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You begin by downloading online dating applications. First, one. Then, two. You draw the line after three. Before you can even ponder your decision, faces appear. They fill your phone’s screen, in grid formation. A few of the squares are recognizable: acquaintances predominantly, a few neighbors, and possibly a poorly lit coworker. You resist an urge to say hello, fearing you’ll impinge on Internet etiquette or that your greetings might be misconstrued. You worry that the people who recognize you will think you’re cheating. You panic, disable your profiles, and disappear. You do this three
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The problem might not be the game, you realize, but instead, the player. You begin to feel old in a virtual space where your age isn’t far from the median. It’s not only the culture—you could fill a bathtub with all the acronyms and pop references you don’t know. It’s the cadence too. This is a carousel that never slows to a point where you can board gracefully.
I’d been working at the United Nations for a little over a year, and in that short time I’d had sex with the South Korean ambassador, the spokesman for the Swedish Mission, an Irish delegate, a Russian interpreter, an Iraqi translator, the assistant to the deputy ambassador from El Salvador, an Armenian envoy, the chief of staff for the Ukrainian prime minister, the vice presidents of Suriname and the Gambia, a cultural attaché from Poland, the special assistant to the special assistant to the Saudi ambassador, the nephew of the ruling party’s general secretary of Laos, a distant cousin of
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I guess what I’m saying is that if everyone who made jokes in bad taste, as opposed to those who were fueled by hatred, simply apologized and never made those jokes again, I think it would be okay to move on from the past, as long as the apologies were sincere, well crafted, and accompanied by some sort of restitution, like a retroactive tip jar or a constitutional amendment. Jokes, after all, add up.
His small talk was always medium sized. Not the burdensome kind that you wanted to avoid or the filler you quickly forget. Artie was, I guess, cool.
Was it the US diet that caused children to be so much taller than their parents? Was it the US economy that aged parents
I also consider shouting at full volume a litany of my fears. I’m afraid of losing my mind. I’m afraid of violence. I’m afraid of suffering. I’m afraid of my children being bullied. I’m afraid of illness. I’m afraid of dying. I’m afraid of dying before there is any meaningful reparation of the world.
The children have blond eyebrows and exhibit the sort of inoffensive confidence one expects of democratic socialism, where people aren’t afraid of one another.
“Remember, many less thoughtful people have been great parents. Don’t overthink it. You’ll do fine.”
The entire scene served as a reminder that the city was, at all times, on the verge of implosion. That we build endlessly without much foresight. That New York was bursting at the seams with money, but everything was done on the cheap. That it was the worst and best place to raise children. That the dangling construction worker who bore an uncanny resemblance to my father probably wasn’t part of a union and probably wasn’t from this country and probably had a child who would one day grow up to be middle class and queer and wary of doctors and playgrounds and any place where intentions might be
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said with the voice of someone who’d smoked since he was young,
You probably won’t believe me, but this relationship business is easier when you start young. You learn about yourselves and the world as you go along. Your growth is tangled up. Trying to do this now, more than 20 years into adulthood, is near impossible. I don’t have the energy. I don’t want to push people. Being on the same page isn’t enough. It has to be the same paragraph. Or sentence. Make sense?
