“Gavin. Get up. Go outside. Discover the world, for Christ’s sake,” my best friend Bobby says, standing his big ass on the top step of my brownstone, a hand on his hip and annoyance in his eyes.
A stiff, icy breeze works its way in from the street, shooting a chill down my spine. I lift a robed arm and motion for him to come inside without saying a word.
“I mean, you won’t answer your phone. You won’t text back. I was about to call the damn police and let them know there’s a suicide victim in here,” he continues.
I chuckle and glance back at him as he scrutinizes my dim loft with a curled lip. The space is beautiful but small, with three hundred sixty degrees of exposed brick, and in much need of a cleaning. Clothes are strewn about everywhere, dishes are piled in the sink, and there’s a coat of dust on everything; from the thousands of dollars’ worth of Banksy artwork on the walls, to the massive bookshelves, ceiling-high, which act as anchors on either end of the loft. I’m lucky he can’t see my room and bathroom upstairs. That is truly an embarrassment.
“It’s literally been like, five days, man,” I say over my shoulder as I lead him past the living room into the kitchen.
“Whatever. You still need to answer a damn text at least. I wanted to grab a beer last night.” He glances around again, the same dirty look on his face. “What’s that fucking smell, dude?”
“Ahhh, probably a combination of weed smoke, last night’s pizza…” I motion to the pizza box on the kitchen counter, which is definitely more than a day old. “And I’m pretty certain there’s a good amount of Ben and Jerry’s residue on the couch.”
“Christ, Gavin, it’s been a year and a half. I love you. You’re my boy. But she’s not coming back.” He puts a hand on my shoulder as he tells me what I already know—Joanne is gone and wants nothing to do with me. She’s made that perfectly clear. “I just hate to see you like this.”
“Listen, I’m just in one of my funks,” I say, motioning to the coffee pot, and he nods. As I pour two cups, adding copious amounts of Baileys to my own, he heads to the couch and clears the scattered books and magazines from the cushions before taking a cautious seat.
Carrying both mugs, I walk unsteadily to the couch, and then hand his over. He takes it before I melt into my recliner, popping my legs up immediately. I’ve spent a lot of time in this weathered chair watching The Office, Friends, and Parks and Rec on repeat. Or reading one of the forty-four books I’ve set aside from my boundless collection. I’ve promised myself a book a week. Call it an early New Year’s Resolution, I guess. So far, I’m at two months, and still going strong. I’m about halfway through The Long Walk by Richard Bachman, aka, my idol, Stephen King, for the third time.
“Have you even written anything lately?” he asks, eyeing me suspiciously over his mug.
“Yes,” I say defensively. “I mean, I’m working on a few things.”
He gives me his stop-shitting-me look. The one he passes over the frames of his glasses like Mrs. Austin used to do to us when we’d clown around in fifth grade. Back when we were young and reckless, and causing mayhem in the suburbs of Chicago. We’ve been thick as thieves ever since.
“You haven’t published in, what…a year? I know your publishers gotta be hounding you. Mine are, and I came out with three this past year.”
“A year and a half, actually. And if you remember correctly, The Wicked Ones was shit all over by the entire industry. Explosive, projectile shit. And you know my publishers are breathing down my fucking neck. Anyway, what is this, a contest?”
He shakes his head. “No way, man. C’mon. You know me better than that. I’m your biggest fan. I just want to see you working again. Maybe dating again too?” he asks, arching an eyebrow.
I roll my eyes, motioning around the messy loft, and toward the daytime bullshit playing on the TV. “Look at me here, Bobby. I mean, what the fuck. I’m not really dateable at the moment.”
“And you never will be if you have your way. You get like this, you know?”
“Get like what?”
He motions to me. “Like this. You wallow, and you’ll text her and she won’t respond quick enough to your liking, or she won’t at all, and then you’ll wallow around some more. I think, in a weird way, you like to be down. Tell me I’m wrong.”
I flip the leg rest down, planting my feet on the floor and leaning in toward him.
“You really think I like being this way?”
“Well, come out with me then. Tonight. Cassandra and I are hitting up Peg Leg’s.”
