A Series of Missed Connections
by Lexys Sillin
Art by Madelyn DeWitt
“Missed Connections,” while accessible to most, serves both as a vacancy and a message board. An underrepresented section of the popular Craigslist website, “Missed Connections” are meant to be what the name supposes: a place for people to reconnect when contact information was not exchanged in a moment or circumstances made it hard to follow up organically. If it sounds like a platitude extracted from a favored TV show or rom-com, then it’s working. Drafted as the “you-smiled-at-me-on-the-subway-platform”, “Missed Connections” is meant for the idyllic rendezvous. And if one finds herself in that situation, there is a place under the “Community” tab, sandwiched between “lost+found” and “musicians”, where you can (anonymously) ask “is anyone still looking for me?” Albeit, an endearing gesture, there is something equally disturbing about communicating with a void of potential respondents.
//
In this new city, I’m desperately looking for companionship. I wear lipstick every day, just to curve the corners up and slide my hands out slowly when collecting change from a very tall and ghostly pale cashier. Like a spell has been cast, he retracts his hands and mumbles his next few words. I move on, work in the corner, almost completely out of sight of the cash register and its bashful operator. But somehow, whenever the hair on my neck rises, I look from my computer to see he is cleaning or sweeping the same spot away from his post, gaze completely concentrated on my sector of the room. When I smile or wave with my fingers, his expression never changes, and I halt attempts to bring attention to myself, embarrassed I ever tried. So it goes for a few hours, first like a game, and then like a plague. When I pack up, he’s cashing out another customer. I pause to dig the keys out of my bag and look back, certain there will be a pair of callous eyes staring back. The cashier is nowhere in sight. Apprehensive, I fall into the night, checking to see if there’s anyone following until I reach my car door. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but who is that lurking in the corner of the parking garage? What good is a spell if magic is so fallible. Maybe I need to be more selective with who I’m seeking connection from.
missed connection: High Grounds at 5:00pm. Blonde with no bra and sweet lips. Be careful, there are a lot of weirdos out there Sweetie. I bet you’d look good in red. See ya around.
//
The late summer, as late as you can get, pretty much fall, but still driving with the windows down—summer—I’m keeping pace with traffic in the left lane, thinking about how murders are correlated with ice cream sales, moderated by heat. The highway empties when a grey Silverado revs its engine, driver peeking through the window, a macabre smile and baseball cap trying to make eye contact. I pull forward, my foot falls towards the floor, and warm wind blows into my hair. The man in the Silverado keeps up and cuts me off only to slow down almost 10 mph. My temperature rises to match the summer fever, infuriated by these damn Iowa drivers. I swing into the right lane, get back up to speed, and eventually drift into the left lane when the grey pickup shrinks as the seconds between us grow. A few exits to go and a few mile markers behind me, just like the rampant truck now neck and neck with my sedan. Again its driver stares into my car, ear-to-ear in an affair of laughter. As is the flu—contagious— I feel my face stretch, throat vibrate, accompanied by a reprimanding head shake. I pull off on my exit, trembling, despite the sun bearing down on my driver’s side window.
missed connection: Driving on 218 South last Thursday around 2:15pm. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of you. You’re so beautiful I almost swerved off the road. I just wanted to get your attention. Please don’t be mad. We should go out sometime. I’ll drive.
//
It’s a temporary damnation that the only person I know in this city hasn’t talked to me in two years. I bet he hates it here. The front yards are almost non-existent, and the residential transformers are placed on the side of the houses or stuffed in bushes. It’s a nightmare. I am strangled by thoughts driving home each night, thinking about how he could possibly make a life here. Incidentally, I learn the streets of the city (not that there are many) and places to eat. I fall in love with walking from the library to a grocery store to a coffee shop and then a gym. I start working, make friends, pick up a new boyfriend, and stop looking for his face. My need to circle the Pedestrian Mall seven times in a trance fades to occasionally taking a long way home. Three months later, I’m watching the sunset behind Old Capitol through the passenger side window when something obstructs my view. He stands at the corner like a shadow of the twilight. Two years estranged from laying across the electrical box in my front yard and all that’s changed is the need to carry a messenger bag on his hip. What’s missed is all the time between then and all the time since, and it almost kills me. Last I heard, he moved to Maine.
missed connection: Looking for a static woman with an electrical love. We spent so many nights letting the vibrations run beneath us before I walked you home. I’m sorry I killed the power. Forgive me?
//
The issue with this void being its indeterminable size. At face value, there would be an expected hundreds or thousands of posts on “Missed Connections” in each city; however, the platform only serves those who are aware it exists, and then, each post is time-sensitive. Missed connections on the current Craigslist platform only last for around a month at a time. Even if a post is answered within the timeframe, there may be greater risk attached to the person seen for only a short moment in a commute, a coffee shop, or from way-back-when. “Missed Connections” may be less admirable for its ability to reconnect and more for the risk in meeting others without even a username to filter through. Not to mention the violation of one’s choice to let imagination fill the gaps of what could have been. Which as far as voids go, is as good as any.