I push away the tray, pull up the covers. I’m feeling feverish. Because of the food, contaminated by some kid’s grimy fingers? Or is it a deep feminine intuition, telling me not to go through with Aesthetica™ tomorrow? Maybe I should just commit myself to a mirrorless existence. I reach for my phone again, lift it to scan my retina and unlock the screen; I don’t bother using face recognition, it never works for me. I navigate to my favorite contacts. There’s only one name there and I press it, put the receiver to my ear. I listen to the crackle sound as the connection reaches over distance, time zones. Then there’s a ring, two rings, three. Four rings and her voice picks up, Australian accent apparent as ever.

“Hi,” the voice says.

“Hey,” I say, surprised to have caught her.

“You’ve reached the voicemail—” I feel stupid and stoned and hang up, open Instagram.

I know what I’m doing as I do it. The thing I tell myself never to do, I am doing now. Explore page, search bar, “Jake Alton.” I type the name and watch him load.

Searching Jake this way is like falling down a K-hole. It’s like trying to move your body when you’re drugged, paralyzed. It’s like he knows I’m watching him and worse than thinking me pathetic, ugly, old, botched, he can’t remember who I am.

But Jake, too, is unrecognizable. A salt and pepper Santa Monica dad for six years now, he hosts a YouTube show called Primal Life™, and has curated his Instagram (grown to three million) to match it. On his grid, he poses in front of handmade yurts, constructed on solo hunting trips to the world’s wildest locales; he posts go-pro footage of himself stalking prey, felling moose, deer, and once, a small black bear, all with only his bow and arrow. He skins the bodies, eats the meat to survive, smokes the rest and brings it back to his family. Providing this way is essential, he tells his followers in the heart-to-heart stories he uploads once he’s back on the grid. “It’s primal,” he says, part of men’s instinctual truth, too often stifled by PC culture, the domestic sphere.