Your Heart, Online. Act I: The Rom-Com

“But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings.”
– Kathleen Kelly, You’ve Got Mail (1998)

“All I ask is for you to get to know me on a deep, intimate level while I resist and obstruct your every attempt to do so.”
– twitter user @InternetHippo

I. Un / knowing
The wind is hot and irritable, summer’s huff of indignation at the state of itself — hotter and drier than the year before, which was hotter and drier than the year before that — and I understand, I’d throw a fit too. When I pull out my phone to let you know I’ve parked, an old receipt is lifted from my purse. My toes curl in my sandals while a gust hurls the flimsy thing over the curb and across the abandoned lot behind me. My trash is soon lost to a yellow tangle of Scotch Broom. “Botanical Bullies,” a national park sign once told me. Bull Thistle, Bighead Knapweed, Gorse. Exterminators pick loveless names.

Unlucky, really. All of this.

I’ve recently shrugged off my last life like a heavy coat, and I mistake the freedom of relocation with being free. The mountain of questions I’m ignoring starts to tremble. How do I escape this if it follows me to every new city? Why can’t I picture my own face? Have I misplaced something important? Temporary strangers, loud bars, the buzz of my phone — It all rises to help me evade the answers. I tug on this cord of unknowing and wait for the cry of a bell to save me from my suspicions about myself. I am at the precipice of you.

A pearl of sweat escapes the fold behind my knee, travels the taut ridge of my Achilles before losing itself under my heel. A new message from you illuminates my screen. “Hey, I’m sorry I’m running a little late…”

I square my shoulders and step out from the weeds.

II. My Heart / Your Eyes
I open my dating apps like it’s an ongoing argument. My friends in comfortable long-term partnerships ask me questions about this portal of the internet, rapt with the fascination of the fortunate. My role in this spectacle is more nature documentary prey than rom-com lead. For months now, I haven’t strayed from the virtual folder of people who have already “liked” me, which means in lieu of an X stamped across my profile, they offer an online heart, sometimes a rose — internet tokens of affection, or at least a “sure” tossed my way from a bus stop or bathroom break or self-checkout line. I open the explore tab after giving myself a half-hearted pep talk, something about making the first move as a form of empowerment. I’ll try anything new if it keeps the undertow of boredom from sweeping me out to the deep end of lonely.

Your photo is the first in half an hour that stills my frenetic slashing through profiles bloated with dead fish and political moderates. Grainy you, sitting on a kitchen counter, looking elsewhere. You are caught in the final stage of listening, as though you’re on the cusp of a response. Smileless. Your profile tells me you live just under an hour away, you are taller than me, and you are beautiful. Under occupation, “actor” is listed next to a little briefcase. The juxtaposition makes me laugh. Your eyes bring one hundred of my questions to a boil. I send my first heart and you disappear from my screen.

My friends and I never refer to our potential matches by their real names. Since first names are bestowed like badges of honor through consistent good behavior, most of them sit in nickname purgatory. James and Mike and Jon and Jo become a carousel of monosyllabic sameness, evoking no memory, no face, no differentiation from the crowd of men we take turns complaining about in the group chat. We fight the drag of ennui by creating our own language, hitching context to each person like a trailer; names that recall some combination of occupation, defining fuck-up, city of origin. We understand the message I saw Detroit last night has nothing to do with sightseeing and everything to do with the trouble that keeps finding us. They give us hell, but we give them meaning. Whether grieving or celebrating, we protect ourselves with the stories we spin. Never question the cost of trading a person for a plot.

We name you The Thespian.

[INTERMISSION: COCKSUCKER]

From the way he looked down at his keys, at his worn brown wallet pulled from a pocket familiar with its outline, anywhere but me, I knew the date with Cocksucker would be something to endure. He frowned into the sun and stopped in front of me, as if by accident. “Kayla?” he asked, the nerves strangling those two syllables. His arms clasped around me briefly, more bump than embrace. The sexless collision relaxed me. It is a familiar purpose: to ease this stranger’s nerves, coax him into his own self, abandon my desires. The role suited me. I’ve always found being a service preferable to being a person.

