I walked into the bedroom, pulled back the sheets and slithered between the silk. As the cool threads caressed my naked body I lay thinking about our relationship and how it changed over the years.
When we first hooked up, there was passion. There was love. It was fantastic. I would get up in the morning with a sense of excitement, fantasizing about the events of the previous day as my body trembled with anxiety in anticipation of another wild ride.
This went on for years. I was never happier. Until May 2010.
I awoke with the usual excitement as the sun creeped through my bedroom window. I rolled over to see if things were up. For the first time, my heart sank. My stomach felt sick.
Since we began our relationship, I was accustomed to that strong, powerful, unyielding wake up each morning to start my day. I quickly realized the pounding I was getting this morning wasn’t one that was going to make the rest of my day any better.
As the weeks and months went on, I felt stuck. Trapped in a relationship that used to be incredible. I spend time trying to work things out in my head. What went wrong? How did I f**k this up? How did I let the fire that was burning deep inside me suddenly go out?
Was I the one to blame?
It was the week before Thanksgiving. The time of the year we both looked forward to. I knew exactly what to expect and I was hoping that the excitement of the holiday would bring back the spark.
Day after day I waited. Nothing. Thanksgiving. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Christmas. The big spike I hoped to have never came. I finally realized that our relationship was dead. It needed help.
I vowed that the new year was going to bring a new sense vitality to our relationship, even if it involved things I never dreamed of doing, or only saw on pay-per-view.
I found the person who could help, but he was thousands of miles away. Could I do this over the phone? I was hesitant at first. Then I dialed. One digit at a time, shaking nervously but knowing that this was the call I needed to make.
A calm, masculine voice on the other end answered. With just his few brief words, “How can I help you?” I stopped shaking. I had a feeling go through my body like I haven’t experienced in years. It was incredible. As I stroked the phone cord I became more comfortable knowing that this is the person I’ve been needing all along.
I went into all the delicate details, we swapped email addresses, websites and he promised to give what I had a good going over. He warned me that things may hurt a bit, but we’ll take things slow.
We carried out our phone relationship for weeks as he learned more and more about me and how things deteriorated so badly. With each conversation I felt more at ease with him. His calm, reassuring nature gave me confidence that this can be rebuilt even if I needed to do things I’ve never done before.
I was ready.
I flew out to meet him face-to-face. As I walked into this office, the blinds were drawn, the incandescent lights dimmed, a laptop sat on the table with it’s contents displayed on the wall behind him.
He welcomed me, sat me down, placed his hand on my knee and reassured me that today was the day my life was going to change. He reached between his thighs as I leered out of the corner of my eye. Whipping out his clicker he went through his presentation, slide by slide, one by one.
He talked about my header and he dissected by navigation. He raved about my section page content but spanked me hard about my item page layout. As I recovered, he caressed my back as he whispered lovingly about my custom features.
We mapped out a plan to rebuild things, including reducing duplicate content, giving the look a freshening up and taking on the challenge of email and social media marketing.
The day turned into night and we were both growing tired. He took me to a bar around the corner. It wasn’t the kind I was accustomed to. Things were obviously different after dark. My mild mannered rescuer had a secret side that I was about to experience.
We left the bar and hailed a cab driven by a man who smelled worse than the urine soaked gin house we just left. Once at my hotel, we went to my room. Like the movies from the 60’s, I offered to slip into something more comfortable. I retreated to the bathroom where I freshened up, gargled Listerine and frantically searched for my emergency bottle of Summer’s Eve.
I came out to find him on the bed, laptop at the ready and his clicker firmly planted in his hand. As we sipped Seagrams 7 from plastic cups, he rambled on about metrics, analytics, A/B testing, list segmentation and with each topic the excitement level built. Faster. Wilder. Hotter. I was going crazy inside then it happened. As his hand slithered up my leg, he screamed out, “positive ROI!”
It was then I blacked out.