Face Time

The room was dark. Craig rolled over and looked at the clock. It was 11:40. He had to think for a moment whether it was 11 in the morning or 11 at night. He reached over and moved the sun blocking curtain. Light shot in and illuminated a cylinder of clarity in the darkness. Must be morning. He figured now was good a time as any to wake up. He got out of bed and put on the same clothes he had on yesterday. And the day before that. What was the point of changing clothes? He wasn’t going anywhere. He wasn’t doing anything. He shuffled down the hall to the living room and into his wide plush chair.

              He had been under quarantine now for 68 days. Keeping track of the days was about the only thing he had to do every day. So it was the only thing he knew for sure. His workplace had closed “temporarily” which meant he was being furloughed “temporarily.” With no end in sight he settled in for the long haul. The unemployment checks were covering rent and he had enough set back to coast on for another few weeks. After that he would either expose himself to the outside world and risk infection or begin selling organs on the dark web.

              He had passed those 68 days as well as he could. Playing through every game he had trying every combination of dialogue choices to the banal conclusion that they all were basically the same. He tried baking, he was terrible at it. He tried starting a podcast but lost interest trying to find something he knew enough about to fill a half hour. He had cleaned everything in his apartment and all his laundry was done except for the clothes he recycled on himself. He had even let his face become unkempt. A burly modern day hermit, skulking around in a dimly lit one bedroom apartment.

              A good portion of his time was spent glued to his phone. He had no cable or streaming services so his only entertainment came from the tiny screen he carried with him everywhere he went. He would google old shows and watch them or look through pages of stuff he couldn’t afford to add to a list of things that would never be bought. He also kept trying to think of witty and clever things to post but usually just reblogged videos and memes he found interesting or funny.

              Through various sources he had watched the world continue to burn without him in it. These people blamed those people. This side argued for reason. That side argued for arguing’s sake. Scientist and doctors were ignored and the world turned. He acknowledged the privilege he had in his ability to stay out of the whole mess till the dust settled and a winner was declared or everybody was dead.      

It was not too far back, possibly day 60, when he realized that aside from his landlord he could drop dead and no one would know. He was also haunted by the occasional paranoia that everyone else on the planet was dead but him which would usually be broken by someone speeding down the street outside his bedroom window. His life wasn’t exactly chart topping but it was better than some of the people that managed to stay alive every day and that gave him enough hope to keep waking up and tracking the days.

On day 69, Craig was eating a fruity loops bowl of cereal for lunch (which was quantifiably different than the munchem crunch bowl of cereal he had for breakfast hours earlier) when he heard a chirping sound from his phone. Being in seclusion with nothing to do but notice the smallest inane details of his life he knew every tone and alert that his phone made but this one was new to him which made him mildly excited as he flipped the phone over to see the note.

Shortly after the start of the quarantine he had done an online quiz to find out what the color of his aura was based on his sexual history. To get the results he had to sign up for a free online dating site which he did to find out he was a “vermilion green” and promptly forgot about until the notification interrupted his lunch.

The notification read “Check out who’s been looking at your page”

Who was looking at his page? He didn’t even have a photo? Or did he? He couldn’t remember. So little had happened over so long a period that he couldn’t remember. He clicked the message which brought him to the app where he found a very detailed profile of himself complete with a picture of him hugging an empty bottle of wine.

“Oh” Craig thought to himself “it was during wine week”

The week of quarantine where he drank a minimum of two bottles of wine a day. There had been a shipping error in his favor when he placed an online order and his logic followed “when they stop sending them I’ll stop drinking them.” His liver was arguably the worse for the ware but the week had been entertaining. At least the parts he remembered. And filling out the online dating profile was not one of those parts.

He read through the profile and found that it was mostly coherent and he even came off as likable. Then he clicked the tab to see who had looking at his page. There was a few names he could view while others were blacked out so you could pay to see them all. He was happy with the free faces. The top face was a very attractive girl. He clicked her picture and was taken to her profile.

It read like so many others that he had seen in his time scouring for love on the internet. Her likes were: reading, playing games, and scrapbooking. Kinda soccer mom with the scrapbooking but he could stomach it. Dislikes were intolerant people, cheaters, and people who put ketchup on hot dogs. Which he could get behind completely. He clicked through some of her pictures and liked what he saw. He saw a message icon at the bottom and figured wine hugging him would definitely start a conversation. So he messaged her.

“totally with you on the no ketchup on hot dogs thing ;)”

He pushed send and set the phone down not expecting much to come of it.

Twenty minutes later when he was miles away from those moments. He heard the unfamiliar chirp and flipped over his phone.

NEW MSG

He clicked the notification and was launched to a message board with her response.

“disgusting right?! lol how are you”

An open door  

“Totally. So what are you looking for on here”

Pulsing dots. She was typing.

