teeth. And so even if he gifted me airport whiskey, I would have to take it personally.

He tells me that the art that matters is the art that is wrought and consumed with great difficulty.

Eric is sensitive about his age and about mine, and he makes a considerable effort to manage the twenty-three-year discrepancy.

But everything is different IRL.

A month is too long to talk online. In the time we have been talking, my imagination has run wild.

“You think you should get what you want, when you want it, and life doesn’t work that way. Art doesn’t work that way, and that’s why you’re not as good as you could be,”

When I think of how we will only move forward from here, how we will never return to the relative anonymity of the internet, I want to fold myself into a ball.

Oh, she says, and then she takes a while to put on her clothes. I look away to give her privacy, but also because it is suddenly hard to watch, the indulgence so close to the aftermath that it feels indecent to watch her tie her shoes.

But what happens is this limp handshake, this aversion of my eyes, this unsurprising and immediate surrender of power.