By Holly Hox Forget Me Not

Have you ever fallen in love with a character in a book or a person you’ve never met?

Example: I fell in love with Nick Carraway from “The Great Gatsby.” Nick was smart, presumably handsome and reserved. He told me about the mysterious Gatsby and I loved the dialogue throughout. He, along with Holden Caulfield, made my junior year A.P. English class fun.

But how long can you really go admiring a person when you’ve never seen his face? Even a picture would do. But at that point, is the mystery ruined?

What brings me to the subject of this column is my recent virtual crush. As a print journalism major, it’s just so typical I’d fall in love with another journalist. Knowlton would be proud.

My previous preoccupation was with law students. Just the concept of a law student (dollar signs and prestige) had me thinking about summers in my very own beach house in the Hamptons. But often, their humor is as dry as Britney Spears’ new wig. Now journalists-they have talent, humor and an eye for happenings.

The man behind the byline is Justin Rocket Silverman. What a name! Obviously, that sucked me in right away. Justin is a reporter for AM New York, which is a daily free newspaper handed out on the streets of New York on subways.

I started commuting to the city in January for an internship. Since then, I have grabbed AM New York from the ink-smudged hands of the paper people each morning. And that’s when Justin and I first met-though unofficially.

Throughout the summer, I was in the city again-this time, five days a week. So every evening, on the 6:08 p.m. train to Huntington, Justin and I would settle down together and I’d listen to him talk about the happenings of the city.

We were establishing a great relationship. He just gave me the facts-the hard facts. He didn’t get defensive when I wasn’t interested in what he had to say. He didn’t judge me when I criticized him. If I found myself tiring of him, I’d just turn the page. I even considered e-mailing him one day to let him know that I admired how he was able to fit so much information into one 250-word block.

Nine months later…

No, we didn’t have a child. But nine months after being introduced to Justin, I finally came face to face with him again.

I was at my internship, working on updating a database of celebrity birthdates. After spending 15 hours on it, everyone’s name sounded like a celebrity to me. I may have even included President Rabinowitz right under Jude Law.

Right before I e-mailed the document over to the editorial assistant, I pulled up my browser to see if had missed any new celebs which happened to jump on Perez Hilton’s page. Gawker.com is my default homepage, and the latest story was titled, “Justin Rocket Silverman’s Effability Diminished by ‘Men’s Health’ Spread.”

That name…though it rang familiar, I figured it must be some kind of celeb who I missed.

I scrolled down to see a JPEG of the “Men’s Health” spread that the title mentioned. There in front of me stood a male, TDH, (tall, dark, handsome) in a bomber jacket. HOT-TIE!

As I read the small bio underneath, it finally was clear: this was Justin, as in Justin Rocket Silverman. Standing on my glossy 20-inch iMac desktop.

I hit Apple+P and flew over to the black and white printer. And there he was, now on paper-a medium that he and I had met on too many times before.

What happened next? No, I didn’t fly to the vacant first floor bathroom to take a few “moments” for myself. Instead, I found myself just sitting there, while disenchantment settled in. Our dream life was over: He and I had finally met. I was coming to terms with the fact that Justin really exists, as a 29-year-old journalist, on the streets of Manhattan. He was no longer hiding behind his byline, because now I had a face to put to the name.

I still grab AM New York from inky hands every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. But now when I see Justin’s name, it just feels different. It’s like in high school, when you have a crush on a boy for so long, but you wake up one morning and it’s gone.

I hope I never see a face put to Nick Carraway. Imagining someone in your head does keep that bit of Disney-like magic alive and well inside of you. And at 21, I really need that.