I made a show out of my relaxation and ignored the nagging pang of unease coming from my abdomen. I laughed through his interruptions, my giggle musical and unrecognizable to anybody who loves me. I believed chemistry’s growth was dependent on whether I could work out my date’s optimal conditions, so I tended to his comfort and watched what bloomed: his bouncing knee lulled under the table, his own laugh swallowed mine, his eyes stayed on me (well, somewhere below my neck) for longer stretches before darting away. What’s a gut to a gardener? Flushed with a sense of victory and the bottom of my second drink, I wondered if my initial assessment was preemptive. Harsh. Shallow.

I tried to forgive his lack of interest in my personhood. After a perfunctory question about my job as a school counselor (it’s “really sweet” that I work with children, it takes “a special kind of person” to do the work I do), he made me incidental to the evening’s unfolding. I heard about his family, his job, his coworkers, his travel history, hours of stories dumped in piles at my feet. But that’s not entirely fair to him, is it? I know how to render myself invisible with my curiosity. It’s a safe place to hide. In my own questions, I mean.

In the firefly blink of patio lights, the smile I kept plastered on my face started to crack. I clenched down on a yawn and imagined driving myself home, scraping off the clothes that crush the dough of my stomach into an unnatural shape, and asking my friends how a date is supposed to feel. He snatched me out of my reverie with the climax to one of his long, rehearsed jokes.

“–And that’s when he knew he was on a date with a cocksucker!”

His tittering hiccups crawled across my skin. This was my harvest. I stared at his lips, hating how the word “cocksucker” moved from a click at the back of his throat to a hiss between his wet teeth, back and forth like the slap of an air hockey puck. The violence of a word, a mouth. Everything loose in me stiffened. I offered him my cracked smile. “I’m so tired. I think I’m ready to call it a night.”

[ten date night ideas SCROLL ten reasons to stop dating SCROLL meet the starting line up of my roster SCROLL meet people online SCROLL meet cutes in your city SCROLL are you in the wrong city? COMPOSE TEXT MESSAGE I don’t think I know the difference between a successful job interview and a good date]

III. New / Year
I delete the dating apps from my phone before the new calendar year, which gives me the same relief as turning off the stove fan after an involved recipe. In my journal, I put my goals on paper.

Answer mom’s phone calls
Eat every day
Read more
Scroll less

Maybe I can change. Maybe this time, the resolutions will find a foothold along my interior. Bobbi and I commit to comfortable clothes and takeout for New Year’s Eve, and our evening is cozy and gently sad, the way most holidays are for me. We crane our necks to catch the Puyallup tribe’s fireworks from her bedroom window. Our view — the casino, sorbet-colored sunrises, the mountain, its shadow — will be swallowed by the blank, gray face of a new condo unit by the next new year, but for now, I savor the way changing colors burst across my best friend’s face. At midnight, I indulge my melancholy as I murmur, “Happy New Year, Bobs.” I’m asleep by 12:15 AM.

I wake up early on Bobbi’s living room couch, rested and clear-headed. Only the hum of a fan whispers from her bedroom, so I know I’ll have a few moments alone. Should I start a new book? Make a full breakfast, wake Bobbi with the smell of fresh coffee? Walk down to the water, smile at the people I pass with the shared acknowledgment of our healthy habits? But the couch is so plush. And I have all year to be better. I open my phone and start scrolling. My stomach contracts once, hard, when I see a voice note from you in my direct messages, delivered a few minutes after midnight.

Since sharing that first heart months ago, our communication has been sporadic. You follow my Instagram dedicated to book reviews, creative writing, and beginner poetry. You write poems, too, about the things that wound you. Our first conversation was months ago; you sent my post about guns in elementary schools with the attached message, Sorry, did you write this? It’s really good.

I wonder if I should have paid more attention to the fact that we started with an apology.

I turn my volume low, careful not to wake Bobbi, and press the phone speaker into my ear. I notice the softness in your voice before I listen to your words. You sound like you’ve carved a private space out of the holiday clamor. I want to know which came first, the quiet room or the desire for me? Your tone is nervous — no, not nervous… tentative. Careful.