“Listen, Bobby.” I lean back in my chair, setting my coffee on the cluttered side table.
“I’m not trying to go out and see you guys be all lovey-dovey and shit. I’m happy as hell for you, man, and I love that you met someone you wanna marry, but seriously, that shit makes me ill. Like vomit stirring in my gut, ill.”
He rolls his eyes. “Oh, c’mon.”
“Don’t c’mon me, man. Come on her.”
He laughs, shaking his head as he grabs my cellphone from the coffee table.
“What are you doing, fucker?”
“None of your business,” he says, going to work on the screen.
“None of my business? It’s my damn phone.”
He takes his eyes off the screen and narrows them at me. “Like you ever use it.”
He chuckles, going back to work.
“Seriously, what are you doing?” I reach for the phone and he pulls it away from me, still working at the screen.
“I’m setting up a SwipeDate profile for you.”
“A what date? Swipe? Fuck, what?”
He looks at me and laughs, my phone clutched tightly in his hands. “A SwipeDate profile. It’s this new dating app where you swipe right if you like the person, left if you don’t. And if she decides to message you, you sack up and ask her out.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind, Bobby. Seriously, losing it. Put the phone down before I break your fingers.”
“No problem. Just finished.” He presses one final button dramatically and then sets my phone back to the coffee table. I quickly pick it up.
“You made a dating profile that fast?”
“Yeah, it links to that Facebook account you never use. I just picked your best pictures and wrote up a quick intro.”
I open the app and see he did, in fact, pick my best pictures, most of which are from a time when I smiled far more often.
Gavin, 28, Author
West Village, NY
Loves rock music, 80’s movies, and anything with a plethora of carbs.
“You’ve got to be shitting me. Show me how to delete it,” I say, holding the phone out for him. “You know I’m technologically ignorant. Delete it!”
“No. Not until you go on three dates. Three dates and I’ll never bother you about it again. I won’t butt my nose in your love life whatsoever.” He stands, putting a hand out for me. I analyze it for a moment.
“Never again. Not another fucking word about my love life?” I ask, arching an eyebrow with suspicion mounting, as I highly doubt that’s possible for him.
“I promise,” he responds, and I take his hand, shaking it before he makes his way to the front door. He opens it, letting in the hustle and bustle of West Village at midday, and then he analyzes my loft once more as I slowly stand from the recliner to join him.
“Write something, Gavin. And for the love of God, clean this place. I want a full report in three days.”
“How am I supposed to get dates that fast?” I ask as he walks out the door. He turns on the steps, repositioning the fedora on his head and smiling.
“It’s just how these things work. Don’t fuck around with messaging a bunch. Just find someone you like and ask them out. It’s not hard,” he says and I don’t respond. With words, at least. I flip him off with a shit-eating grin as I shut the door in his face.
I shuffle back to my chair and sit, picking my phone up and investigating the stupid little app. My focus is first on the pictures he chose for me and I can't help but laugh, knowing each one was taken by Joanne.
One photo is with Bobby at his cousin’s wedding four plus years ago. Joanne was a bridesmaid. I was Bobby’s ‘date’ and the picture was our idea of my in with Joanne. She and I spent the rest of the night together… talking and laughing, exposing more of ourselves to a stranger than either of us had ever before. The next day, I spent four hundred dollars to change my flight to the following day so I could see her again. Six months later, she was moving to New York from Grand Rapids, into this loft I bought for the both of us. Two and a half years after moving in together, I found the pictures on her phone.
Another photo from our Caribbean cruise a year after the wedding, when I was pulling the king of the world stunt at the front of the ship during embarkation. She laughed so damn hard at that. So many people were looking, likely judging, but I didn’t give a shit. I was alive, I mean, really alive, for the first time in my life. I had just proposed to the woman I loved… the only woman I could ever love.
One is from softball, the Thursday night coed team we used to play on. She never really liked it, but she did it for me. I didn’t truly appreciate that until it was all over… that she would risk a softball in the face just to do an activity with me that I love—or I guess loved is more appropriate. I haven’t played since the day she packed her boxes and exited my life for good.
