The second letter that I received from Elena arrived with two small photos of her. She looked different in these photos than in the photos that I had seen of her on the dating site. The photos that you see on a dating site are normally taken by a professional photographer. The women are usually well groomed and posed in a manner to make them seem inviting. Sometimes they seem just a little too inviting like a photo shoot from Victoria's Secret. In a way with those two small photos, Elena started a tradition between the two of us, as we started to send at least one photo with each letter. There was a nominal fee for doing this but at the same time it made us seem more real to each other. It is difficult to build a feeling of trust when you have never seen someone before face to face. After you have read and heard some of the horror stories about men that have been duped out of their savings by unscrupulous gold diggers, you start to look for some of the warning signs.

I will not describe the warning signs in this chapter as there are already many web sites with information that could scare you half to death. There are also data bases where by you can check your lady's name and address to see if she has been involved in previous internet scams. If you are really paranoid, there are even private detective agencies that would be willing to follow your lady around for a few days to see if she's being sincere with you. I do not really recommend this because in any relationship there must be a foundation of trust right from the beginning that only becomes stronger with time. I confess that after reading about a few of the women that have given dating agencies a bad name, I did check Elena's name and address against two different data bases of known and suspected offenders. I suppose that if there was a data base for abusive, sexist, bozos looking for quick satisfaction, Elena would have checked my name and address as well. I was relieved that Elena was not listed in the data bases, but also alarmed at how many young women were. I knew that some of them were reported by men who were seeking revenge after being rejected or slighted, but greed and money lust are not uncommon in any part of the world.

And so we carried on our tradition of sending one or two photos with each of our letters. Elena said to me right at the beginning that she looked different in every photo and she was right. There were even times with childhood photos when I had to guess which little girl was Elena. I noticed that in most of Elena's recent photos that she did not smile very much but in past ones she did. I became aware that perhaps she might be self conscious about her smile but was not sure why. I learned later during a telephone call that she had recently been to an orthodontist to be fitted with braces. When she confessed this to me, I was not at all surprised and had even somewhat suspected it. What really did surprise me was that she thought I might not wish to continue our relationship because of it. I suppose that some men might have done just that but, I was already starting to have feelings towards Elena that I knew were stronger than friendship or lust.

I decided that with one of my first photos that I should show Elena what the rest of me looked like as I had only sent her a head shot at first. I have an inexpensive digital camera with a timer on it, so I set it up on a tripod in my living room and snapped a few pictures. I made sure that I had a full length one of myself from the front and the side. I combined the two of them together to send to her and it sort of looked like a photo taken when someone is incarcerated. I sent it off with my letter and awaited her reply. When Elena's reply came, I was disappointed to find that she had made no comment about the photo. I remember feeling somewhat rejected as I had told her how beautiful she was in her photos. I knew that I had become overweight since I had quite smoking five years ago, and I suspected that this was part of her reason for not commenting. It was at that moment, that I made a conscious decision to start the diet that I have been on for the last several months now. There was no other way to change my appearance without cosmetic surgery, and that is not on my short list of things to do. So now we each had something to be self conscious about, Elena with her braces and I with my physique.

I accumulated a great number of photos of Elena and she of me. I often enjoyed to look at them when I was awaiting her next letter. It also gave me an opportunity to be creative with some of my photos. I have several photo programs that I utilize in web site design and enjoy creating unusual photos and animations. Sometimes I would place the two of us together in a photo to surprise her and to demonstrate my wishful thinking. I know that I surprised her with some of them and even introduced her to my offbeat sense of humor. A couple months into our relationship, I suffered a catastrophic computer crash and had to restore the hard drive to it's original out of the box condition. This caused the entire memory to be erased along with all of the photos and letters from Elena that I had saved. I had made the mistake of not backing up any of my files on disc so I was only left with the photos that I had printed. All of Elena's letters were gone though. Since then I have made sure that I leave a copy of all of them on my mail server until I can burn them on a disc.

I began to do research on the internet to find an inexpensive way that I could call Elena on the telephone and it did not take me long to find one. I found an exchange called 10-10-345 that claimed to have a rate to anywhere in the Ukraine for 14 cents per minute plus a 29 cent per call service fee. This meant that I could telephone Elena and talk for an hour and have it only cost about eight dollars. I wrote to her in a letter and asked her if I could telephone her and when would be a good time. I suggested a Sunday as there is a seven hour time difference between us and I would need to call at noon to reach her at 7PM. Elena was recovering from a head cold so she asked me to wait one week before calling her. I gladly accepted. I remember feeling as nervous as a teenager asking a girl out on a first date when I made that call. I was also worried that one of her parents might answer in Ukrainian or Russian and all I would be able to say is Elena's name. I was not even positive how to say that properly.

I dialed the number and Elena answered it. She has a very nice voice and speaks English quite well. We had a very awkward but wonderful conversation and I remember feeling closer to Elena than I had ever felt before. Elena had a surprise for me though. She had not planned to tell me until later on in our relationship but somehow decided to confess to me that day. Elena had previously told me that she worked as a translator for a small company and dealt with translating letters for them. This was half of the truth as she says, and now it was time to learn the rest. I had already suspected as much, but now she had confirmed that she in fact worked for the dating agency that I had been communicating to her through. Again she thought that I might break off our relationship because of this and again she was mistaken. My mind raced with uneasy thoughts about this for several days after ranging from honest concern to the totaly absurd. My greatest concern was that she was actually being paid by her company to keep up a correspondence with me or that she somehow earned a commission from our letters and photos. I have never dared to ask her this and still do not know for sure but my instincts tell me that it is not the case. Elena also told me several times that she answered my letters at home and not at work.

As we continue this unusual relationship, it becomes apparent that neither of us is sure of the outcome, and neither of us wish to discontinue it. We will never know for sure until that day when we might meet face to face and spend time with one another, to know each other's real self and mannerisms. For the time being though, our photos and phone calls have brought us closer to that day when we might see what our chances are.