more email

Here's one I got from Janna herself about three days after we started a dialogue - I'm not including the whole email, because a lot of it is irrelevant, talking about tshirts and bras and hammered dulcimers, but she confided in me about "Jesse," so let's just start there. Oh, and did I ever mention that Janna had an affair with "Jesse," after she hired him to work for her at AP?

It was my intent to ask you today if it would OK with you if I mentioned to our auBoy that we've begun a dialog. I like it and if you do too, and we keep it, I'd prefer to not have to say "Au by the way..." months down the road.

This is kind of ironic because in my mailbox today is an E from him telling me he's begun to tell you his story. This isn't something he does freely, easily or often. In my opinion it's a rarity actually, as he believes he's guided to safe harbors but doesn't sail off looking for one that often. It doesn't surprise me he'd drop anchor with you.

It's funny because for Season 1 and the majority of Season 2 he and I shared our obsession with "Deadwood." I think I even wore him down with my Milch madness. Another friend told me HBO had a "Deadwood" Web site where I would find LOTS of people just. like. me. I did!

I brought auBoy into the mix, though I was frought with all kinds of reservations. I didn't know enough about what I was getting into, being a "community" novice. The nastiness and fighting just blew me away, but then {REDACTED} said it was worse in other places. I can't imagine, but that somehow made me feel better enough to hang in there.

The LAST thing auBoy needed was some online unpleasantness or worse, weirdness. A bad online experience we shared as total Web virgins left us both badly scarred and scared.

After two fairly rocky weeks on the board, being true to what had pretty much become the most recent incarnation of his 3D self, something seemed to come over him. I don't know whether it's the anonymity of it, or the anonymous familiarity posting offers or what. But I started to see things, read things, from him I haven't seen in years. YEARS.

As I'm sure he's told you or will tell you himself, he's had a rough ride. He came to me in an upswing. A point where he was young enough and resilient enough to effectively just stuff it all down inside and just try to be himself. Over time, I do believe I got as much of the whole person as anyone outside him will ever be able to get. I cherish it.

I fell in love with the fun and fooly, fully open person he offered me. Offered everyone. Over time, I realized I've never known an onion so complex. The more layers he peeled back, the more amazed I was that he still breathes. Every day, every detail, only made me love him more. It didn't matter how dark or light the detail was, by the time it hit my canvas it was just fucking psychedelic!

Eventually we all lost him and I mean really lost him. To sadness, to circumstance, to a total lack of coping skills sharp and fast enough to deal with all that was tossed at him. I'd resigned myself to loving him forever, but also to the fact the him I loved first was also gone forever.

At first when I'd read some of his posts in cyberDeadwood I'd just go "Hmm." Then every so often I'd actually have to smile.

Then one morning I woke up and read an exchange he'd had in {REDACTED} with some people and {REDACTED} himself. The more I read, the more I sat here sobbing like a lunatic. The dogs thought I was insane, yet again.

It was the conversation that included {REDACTED} and {REDACTED} and I think one other of the guys. The night the term "entendredudes" was born. They talked softball and guy stuff until the womens' {REDACTED} heat sensors went off and they began to arrive.

I found it so interesting that although we're talking only two dimensions, somehow {REDACTED} had run into the core Jesse.

There's been a few more of those blocks of pure Jesse on there since. Parts of his personality that I'd mourned and buried are BACK! Who the fuck would have guessed that a Deadwood fan community would produce this? Certainly not I.

So I've TOTALLY stopped beating myself up for bringing him there. I have a master's in psychology but never practiced because I'm an Earth Mother and can't leave it at the office. It consumed me. Though I intellectually KNOW that therapy is really just finding a good enough facilitator to get one talking because the answers are within, I'd never seen it work. Now I have. He's got a "room" full of facilitators, both general and specific.

I can't tell you how good it is to see him again. I'm a cautious person anymore, but I'm having a hard time trying not to celebrate this return for fear he will disappear again. I can't help myself.

The Internet is not all bad juju.

My, I'm running off at the keyboard today. Sorry.

I just need to add that his name really IS Jesse James. This actually served as bond between us in our very first exchange because my daughter is Jessica Saint James, or Jessi as she prefers. We wrote some letters back and forth as he was wrangling for a job. In the SECOND LETTER he said something to the effect of "It's good I have the same name as your little daughter. This way when you scream "yes Jesse, yes!" in your sleep your husband will think you're talking to your kid." Carumba!

He never wrote for me using that name though. He always used a nom de plume he was more comforable with. Actually, I can see that because my child has grumbled MANY a time to me. There is a stripper in Denver named Jessi St. James and people we know in Colorado that see the ads in "The Denver Post" always ask her if that's HER. Notorious just isn't for everyone. Nor is attention. And I think those two generate enough without any help from their monikers.

One other thing that struck me when I was re-reading a bunch of her emails - she mentions a brother who worked for United, apparently as quite the insider, for 20 years till he got laid off. Assuming he got another job in the airline industry, I'm sure he had no problem mailing things for her from his various layovers. So maybe he's in cahoots with her, and I was talking to him on the phone, or maybe she just gulled him into mailing things from various locales around the globe by feeding him a line of bullshit. Maybe she told him I was a stamp collector. Dunno....