Build A Husband

After reels became completely flavorless, Jessica ran out of things to do. Her thumb window wiped her phone, back and forth and back. Youtube. Instagram. Reddit. Google News. She chewed through them all. What else. Then she saw it. The app she downloaded a while ago but never felt like it to try. 

Edam. 

Her thumb loomed over and cast a shadow. She hesitated. Three seconds later, she tapped on the icon, a purple apple, undevoured. A message showed demanding an update. Jessica was glad about the reason not to proceed. Yet before she could exit, she clicked on Install. The next thing she knew, she clicked on Open. 

A white background popped up and illuminated Jessica’s face. Like an approaching car, a dot appeared in the center and grew into a lavender circle. The circle kept expanding until it filled the screen. Then, the screen started peeling and revealed the words of the same color underneath,

“Create your Adam.”

“Powered by AI.”

Nice interface. Minimalistic. No bullshit. The aesthetics lightened her up. Jessica had hoped it would never come to this. She didn’t need to. She told herself that. But why not try? She was bored anyway. 

The app knew the hesitance and wasted no time before the words dissipated into borders and became a frame. Then, the screen halved in the middle. There it was, the first multiple choice on the survey, the first input into the algorithm, to create a lovable man.

Known or Unknown. 

Do you want the world to know? That your partner is made up? The known ones arrived at your doorstep with a tag, “Delivered from Edam.” The ones unknown met you where you wanted your story to start. Nobody knew unless the customer told. These days, they did tell. People just didn’t care anymore. AI has proven to be allies among everything once perceived as a threat to human supremacy. They were human derivatives. Another dimension. A checkbox you could opt out of on an intake form. 

So, it was more of a preference thing. Some people liked the convenience of accepting, while others still longed to discover or be discovered. The element of mystery, whatever it was now, could not be lost to Jessica’s kind. From a library of first-encounter scenarios, Jessica chose one marked as “Most Popular.” It seemed decent, unassuming, straightforward, and realistic. Very befitting to Jessica, “Swipe to him on Bumble.”

Grow or Build.

Jessica frowned. She was never a grower. She believed in the ones. If you were not one of the ones, you were out. If they needed instructions on pleasing you, they were out. “Fixed mindset,” Jessica remembered being labeled by a YouTube video. The fixed ones had more say in a relationship. So often, Jess was the one who broke things off after the sparks died, giving her the impression that she had always been in control. She had been in control indeed. Of her perpetual single status. Now, an older Jessica was even less patient, and the candidates left in her ocean seemed to share her black-or-white judgment. So there had been a lot of ghosting and canceling each other. Jessica played it like she didn’t care. But she grew annoyed, whichever side she was on. 

In the Grow setting, you got a generic Joe who was very good at learning. Jessical scrolled past a list of parameters she could determine later and arrived at the Bar, a slider to set the level of resistance and adaptability. From adolescent-style defiance to nose-in-your-ass obedience. Jessica called it the bar of shame. Jessica’s version of love was a heavy dose of oxytocin. To chase that butterfly. Not to cradle the caterpillar. The concept of growing repelled her. Repulsion beat annoyance. She exited the page and entered the interface for “Build.”

Ethnicity:

Americanized Chinese.

Height:

Above 5’10.

Body Type:

Fit but not too lean. Have a shoulder and chest. Love handle is a plus.

Intelligence:

Smart but not nerdy.

Education:

Braggable.

Career:

Sound.

Personality:

Serious about his career but not himself. Have a sense of humor. Confident. 

Jessica clicked Next at the bottom of the list. The screen blinked red. A message popped up and said, “Your criteria did not pass validation.”

She read through the profile and realized she had left out Age. She filled it in.

The screen was still red. Confused, Jessica clicked on the question mark wrapped in a circle. A small banner floated on the spot, stating, “Some parameters or their combinations are mutually exclusive. Please update.”

Jessica read through the makeup of her ideal man. She intended to keep the criteria broad and the vision vague. Yet the more times Jessica reviewed the profile, the more it resembled an ex. She shook her head. Yet the imagery lingered. She was still clueless. Which character broke him?

Height?

These days, it was the tall ones who barked loud. “Above 6 feet, if that matters.” Jessica always gagged at such an opener on Bumble. Who would care? The owner of such a magnificent statue, or whoever thought he could pass as “6 feet” to the naked eye. Jessica detested the blatant advertisement. She detested it more that she saw height. Were they both too serious about something merely on the outside? Those who bragged and those who nodded? But she wanted someone “serious, but not about himself,” didn’t she? With some hesitation, Jessica lowered the height to “Above 5’8”.

Still red. 

Maybe the love handle thing threw it off? Jessica removed that, too. Though little screamed self-obsession louder than a tight waist in a not-so-scrawny Asian man. 

Red.

Smart but not nerdy. Jessica held her hands like serving, chest level, palms up. Of all the alphas she was after, one hand represented the technical ones. Individual contributors. Subject experts. The other was for those who wanted to be the boss. They had never been equal. At least not here. We did not like to lead. Asians in America, like her, were bred with a desire to please, a perfectionist tendency, a low tolerance for bullshit, and a collective lack of interest in bureaucracy. Thou shalt not ask from others that which thou canst not perform thyself. Jessica decided she could sit with the nerds.

Red still. 

Jessica updated Education from braggable to decent and Career from sound to stable. Same outcome. Of course. We were Asians. We did not expect less. 

Serious about his career but not himself. “Delulu?”Jessica pondered, “People only disassociated when they failed.” “When you decided to push for that extra mile, was it your job? Or was it you?” “People who chose career over his wellbeing were the ones most obsessed about themselves.” When Jessica was frustrated, she became more opinionated. Radical even.

“Who would you choose? A successful narcissist or a happy-go-lucky slump?”

Success beat slump. Jessica updated the profile. She also removed a sense of humor in case the algorithm saw it as incompatible. Yet the red did not bulge. 

As a final attempt, Jessica removed “Confident”. To her relief that soon turned into emptiness, she passed the validation. 

Oh well.

I guess it’s difficult to be confident when you have to prove yourself so the world sees the giant in your mind. When your smarts care more about what you do not know than what others know about you. When you are only egoistic about beating yourself and always see a path to be better. Is confidence overrated? Could you be truly confident when you are not content? 

At least Jessica was not content with her ability to build herself a man. So much design and compromise. So much confusion. Just like the mind games she sucked at in dating. Yet she vowed she would never feel bad for herself. Ever again. It was for the young, the naive, and the forgetful. Jessica exited Edam, opened Bumble, and started swiping. Here, she could still hope to run into someone who shattered all her standards and stole her off her feet. She hadn’t given up on that.