The Monster Affair

A series of questionable judgments here

Just after Jen and I got married, as soon as the wedding wrapped up, we got to work on Petroglyph, our retail startup. We opened our first studio in 1994, but we made a rookie mistake; to save money, we put the store in a questionable location, a bit off the beaten path.

By 1995 we wanted to do it right and open in a downtown location. But for that, we’d need more money, and the existing store was an operating loss.

It was going to be hard to get money when we hadn’t even proven the studio we already had was a good idea, but we were confident. It was new for me, but we decided to raise capital from investors, and I set about to figure out how to write a business plan.

Petroglyph Ceramic Lounge

Petroglyph isn’t a regular retail business — it’s both creative and very hands-on. Our advisors sent us a bunch of business plans to see how these things tended to look; the plans all were equally icky and corporate, xeroxed and bound at Kinkos in plastic. I felt the plan itself had to echo the unique flavor of the offering.

One afternoon shopping, we came across some hand-made journals, with tactile pages and the cover. The cover was incredible — a combination of pressed board and copper. “This is what our business plan needs to be like,” I insisted. Jen enthusiastically agreed.

The Web was only a few months old, and every human on Earth was getting weekly bombardments of introductory AOL disks. I had been on the pre-web Internet for a decade at that point and was hesitant to try AOL. As always curious about new tech, I signed up. And I used its nascent powers of search to figure out where the copper-cover journals had been created.

I found a business in Chicago, and I found an AOL email address. Then I wrote: “Hey there, would you guys be able to custom make some book covers I can use for my business plan?” and I went on to describe the business and what I liked about their covers.

Creative Collaboration With Monster

To our great delight, I got a response from the owner, Monster, asking for more info about what I was looking for. Jen and I were thrilled. It was one less thing to worry about, and I was convinced that investors would fall in love with our business; simply, on the strength of the awesome cover. (Yes, it was my first rodeo.)

Thus began a series of email correspondences with Monster as I outlined the project and we brainstormed things that were possible within our constraints. I wanted it textured. And some metal. Was that possible? Monster was full of great ideas.

Could I imagine a little window in the cover where I could reveal something on the other side? or insert a graphic or logo there? I could use velum pages where some words or images could show through the sheets.

Yes! There’s nothing more narcotic than great creative collaboration.

By this time, Jen spent her days and nights in the Petroglyph studio — she was the manager, the operations executive, the host. She did the kiln firings and taught our three employees.

We needed more space for the bisque ceramics, so we rented an empty storefront one door down, which we used for manufacturing and storage. But in the front, I set up an office area where I did the corporate stuff — writing the business plan, handling finances, and bookkeeping, learning about trademarks and human resources — as well as trying to write and publish the third edition of my book Nonlinear, which was supporting us.

I was also engrossed in the collaboration with Monster over the covers. The sooner it was done, the sooner we could send them out and begin growing.

Falling in Deeper

I discovered that Monster was a single woman living in Chicago. She wrote poetically, and it inspired me to respond with just as much artfulness. Our banter was delightful. And very quickly, I must admit, I had a crush on her.

All of our back-and-forth in the private AOL chatroom became flirty, and our messages were full of innuendo. She confided she had a girlfriend. And a boyfriend. I found that enormously provocative.

She was an artist and entrepreneur who rode a motorcycle. She seemed wild and alive. I admitted I was recently married and building the company with my new wife. And our flirting included the three of us meeting at some point.

Poetic Flirting

At first, I brought Jen into the messaging. I’d sit her down at my computer and show her the threads and see if I could get her to chat with Monster too. But she was uninterested. “Get the covers done,” she insisted. “I don’t care how you do it. But I don’t need to be part of this.”

Monster and my flirting got more serious, our messages more explicit and yet still poetic. There was something about the anonymity and distance that made us both bold.

We wrote all the time, and I started hiding the depth and quantity to Jen. And still, the covers were evolving nicely. Monster had sent a box of mini samples, possible directions for us to go through, and they were each wonderful. Jen and I were excited about what they’d bring to the plan.

The Polaroid

About a month later, the project was nearing completion. When the box of 20 sets of finished plan covers arrived, we opened it like kids on Christmas. They couldn’t have been more perfect.

But also inside the box was a blurry Polaroid of Monster — just cryptic enough to be provocative. Since I had never seen her, it was my first glimpse; a small cutting of her red hair, tied in a bow and bound in copper. Jen looked at the hair and the Polaroid and me, “What the fuck??”