“whatever. Friends. fun. Someone to bitch too. Just no nsa”

“totally respect that”

Pulsing dots

“cool, so you like wine huh?”

He smirked and tried to concisely explain his situation with the wine and his profile. Two paragraphs later she responded

“sounds like fun”

“the hangover wasn’t so fun”

“I can imagine”

“so where do you live”

Pulsing dots and he realized how creepy it sounded

“I don’t mean like address im not trying find you I was just curious”

Pulsing dots

“lol I figured. I live in Greenfield”

One city over    

              “dang that’s close”

              Pulsing dots

              “I know that’s why I visited your profile I was shocked someone was that close”

              Shocked? Was it that small of a dating site? He ignored the comment and moved on

              “who knows we might be able to meet up sometime if this goes well”

              “maybe…:)”

              It wasn’t a no!

              They continued talking for the rest of the night. They covered topics from favorite ice cream flavor to how the geopolitical map was designed to keep the top percent in power forever. Towards the early hours of the day he realized the time and messaged accordingly.

              “o god I just realized what time it was. Im sorry if I kept you up”

              Pulsing dots

              “its fine. If I didn’t wanna talk I woulda just stopped. I like talking to you”

              BOOM. It had been a while since any woman liked talking to him. Not just since the quarantine but well before then. He was quite inferior when it came to talking to the fairer sex. Which is why he could count his girlfriends on one hand with fingers to spare.

              “awesome” he typed back

              Such a dudebro response he thought to himself but it was too late to undo

              “right well if you have to go we can pick this up later if you want”

              “no it’s fine. Its not like I got anywhere to go.”

              “lol”

              Pulsing dots she was messaging again.

              “I hope this isn’t too forward”

              “forwards my favorite direction”

              “Would you wanna facetime?”

              Facetime meant getting her actual phone number, which at this point would be much easier than keeping the damn app open just for a message thread.

              “sure sounds great”

              They exchanged numbers and after a quick confirmation text that they were who they thought they were, there was a familiar ring. He clicked the icon and suddenly her pretty face appeared on his screen. She was dimly lit, her features sharpened by the shadows. Even poorly lit he could see piercing hazel eyes underneath a strong brow with nearly flawless eyebrows.

              “Hello there” he said.

              “Hi” her voice went up at the end of the word possibly forcing enthusiasm.

              “Nice to see you”

              “Nice to YOU” something about her voice he couldn’t place.

              “So you were talking about why you moved”

              “Yes,” she said eyes wide enough to carry the drama that surely came with the story. “My boyfriend started hanging around with some new friends and they were teasing him about dating a trans and he decided I wasn’t worth the fight, so he dumped me.”

              She was trans! How did he miss it? They had been talking for hours. How had it never come up. Was there something he missed? Craig had the feeling that he wouldn’t have skated around something that noticeable. While he was running through their conversations in his head trying to find context clues to connect dots she noticed his lack of speech.

              “Hello? Did I lose you?”

              Craig snapped back to the world.

              “Hi. Sorry I just….I uh…so you’re trans…”

              Her face reacted poorly.

              “Yeah?” she said as if it was obvious.

“Sorry, I just…didn’t catch that.”

“Really? I figured you were on the site so you knew.”

“The dating site?”

“Yea, TransMeet”

“TRANS Meet,” the reality smacked him in the face, “I thought it was Trains Meet”

“Is that why you quoted the Polar Express in your bio”

He was dazed but answered “Yeah probably. I was pretty drunk.”

Her face melted from cute confusion to melancholy fast.

“Yea I’m trans.” She said with a firmness

He was reeling from the chain of events. He couldn’t remember what was real and what was fake. Quarantine had made time and all other properties an illusion. He reached through the chaos to grab onto the two things he could cement down as true. One, he genuinely liked this girl and two, he hated the look on her face when she realized he realized the truth. He used those two things to snap back to reality.

“Gah…yes…I’m sorry. That was…not the way to respond…this is the 21^st century for god’s sake. I’m so sorry I…I just…”

He was rambling. He needed to shut up and or least make sense.

“Look,” he held up his hands in an attempt to slow his own brain “I like you. I really really like you. I will admit I obviously didn’t know you were…trans….BUT I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to me. You are who you are. And I see a nice woman who I have a lot in common with and who I like talking to and I would like to keep talking to you even though sometimes I am not very…good…at talking so I don’t…I don’t want to ruin any potential there is here just because I’m an idiot.”

Her smile came back.

“I don’t think you’re an idiot”

Craig laughed. “Just wait, I’ll prove you wrong.”

She laughed and he saw a glimmer in her eye.

You almost made her cry Craig thought to himself that wouldn’t have been very nice of you