I know this is a weird thing to do, but I wanted to wish you a happy New Year. And I like the way you talk. You talk like… like you’re in a movie. I can hear your smile. I like it a lot. Anyway, I hope your year is full of all the good things, and… I want to meet this year. I hope we do. Okay, bye. Happy New Year.

My blood turns to honey, sticky against my balled stomach and new resolutions. Nobody else is in the room, but I still hide my growing grin, stuff my eagerness between the couch cushions. By the time Bobbi wakes up, I’ve listened to the message four times.

IV. Lost / Found
The concessions I make for you start immediately. You are forty minutes late to our first date and something about you, or something about me, makes me want to pretend I’m not hurt by this fact. In that time, I’ve finished two and a half drinks, befriended the waiter, and hurled a flurry of texts at Bobbi. I can’t remember how tall the thespian is and I just know I’m about to meet Thumbelina. Oh god what if he’s one of those people who wants to sit on the same side of the table as me. Okay he’s going on 45 minutes late now. I should leave. Right? Any self-respecting person would leave… Right?! I am mostly lavender, champagne, and frothy panic when the waiter asks if anybody will be joining me. I apologize, “Oh — yes, I just came early. That’s my fault.” This is the first time I am lying to myself on your behalf.

When you walk in, the sound of a bell swallows me. The backlight of the setting February sun delivers you inside the restaurant more silhouette than person, so I strain to collect your details before you reach me: your rings, the shape of your hands, your eye whites more eggshell than snow, the glow of your watch on your tattooed forearm. You look like the music a wave makes raking over broken seashells. I know the first text I’ll send Bobbi after our date, Well he’s definitely not short LOL. You move toward me with slow, sure strides, a stark contrast to my airy hysteria. You are here. Solid and real. My grin is mirrored back at me on your face, nearly conspiratorial. “Hi!” I sing. “Hi,” you promise.

We beam into each other for hours, long enough for the afternoon to spill citrus colors over the wood-paneled walls, over us, before making its gray retreat. The only remaining light in the room cups us softly, artificial and warm. I’m surprised when you tell me you’ve read an Eddie Glaude book on my recommendation. We talk Danez Smith and James Baldwin; you love the poem Dinosaurs in the Hood, but Begin Again stretched a sore muscle in you. I learn you are a long way from the first place you called home. When you talk about your baby sister, I picture you swinging a machete, cutting a path for her through the tall grass and the monsters that lurk beyond it.

You tell me once, gently, “You have a lot of questions, but you avoid a lot of answers.” Your noticing makes me squirm. I tell you about writing, how my newness to the practice scares me, how I scare myself with some of the sentences that come out. My stories are punctuated with, “Did that make any sense?” You ask me questions about my students and I tell you about my favorites, how last week, a first grader growled, “I wish nobody liked you as much as I like you.” You never once call it sweet. Instead, you say, “It sounds like you have the capacity to hold so much, and to hold it carefully.”

The memory that will haunt me most is the bounce of your laugh. You laugh like someone who has freed himself. I will do or say anything to hear the surprise of it coming out three octaves above your speaking voice. My cheeks ache with how much I’ve been smiling, but this time, from the potency of my pleasure, its refusal to be contained. If a thrill could set fire, I would’ve burned all night.

“We should go, right? We’ve been at this table for over three hours. They’re probably sick of us.” The word “us” melts in my mouth. I’m aware of how our bodies move together as we walk toward the parking lot. At my height, I am rarely under a man’s chin, and I distantly resent how much I like it here, beneath you. My femininity does this sometimes: tumbles around my insides, making itself known in surprising and irritating ways. It jostles against me like a spare part I’ve inherited without a good place to put it. This part of me looks like Marie, the sole girl cat from The Aristocats mewling at my ankles, her pink bow and silky white pelt rubbing against my calves while I look up at you.

It rained at some point in the evening. The wet cement is a shock only to me, too cocooned by the warmth of your eggshell eyes to register the pattering on the window at my back. Orange puddles of light, cast from the glow of stern street lamps, dance by our feet. We are lingering. Still prolonging our goodbye.

