In this story, technology is not the only that aparts people from each other. Even if that woman loves him, she takes for granted her boyfriend is going to be always there.
Some people -me among them- prefer to focus their attention inside a machine or a book or live in their head because they are not good at dealing with their peers.
This story was a poem when I first wrote it.
@hlezama, thanks for reading and for your labeling advice.
You are welcome. That explains its poetic flavor!
You are right. I guess, as a book lover, I see books as technology too. It was in its beginnings.
I think that sense of self-alienation or enclosure with anything but human contact is more common than we, as a society, want to admit.
For some stupid reason, those who hide behind books are considered weirder than those who hide behind a cellphone or some other "curtain".
The problem with good books, at least in this context, I guess is that when we get used to them they become an idealized bar against which we measure any other interaction and that is so unfair to others.
The comparison may be hideous, but my guess is that it must be similar to what pornography does to a young man's future sexual life.
In my late teenage years I realised I used books as a wall to set the limit between me and the rest of mankind. I only considered going out when I thought somebody could be like me. That´s why I feel closer to fictional or passed away people in books than the living ones.
It doesn´t matter if you prefer books over cellphones or viceversa, the reason to do it is the same.
And related to the topic "porn", there´s people who perfer to have cyber-sex or get laid with a robot. I know it for a while and I still cannot understand the point.