I met B— in Mendoza, then scrapped a crossing to Santiago to meet her again farther north. We kissed in Plaza Nueve de Julio as the automatic sprinklers went off. Later, at a hotel, we shook hands and agreed that I wouldn’t murder her. We slept atop three children’s beds pushed together. The next day, through the four museums we walked through, I kept asking myself, “Where does the water in Salta come from?” We traveled together to Tilcara and Humahuaca, then parted as I bribed my way into Bolivia and she took an overnight bus to Buenos Aires before returning home to Rio.

We texted daily before sexting daily. From Lima, I flew to Rio, where we spent Carnival together. One night, she got drunk and said she loved me. I said it back and meant it. We’d known each other less than a month. She issued a soft retraction the next morning. I didn’t. I promised I’d convince her to feel the same.

After two months in Asia, I made a pitstop at home in St. Louis, then took a one-way flight back to Rio to convince her. Love was a piece of real estate on every heart, its title always written in the name of another.

I flew back to the States less than three weeks later. People used to get torn apart in more honorable ways.

 

//---/-/

 

At the Ringling Museum, Ian and I entered a room piled high with human-shaped pillows embracing one another. So much numb, unconditional comfort from the faceless. On the walls were projections of more pillow-folk. They bounced off one another.

Tampa was the cheapest destination out of Rio. I spent most of my time there sleeping in Ian’s bed with him, homoerotic and platonic, as in college. He lived in a converted garage in Bradenton, two blocks from a beach I never went to. I mostly cowered from his cat while he was at work. She moaned in heat and displayed her swollen pussy at me.

Before that week, I’d been to Hooters once. I went every night with Ian, who was a regular and friend to all of the waitresses. He tipped well and wasn’t one of the stalkers, one of whom came in to drop off chocolate strawberries to his favorite waitress.

I had brought B— an indigo-dyed hemp shirt from Sa Pa. I learned earlier than him that I couldn’t buy a fantasy.

I returned to St. Louis and moved to Brooklyn a month later.

 

//---/-/

 

After settling in, I convinced myself I was ready to date again. The easiest start was Bumble: the onus to begin the conversation was on the woman, so all I had to do was wait and hope the birds of the world would see beauty in me.

I consulted with my roommate Marissa for profile advice. She added a prompt: “My Ultimate Green Flag: I don’t play video games.” Within a day, I had four matches and two more likes hidden behind a paywall.

One of these matches was L—. I felt a sense of claustrophobia and infinite possibility when I saw her photo. I’d been following her and her Twitter bot for two years. The bot cataloged book dedications, all of them hinting at a more pure, unrelated story.

Online dating is the chase of affirmations. I had found just that: a woman who posted tattooed thirst-traps of herself online, with whom I already had a long term, one-sided, parasocial relationship, had validated me with her thumb.

I asked her how Lonesome Dove was, which she had mentioned in a prompt. She had already finished it, but hadn’t updated her profile since redownloading the app. It felt reassuring that she was just returning to this, too. It would play out like Morita’s Haru: a distant, slow-burn exchange before the heat of real interaction.

I didn’t bring up the bot. I didn’t want to seem like the Hooters stalker. I asked her how her job was. I told her I used to work at a nonprofit, too. She ghosted me.

In retaliation, I ghosted three other women. One who liked that I hated video games and was in therapy. Another who was an astronomer. A third who only wanted to talk about making pasta by hand. Every dating app is a grave of faces.

 

//---/-/

 

Being ghosted is the tender act of another. Would I rather they tell me that my photos give off a general aura of unfuckability? Do I want to know that they already see through my script (Opener: “What’s your favorite hat?” Followed by Groucho Marx: “Will you marry me? Are you rich? Answer the second question first."). I wouldn’t be so honest to another.

It’s painful to criticize in a space that encourages disengagement. Humanity just isn’t valuable in that space. Everyone consents to and regrets being under the power of another’s thumbs.

I shouldn’t have asked L— about Lonesome Dove. I’d already seen her review of it on Twitter. Post-ghosting, I learned that I shouldn’t have asked about her job, because she had finished that, too.

‘Ghosting’ is a misnomer. A ghost haunts with its presence. Ghosting someone is to haunt them by way of absence. L— was a classic ghost, then: present and one-sided. I could see her. She couldn’t see me. I unfollowed her and felt so brave.

 

//---/-/

 

B— reached out after three months. Things went too fast, she said, but she wanted to be friends. I said that friendship started with a phone call. We spoke the next day. She had moved from Santa Teresa into her childhood home in the North Zone.