That was a difficult evening. Jen was more pissed off than I had ever seen her. She had no idea we were flirting to this degree, and despite the covers, she was exceptionally uncomfortable with my communication with Monster.

I knew she was right, and even though my defense was that I had never seen her, nor spoken with her, and it was just a weird internet chat room thing… I had no argument.

She felt this was as bad as a real affair. At Jen’s insistence, I sent Monster a final message that said I couldn’t chat with her anymore. Of course, there was no decision here.

A Mysterious Package Arrives

The business plans worked. We raised money for Petroglyph, and the company began to grow. A few months later, I received an unmarked package from Chicago, but I was suspicious. I opened it in the privacy of my office.

It was a book — a handmade book, almost three inches thick. The cover was leather, hand tooled. And inside the pages were the print out of my text conversations with Monster.

On page one, it said, “Hey there, would you guys be able to custom make some book covers I can use for my business plan?” and on the last page, it had my note telling her we couldn’t chat anymore. And in-between was the entire arc of our poetic relationship. It only existed in text form, a true epistolary romance.

I sincerely didn’t know what to do with it. I both deeply revered it and realized the issues it would create. I called my brother, my moral compass. “You know you can’t keep that thing,” he said. “You don’t want to have something like that you have to hide from Jen your whole life.”

So in late 1995, I packed it back up and returned it to her. And I decided never to email her again.

You’ve Got Mail

In 2007 Jen and I were in turmoil. She had fallen for another guy, and even though we were still living at the same home, we hadn’t slept together in a year.

Juggling the relationship stress with my intense job at Netflix was painful and distracting. Finally, in a moment of insanity or perhaps to assuage her guilt, Jen suggested that I needed to get laid.

It’s not easy for a married guy to get laid just because he wants to, and I argued this offer, while generous, wasn’t practical. I’d been monogamous for 17 years. There was no Tinder. I wasn’t even sure I could do it with anyone else. “Wait, I have an idea.”

I went to the computer and dug up an email address I hadn’t used in more than a decade. Not sure if the email would bounce, I didn’t want to pen a lengthy correspondence.

Whimsically, I wrote to Monster: “Hey. Are you married?” and hit send.

The computer beeped a moment later, and I opened the reply. “Not too married for you.”

It Starts Again

And just like that, Monster and I began texting. It was like no time had passed. But quickly as I began to suggest my traveling to see her or us meeting in some clandestine location, she began to hedge.

She worked with her new husband, they were rarely apart, and as important, something about my coming to see her felt forced. We’d still never seen each other or even spoken. Certainly, there was intense curiosity, but would we have chemistry in the real world? Did it matter? Maybe this was a bad idea.

I backed off. Both of us had always trusted the universe to deliver and were observant about not pushing an agenda. We decided to stop communicating again.

Then, perhaps a month later, a senior associate at Netflix mentioned a conference in Chicago that he urged me to attend. It was late notice, but he felt I could jump on a plane and just do it that weekend. Would I free up my schedule?

I wasn’t sure if I should tell Monster or not. I was convinced she’d feel I put this together to see her.

The day before my flight, I sent her a note. I told her I had to be in Chicago for work, that I was going to be at the convention center and nearby hotel, and if she was comfortable, I would at least like to meet her in person. Just coffee, maybe. She didn’t respond.

The Unmistakable Redhead

On Friday afternoon, as I sat in the opening conference session fresh from the airport, my phone rang. She said she was outside the convention center and would be willing to meet me if I came outside.

Excusing myself, I raced to the street. I identified her easily. She was lovely and sweet, and we stood outside grinning and making small talk.

She said that she wasn’t going to come, but for reasons she could not explain, her husband announced that morning he was heading out of town for the weekend. She said that rarely happened. And to her, it was a sign.

We stood talking… and then we embraced. Like the couple in the Doisneau photograph, crowds passing us on the busy street, we were oblivious.

I hadn’t checked into the hotel yet, so she walked with me to the front desk. We pretended to be married. We pretended to be newlyweds. She came with me to room 451, and she didn’t leave until Sunday. I only left her a few times for important conference events, but even then, I was distracted and only extracted myself when feasible.

At the end of the weekend, we said goodbye. I wondered if we could see each other again somehow, but she told me it would be impossible. Even speaking with me would be painful, she said. Her marriage couldn’t withstand it.

“You have been, and apparently still are, one of my most potent drugs.”

On Sunday afternoon, she left. Those were her last words to me.

Thank you for reading.

If you are interested to know more about my stories, you may read the following curated one published in The Masterpiece.