You cut through the nervous chatter by asking, “May I kiss you?”

I laugh at your choice of words. The formality is already out of place in the space between us.

It’s melodramatic, right? To say that by the end of that kiss, something in me had been found? It’s true, but I scorn the cliché. Let’s say this, then: When we kissed, everything in me went quiet. I drive twenty minutes home without music, my fingers pressed to my lips, savoring the taste of lavender.

My mattress squeaks with the weight of my rapture as I fall into bed. You have the longer drive, but you’ve already texted me by the time I get home, Thank you for spending your time with me. My schedule is dumb the next few weeks but I’m gonna make it a priority to see you again. I force myself to wait for the tide of giddiness to recede before responding. Your wanting makes me want-able — to satisfy would be to disappear. I’ll whet your desire by hiding my appetite. I lay on my back with my eyes closed, projecting my favorite moments from our date onto my lids, rewinding as many times as I’d like. I’m greedy for more of you while I create distance between us, so I unlock my phone and locate the rest of your social accounts within minutes. You aren’t hard to find. None of us are, really.

I scroll and scroll and scroll, and an oily reality begins to wriggle. Bitches are so / I understand, now, you have a hundred faces unknown to me. It is conceivable, maybe even expected, after only one date. I don’t want that hoe / But the deeper truth, burrowing cold and wormy in my belly, is that you can make me see whatever — or whoever — it is you want me to see. Bitches don’t care about me / And I’d believe you.

I text my group chat, Y’all… I found the thespian’s twitter. I am trying to convince myself when I add, that’s a wrap lmfaooo. Ayano replies immediately. Is he homophobic? Racist? Ableist? A Playboi Carti fan? If I can’t delegate the burden of discernment, I can at least count on my girls to puncture my ballooning dread with their irreverence for my antagonists. I laugh, then sigh, and remember not to make a monument of you. LOL nooo, none of that. He just… doesn’t seems like somebody I could really know.

You’re a room made of mirrors. In that way, you’re just like me. I add these facts to my list of unknowings before fighting with sleep.

[INTERMISSION: MCMANSPLAIN]

Tuesday chafed my skin like a violation. Buzzing static invaded me in the too-loud, too-crowded, too-white bar, and I imagined breaking pint glasses over my head until the noise retreated. Everything irritated. My jewelry, my pants, too tight, too short. When was the last time I ate a full meal? Monday morning? I began to collect my belongings, prepared to leave –

He walked through the door four inches below where I expected to see him. He mumbled, “I really have to take a piss before I sit down. Long drive.” On his walk to the bathroom, I cursed my adherence to the online dating advice about making plans for a date within the first five messages. I pressed the wall of my glass into my temple and briefly prayed for a shatter before resolving to salvage something from the impending wreck. I undid the top button of my jeans and hunched comfortably over my tepid cider. My face slackened. I let his jokes fly into my silence. Die a twitching death on the table between us.

“Have you seen that McDonald’s documentary?” he asked, mouth full.
“Supersize Me?”
“Yeah, that one! That guy ate McDonalds for months and got like, super healthy. Hey, do you wanna go to McDonalds after this?”
I ignored his question. “Oh, I actually think he got pretty sick. But I saw online he was also hiding an alcohol addiction from the producers so–”
“Mm, no. No. I think you’re thinking of the wrong movie. I’m talking about SuperSize Me.”
I let the pause linger. He burped. I followed a hunch, “Have you actually… seen the movie?”
“No, I haven’t. But a friend described it to me once.”

I laughed, long and loud. The more annoyed he looked, the less I could contain my eruption. I laughed with relief in knowing men could still be terrible in the most obvious and traditional ways. Laughed with gratitude for the clarity. Their lack of imagination. I felt the same cheap, brittle thrill I always feel when I turn a person into a punchline.

[New ick unlocked, just imagine him tying his shoes SCROLL if we’re talking, don’t ask me why I’m single, cause you’re about to find out SCROLL you gotta pick whether u wanna use your brain or whether u wanna be happy with a man, cause u can’t do both COMPOSE TEXT MESSAGE hiii sorry for the delay. You’ve been on my mind too. And yes I’d love to come to your show!!]

