Every day around 3:30 PM, Jesus calls. He knows I’m working, unable to properly receive his divinity du jour, but the consistency is reassuring. I often wonder if Jesus shows up in other girls’ lives the way he does mine, or if I’m—dare I say—chosen. I haven’t done anything particularly honorable to warrant such holy commitment, but I am a good person, and that should be enough given what I know about Jesus. When my valiant efforts to keep it together go awry, it’s nice knowing I can rely on Jesus, even if I can’t see him.
This isn’t the tepid religious experience it sounds like.
Jesus is a 25-year-old Hispanic dude from Nashville whom I met off Instagram. I don’t know how he found me. All I know is on September 23rd, I received a DM that said, “you’re so stunning it’s literally insane” from whom appeared to be Omar Apollo’s identical twin. Had he not been cute with a cool feed, I’d never respond (I’m only human). But here I am, hitting decline on the very iPhone 11 Pro Max that he convinced me to buy when my phone shattered two months ago. Quite the impact for relative strangers.
Jesus and I have a platonic relationship, grounded in the reality that we’re two people who might never meet, but just enjoy talking. Nevertheless, his confidence to exchange voices with me has illuminated the stunted communication skills of other men in the swipe right age. Everything I thought I knew about intimacy has been reduced to some pixelated fantasy in my brain’s hidden folder, not unlike the nudes I secretly store on my phone. It’s not just that men are scared of vulnerability. They’ve simply lost interest. Jesus is my bilingual, Supreme-clad beacon of hope.
I recently shared this tweet in a group chat:
Though we all agreed that the text example is actually ideal and made (completely serious) jokes about marrying men with flip phones, I understand the author’s disconcertment. Women are getting so used to the texters… the Instagram story watchers… the DM sliders… that they lose their bearings when one is direct enough to say, “call me.” Oh, this man wants to engage in thumbless discourse? There’s no emotion in his text! He must be a psychopath! He’s breaking up with me!
…or, the real psychopaths who will probably leave you are the ones who’ve shrunk your concept of intimacy to snap streaks, rendering you befuddled by a straight shooter.
Call me old school, but I like a caller. All three of my important relationships were with callers. It’s a difficult preference to maintain in 2019. When you think about the implications of being a caller—the selflessness to stop what one’s doing to converse; the care to hear a real voice; the patience to listen; the efficiency to get to the point—it exposes the utter lack on the other side of the spectrum. Texting and other similar modalities are certainly convenient and fun, but they remove the human element of communication and add to the distractions we’re already battling, and this bleeds into our capacity for other forms of intimacy.
I was chatting with my friend the other day about sex. It was one of those special, candid conversations between two people who’ve had sex, but don’t have the emotional ties to get offended by any of the perversions disclosed—a reliable dynamic for learning the skeletons in the closet of the male brain. He admitted that most of the time he’d “rather sext and jerk off than have sex and deal with the other person’s… feelings.” While I’m certainly pro-masturbation and a prolific sexter (with partners. Don’t sext me.), there’s something apocalyptic about the rise in sexual introversion. It’s like erotic slacktivism: the mass media produced and consumed is intensely horny, but just like tweeting #blacklivesmatter, people remain comfortable in their blue light solitude. Millennials love to invoke 60’s radicalism, but what about free love? Connecting with another body, warm and soft, salty with sweat, a vessel of deep emotions that you might just taste if you take a bite? Oof, too much. I’ll take “my right hand” for $600, Trebek.
Every year when I’m shopping for my dad’s Christmas present, I hit him with the same joke: “What can I get for the guy who has everything?” I find myself asking a demoralized version of this when met with a romantic interest: what value can I bring this person that they can’t get from Instagram or PornHub? It’s a threat to my self-worth that I never anticipated, and it’s especially pertinent when I’m attracted to independent people—people who would typically rather be single, but might make space for me.
These barriers to intimacy make dating a dicey enterprise. They’re largely why I consider myself “not looking, but open if it comes along.” Yet, when I go out, I still find myself scanning the room for this faceless, nameless someone to set my heart ablaze. And for what? To learn they’d rather reply to my story than meet me for dinner? It is in these moments of cynicism, one “wyd” away from begging Elon Musk to rocket launch me out of the simulation, that I turn to Jesus, and I know it’ll all be alright.
