… usually I dated someone who had their own apartment which was great… so time there alone …. We called, sometimes wrote paper letters of our thoughts… sometimes I wrote a long letter of my thoughts and left it for them at school… It felt modern but it also felt like I could have that Romantic era experience a little… so I liked it when I had to be direct and in the flesh and to show up… and I loved writing and receiving letters and mementos. There’s something exciting and wonderful about being able to write to someone in another country right in the moment you wish to be with them, to even see an image of their view at that very moment… maybe a video, or a live video conference … audio in the moment (like the phone) but a text with an image right then can feel like some dangerous assignation… it has the mystery of a secret about it… but there is something about the freedom of the 90s era where we collected our own secrets in the living moment … so that in sharing them with that someone special rather than the entire world makes them deeper and more meaningful somehow.