And the last one is from an author signing she set up for me at The Strand Bookstore in Manhattan, one of the biggest in New York City. It was my first signing, mostly because I was too chicken shit and introverted to set one up myself, but I fell in love with them after that. Being able to meet the people who give their time and money to dive into the worlds I create… the characters I love… it’s everything. I loved every second of it while I was still doing them. And it was because of her I had the strength to find that happiness. Yet another thing I just don’t do anymore. I don’t want them to see me like this. I don’t want them asking me when the next book’s coming out, because honestly, I’m not really sure if I’ll ever write again.
Though he doesn’t know it, now Bobby’s got me thinking about her all over again. It’s this stupid little game my mind likes to play on me. It makes me see her in places where she isn’t. It tricks me into thinking every chime of my phone is a text from her when it never is. It consumes me and forces me to analyze my entire life over and over again.
Where did it all go wrong?
I’ve never been so captured by someone like I was by her. Past breakups have been ugly, yes, but two weeks later, I’d realize I was better off without them and move on with my life. Now, here I am, a year and a half after she left me for him, and it feels like it was just yesterday, the pain still raw and visceral. I want to move on… I just can’t.
I click the search icon and start reading the first profile to take my mind off her. A graphic pops up, directing me to swipe left if I don’t like the profile, and right if I do, and I can’t help but think how horribly superficial this all is. It feels so synthetic. The graphic fades out, and Sarah, 26, from Queens, is staring back at me. And when I say staring, I mean, staring. It’s one of those photos your friend takes of you and tags you in that you delete as quickly as your fingers will allow, but here it is, my first introduction to her. I chuckle to myself and scroll through what I imagine to be your normal set of online dating profile pictures—one with an animal, one with a few friends, and one doing something adventurous—and then I get to her information… I heart the Kardashians, E! television, and mani/pedis. I quickly swipe left without even really thinking about it, my hand moving as if on its own. The next girl, Cindy, 29, from Scarsdale, is a cute blonde, hair cut shoulder length, with a petite frame. In all her pictures, she sports a dress right off a Lilly Pulitzer rack, and when I get to her information, it reads Duke Law degree, Defense Attorney, enjoys fine wine and traveling.
It’s all well and good, and she certainly stacks up, but I scan the space around me, the cluttered couch, the sink full of dishes, and the entryway that hasn’t been swept in weeks, and I laugh to myself.
Outmatched.
I shake my head as I swipe left again, sick of the thing already, but with the outcome being Bobby getting off my ball sack when it comes to my love life, I’m all in. I’ll knock out three dates in one day—coffee dates, of course, quick and easy—and then I’ll politely part ways. He’ll have to keep up his end of the deal. He always does. We take this best friend thing seriously.
Setting the phone down on my lap, I regard my loft again and the constricting grip of embarrassment overtakes me. I put so much money into making this place perfect—like my own personal library and writing cave, in specific detail. Each towering bookcase on either end has a matching ladder that rolls down the length of the book shelves. The kitchen was gutted and revamped with the finest dark maple cabinets and granite countertops, leather everything, and the bedroom has a mattress you fucking melt into. Now, it’s all still here, it’s recognizable, but it’s not the same. It’s kind of like Chernobyl. There’s evidence that life once existed here, but everything is coated in decay. I’ve truly let it go.
Though I like to think I’m content this way. I’m not. I don’t like being like this. I would love to have someone to love… and someone to love me back. I would love to feel fulfilled, content, and normal… whatever the hell that is. But I just can’t. I’m not there. And God’s honest truth, I don’t know if I’ll ever be there again. Not like I was with her.
I lift my cell back up and see Jessie, 40, from Chelsea, looking at me. She’s wearing scrubs with a warm smile on her face. She has your usual photos, but the smile is ever present and authentic in all of them. I swipe right… waiting a moment for something to happen, but it doesn’t. It just moves to the next girl, Amber, 32, from Park Slope. My brow scrunches and I scratch at my thickening beard, wondering if I’m perhaps missing a step. I click a few of the buttons, finding nothing but more confusing shit, so I go back to the main screen and continue my lefts and rights, still unsure of what is supposed to happen next.