It hurts to chew and the food is bland but my brain fizzes when it meets my mouth, my stomach, cutting the fog of yesterday’s journey. I fork with one hand, open Instagram with the other. I check Jake’s story, find nothing new and move to my DMs, hoping I’ll see a fresh note there, the reporter, so eager to listen. But the messages are all old, already seen. The ball is in my court, now. I navigate away, back to the scroll: Erin, the weightlifter turned direct-sales leggings ambassador has since turned mom and performs for two million viewers an entire at-home workout with only her freshest infant for weight. I watch her lunge and thrust. The baby gurgles when she holds it to her chest and jumps. Some years ago, that Instagram friend of hers climbed to 450,000 followers when her butt got better, then lost 20,000 and a resistance band sponsorship when it turned out to be fake. Erin’s ass is definitely real, just smaller, shrunk by trend, I guess. The late nineties-era skin and bones I was born into came back into fashion this decade, lucky for no one. But it’ll change again soon, of that I’m certain.

I think of a line from a movie I saw recently. Something about how salesmen never stop speaking long enough to listen. They already know what the customer will say next, what they’ll want. They know to anticipate the next vibe shift, next nostalgic cycle. That’s why I’m bad at selling. No foresight. I’m always certain that this moment, this fashion, this platform, is the final version, that culture has finally reached its final form and will flatline there. I’m always too busy listening to the customers who come to the black and white striped store for whatever serum I might recommend, always forgetting to upsell, forgetting to give them my name, to walk them to the register and assure my commission, always last place in the monthly sales roundups. Even as @annawrey, I wasn’t favored by sponsors. I should have been good enough to win their business and make it my own; my look, my account, that impossible patina—everything that was already soft and pretty Photo-shopped to be even softer, prettier, more impossible—should have been what sponsors wanted.