V. Star / Gazer
A few weeks later, I’m seated for your play, in spite of myself. I try to listen to my foreboding about the way your hurt will collide with mine, but the temptation of you wins out. You texted me last week, I hope you breathe into the day with ease, your fingers stay warm, and everybody likes you as much as I like you. The orbit of a shared story calls to me. Incoming meteors be damned.

Even if I’m wrong to trust, even if you’re fooling me, I have a built-in exit route; you’re moving across the country for graduate school in the summer, an Ivy League program for drama. How much damage can two people do to each other in only a few months? I ask myself this question like it’s a reassurance instead of a premonition.

Mary told me once, years ago, to never date an actor. This warning makes sense when I consider how frequently women are herded into the periphery role of doting fan, or how many men can pull off an act without a stage. I often feel stuck in this framework: I am not just me and you are not just you, I am every woman and you are every man and we are trying to reach across an infinite history to get to the “us” of it all. The problem is, symbols can’t hold each other, and I’m mostly preoccupied with holding you. I try to disregard this preoccupation by telling myself I can keep this thing between us fun. Casual! Recreational arousal.

My tights cut my soft torso to pieces. I check if my phone is on silent eight times before powering it off. The metal of my mind is screaming again as the lights go down. My symbolic self and my real self sit in your symbolic and real audience, where we gulp in each minute you spend in front of us. It is impossible to see any other person in the theater for the hours I sit motionless, legs itching, hands hushed in my lap. Watching you.

I type one message to Mary after the final bow. Oh my god. He’s a star.

People buzz with admiration for you as I wade across the lobby. “That young man was really spectacular. Really, really spectacular.” A growing protectiveness tears through time to tackle me with its too-soonness. I am alert to the crowd’s appraisals, ready to bare my teeth at any perceived condescension or stinginess, but I only hear the lusty thrum of approval.

I wait for you in another one of our parking lots. You jog ahead of your friends, who cheered proudly from a few rows behind me, to kiss my cheek like a habit. You rush out, “These are the homies and I already told them I’m trying to date you.” I’m full of helium by the time they flock to you. You shine at one another, your faces singing, IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou. I’m already at home here, in the afterglow of your spotlight. Your laugh ricochets off the watching street lights.

After a night of vices that warm our insides — dark drinks for you, suppressed adulation for me — we flood my parked car with hungry lips and half smiles. We’re less inhibited this time than the first, less polite now that we are partitioned from the cold outside by my sweating windows. We disentangle, and you groan, “Ohhh noooo.” Each stretched word holds the force growing between us and our reluctance to submit to it. You elaborate, “I really, really, really like you. This doesn’t happen to me. Like, ever.” But you are smiling. We’re in on the joke, you and I. We are the joke. Our own romantic comedy.

With honey on your tongue, you offer, “You can come inside and it doesn’t have to mean anything. I don’t want this night to end right now, that’s all.” This is a line. All my symbolic women — their army of ears — clock it. I hear gates crashing closed, sirens wailing. It terrifies me how believable you are. I am desperate to believe you. We both know how this will end if I walk into your home. You pretend the inevitability doesn’t have to mean anything, I pretend I don’t want it to mean everything. “I should go,” I apologize. The invisible rules with which I govern my desire squeeze my throat as I choke out a goodnight. You leave my car so quickly I can’t remember you getting out, only the shape of your back walking into the night. Worry consumes me on my drive home. Maybe you’re the type of man to get angry over a boundary. Maybe I’m the type of woman who cares.

My phone chimes. I had to get outta there cause there’s a fine line between being cute and being coercive and I never wanna be the guy to cross that line. I loved tonight. Let me know when you get home safe.

VI. SHORTCUTS
The third time I see you is the time I stop counting. We’re seeing another show, the show of your parking lot friends, and I know I definitely cannot keep calling these dates. Oh god, am I a groupie? You didn’t tell me you were coming with a full car of people until I receive a message an hour before the play, We are running late. Who is we? As you arrive, I recognize a few of your friends’ faces from online.