She said she had felt so alone during our last night together on Lover’s Day. While getting ready for dinner, she confessed her anxieties. We ended things. I made a call to Ian before booking a flight to Tampa, then called another friend about a potential job opportunity that vanished the next day. I had finally sidelined her. She had wanted me to keep fighting.

I’d chased her across continents to end up in Rio again, trying to stay occupied and out of her apartment while looking for a remote job, acting upbeat despite the alienation of a language barrier that Babbel couldn’t alleviate quickly enough, all compounded by the full-body terror every time two guys on a motorbike passed me on the street. I was worn down, content to be alone instead of pillorying myself for a six-month situationship.

After dinner that night, we returned to her apartment. I offered to get a hotel. She invited me to bed, posed and presented her ass. She had gotten a wax that morning. I told her I’d never see her naked again.

I took that call out of curiosity and the insane dream that we’d reunite. I received the mirage hope of a long-distance friendzone. I fell back into the thought process that led me to be a recovering 21-year-old virgin: nothing ever comes of anything, so I should learn how to masturbate in more intensive and inventive ways.

I wished B— the best and told her the call wasn’t an invitation to continue the conversation. For weeks, I waited daily for her next message.

 

//---/-/

 

Being alone is the horniest state most people will find themselves in. While pornography’s returns diminish, the most cliched and depraved fantasies can cover the losses.

I imagined forming a spit system with a stranger, being taken in by an embrace in which I could finally and comfortably be the little spoon. I imagined getting pegged and called slurs that don’t even apply to me. I imagined sewing green woolen fatigues for my family of four so on Halloween we might dress as struggle session hosts in a CCP propaganda poster.

Any story to get me to sleep. Shared union, submission, being had and being held. Lives where I’d no longer have to take action against loneliness. Anything to fight off the thought that love is an unverified source.

 

//---/-/

 

B— messaged me again, this time about US elections. I led her into a conversation, then ghosted her.

All I wanted was to lull myself to sleep with sex fantasies of women who didn’t exist. But fictions of B— returned and they all ended with her leaving me. These weren’t fantasies, but unlived realities: footage of life edited to illustrate the other paths I could’ve taken to be just as lonely.

So much of our time together was spent texting and exchanging view-once nudes. WhatsApp had mediated my feelings, convinced me that I’d found the rest of my life in another. We spent less than a month together in-person.

Two weeks later, in Brazil, Bolsonaro was indicted for attempting a coup against Lula. I didn’t message B—. I received an email notification about her posts on Instagram, which I didn’t on my phone, so I logged in on my computer and looked at pictures of her backpacking in Bahia. I deleted my Instagram account.

I deleted our texts from WhatsApp, then deleted her contact. It felt like the right time to cry, but the tears weren’t there. I didn’t feel brave, but I was tired of being tired.

 

//---/-/

 

These interactions and their ends are all nurtured by Silicon Valley middlemen that have only innovated two things: losing life savings via scams and chatting with strangers of all distances online. Ostensibly, Facebook, Bumble, and WhatsApp reproduce preexisting norms. They do not. They create something that’s entirely too new to process. We haven’t yet internalized how helpless we are.

The middlemen present online romance as a consistent narrative: a record of metadata rich photos, receipts of every expired audio message, texts timestamped down to the minute. Seemingly linear, like a book, but really a lesser sum of the beautiful and regrettable in real life.

B— was always a message and twenty minutes away. L—’s Bumble profile listed her as three miles away. That compression of space swelled with fantasy, even though no one wants to be an imagined actor in so many iterations of them fucking and loving and abandoning another. They deserve to be left as they are: 5,000 miles away, or with a hundred thousand people between them and the most recent freak.

While trying to sleep, I abandon the sex fantasies and imagine the feeling of being held by another. They’re soft and accepting and faceless, one of the pillow-folk from the Ringling Museum. All to avoid inventing a wife, or asking for love from someone real who didn’t have any to give. The landscape of hearts is all too brutal now.

 

//---/-/

 

At a cafe, a woman beside me drew a street map tagged with a Google Maps pin. I asked her if it was a map of where we were right then. She said it was entirely made up.

I left for the train. Waiting there, I saw her come up the stairs. She passed by without noticing me. She sat two benches down from me.

I said, “Small world,” loud enough for most of anyone on the platform to hear. She didn’t respond. I turned to her. She had large headphones on. We got on the same traincar, sat opposite each other. We both got off at the same stop, parting ways, one of us knowing.