Palm Experience: Subway Encounter

I beamed with a stranger and my girlfriend flipped

by Avi Gesser

Beaming has become an important part of my relationship with Rachel. We are both Palm V owners and part of our intimacy involves finding free programs for our hand held devices on the web and then sending them to each other via the infra-red communicator that allows one to exchange programs between Palm units. Sometimes I turn on my Organizer to find that Rachel has left me something-a new program, a poem, a little love note-and I do the same for her.

So I'm on the subway playing a new solitaire game that Rachel found for me at palmcentral.com when I sense some guy looking over my shoulder. He's about 30, in a suit, with a clean-shaven square jaw and a frat-boy haircut. "Wow, is that Solitaire man? I've been looking for that! Is it freeware?" I slowly start moving away, but he pulls out his Palm V and I'm immediately put at ease. "I'll trade you chess for it" he says sounding eager to please. "Chess? You have chess?", I pause. I can think of no reason not to trade programs. With that, we hold our Palm Pilots close, almost touching heads, and begin feverishly beaming programs to each other. After a few seconds, the subway crowd seems to disappear. I offer him Defender; he declines, but does accept the subway map and the postal code directory. I tell him I have no interest in his full-text version of Paradise Lost, and he is clearly disappointed; I should be more sensitive. He desperately scrambles to find me something else so that we are even. "How about a map of the United States?" "No thanks." "Donkey Kong? Subhunt? A pocket synthesizer?" "No it's quite all right." I say trying to reassure him that it's nothing personal. "The chess game is more than enough." "All right", he mumbles, looking slightly deflated. And with that, he rushes off at Times Square. As the doors close and the subway moves ahead, I look to see if he will turn back, but he doesn't. Perhaps I've offended him.

I arrive at Rachel's place and triumphantly unveil my new chess program. "Where did you get it?" she asks, expecting me to answer with the name of a website. "Some guy on the subway" "WHAT??? The subway? What are you talking about?" She makes me tell her the entire story moment by moment, and I can tell she's getting angrier with every word. "You beamed with a complete stranger? How do you know what he was sending you?" I sputter an incoherent explanation, but she isn't interested. "He could have a virus. You don't have any protection on your Palm." I cower and quietly try to apologize. She ends her jealous rampage with, "If you want to beam with chess-boy on the subway, that's fine, but don't expect to get anywhere near my Palm ever again." She turns, goes into her bedroom, and slams the door. Sitting in her kitchen, I first think to myself: wow, my girlfriend is a complete lunatic. But after a couple of minutes I start to see her point. Here I was engaging in an activity that had been our private little thing, with a total stranger. It was as if I told the new secretary in my office to call me "my little pony."

I knock on her door and promise her I'll never do it again. I tell her I actually didn't like it much, but that's a lie. It was exciting. There was a certain energy generated when we were frantically trying to find programs for each other before one of us had to get off, knowing we'd never see each other again. "What was his name?" Rachel asks. "Jacob" I tell her knowing that will make her more comfortable. The truth is, I don't know his name. Neither of us even asked. -Avi Gesser [Avi Gesser is a lawyer and writer living in New York]