I am growing uncomfortable with my internet access to you, since I never reveal the full scale of my digital view. This one way mirror sits in my gut like a lie. I pacify myself with technicalities: I found his public profile with only his full name. He wasn’t exactly discreet. Never mind the fact that nobody loves well under a technicality. I type your username in the search bar hours after swearing to myself, this is the last time. My bad habit fills the empty space growing between our messages and voice notes. Some days I don’t hear back from you for a few hours. Some days I don’t hear from you at all. I match your response times, even when the distance fills me with lead. This is normal, right? Casual! I want to be someone who can handle casual.

There is no kiss on the cheek this time. Your hug is limp and brief before you walk in front of me to our seats. I am meeting a new version of you, harder, less interested. As I follow your back through the crowd, I get the sensation of being shoved into a new room, jangling a set of keys to see if I can find the right one to unlock your next door. Before the curtains rise, you ask me to adjust your bracelet, and I can’t because my hands are shaking. I don’t absorb a single word of the show. I can only hear the scream of alarm bells, can only feel your thumb tracing planets on my palm.

Your hard shell dissolves a little as our laced hands swing between us on another dark walk to my car. Your eyes finally thaw, and it is the first time tonight I’ve been able to take a full breath. A shriek from a distant alley flips my fear inside out. My body tenses into you, and you wrap your coat around my shoulders, making fun of me with your glance more than anything else. “Don’t worry, I can fight,” you whisper. Your words sound like a wink, but I know you aren’t making a joke. I’m annoyed by the tickle of Marie’s whiskers. I struggle to resist the ancient chivalry of violence offered as a gift.

Our problem is we learned our violences differently. Yours hunts you. I sometimes hear it breathing down your neck, moving like a flag. You stay ready to face it in the night. I meet my violence like a neighbor. Like a father. When I swapped my razor blades with fleshy pinches, my violence also became a compromise. I squeeze the fat on my thighs until I’m peppered with blue stains: my note to self. We will never breach our private violences with language. I’m not saying either of us is wrong. It feels good to take a shortcut, make our hands do the talking.

You sit on the same side of the table as me. My dread from the first date is already incomprehensible; how could I want you anywhere else? We watch a fight take shape between two men on the far side of the bar. “They should just kiss instead,” you say into my ear, and I wonder if we would know the difference. The full length of my thigh is pressed into yours, my ankles tucked under your calf. This time when you deliver your line about a night that doesn’t have to end, my overnight bag is already packed.

In your room, I am overwhelmed by the scale of you. I step gingerly, like I’m in a museum, each artifact evidence of an unfamiliar history. Polaroid pictures, mounds of clothes, a lamp that changes hue depending on which bandana you drape over the bulb. You seem younger here, almost shy as you try not to watch my revolution around your space. Beyond the protections of a stage, my audience makes you nervous. Your new vulnerability chases the last dregs of my alarm away — proof that I have what it takes to reach this other side of you. At least for tonight. At least for this lock.

You cross the room to hold me from behind while I memorize an old picture of you, the past I can’t touch, washed in the soft purple light of your lamp. When I turn into you, you press your forehead to mine. Nothing is casual about our breaths slowing to find a new rhythm together. The room is quiet. Neither one of us is smiling.

There is a magnet in you that beckons the need in me. I have tried to withstand it, but I am getting so tired, so clumsy in my resistance. The pretending in me runs out. I tip into you, and you catch me with the sureness of someone who knew the fall was coming. This is our montage: Lavender bubbles and fingers interlocked on the same side of the booth and wet parking lots and your faraway eyes. My hands hold your face, a standing ovation. It is with the roar of this ovation that my lips find yours.

My skin wakes under the weight of your hands, blood rushing up to meet you at our places of impact. These clothes are in the way, your sheets are in the way, I’m in the way. I don’t want to mix, I want to dissolve. You whisper into my mouth, “Is this okay?” I answer in short praises: yes, yes, yes. You are the only one who is always present tense. I leave my body, move like color, find your shape, become a sound. We talk with our friction. Laugh with our hands. I cannot find the language to walk you through the throbbing in my chest, so we take the shortcut instead.