But of course not. Instead I stayed under the covers and addressed my problems to the framed photo of the late, beloved Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the wall of my tiny, partitioned bedroom. Ruth keeps me on a firm, morally responsible track, and I like to think that she secretly enjoyed watching Callum and me having sex. In all matters except maybe wardrobe I always ask myself, “What would Ruth Ginsburg do?” so today as I wondered if I was ever going to fall in love again, truly in love this time, Ruth informed me, “Stop whining and go to work, you little pisher. I’m in heaven but I’m still busy.” Ruth often sounds just like my equally beloved eighty-five-year-old great-aunt Miriam.

I took a shower using my new manly bodywash, which is exactly the same as the female version, only with simplified graphics and a steel-gray, squared-off bottle, as if it contains motor oil and testosterone; I slathered on Kiehl’s Creme de Corps moisturizer because a model at my gym recommended it after he glanced at my pores with pity but then insisted, “No, they’re fine, really, you just need to think about them”; I brushed my teeth with a gel that promised “Triple-Extreme Dazzling Whiteness” thanks to “Gene-Spliced Wintergreen”; and then I got busy with more hair care products than a Mormon family has children. I was pampering myself as a fan of what the mindfulness tutorials call self-care, in order to heal and glow. But after a final check in the mirror, I knew: none of it was working. I wasn’t healed and I wasn’t glowing and a sizable chunk of my hair was completely awry, as if it was signaling frantically for help.

“So?” asked my roommate Adam, once I’d reached the kitchen area of our shared let’s-call-it-a-three-bedroom in the budget-friendly wilds of Hell’s Kitchen. Adam’s a Broadway dancer, which means that just seeing him both cheered me up and sent me into a body-image spiral, because he’s got the lithe muscles you only achieve from doing cardio for a living. He was wearing the limp, colorless, shredded sweats that dancers barely cover themselves with. “Are you feeling any better?”

He offered me a smoothy he’d concocted; he meant well, but I shook my head no as I plunged my hand into a box of Frosted Flakes, which made Adam look Whole Foods–judgmental but also heartbroken on my behalf. I studied Tony the Tiger on the cereal box and wondered if he’d ever been cheated on, maybe by the Lucky Charms leprechaun or Cap’n Crunch.