CHRISTOPHER

Plano, Texas?

BELLA

Illinois.

CHRISTOPHER

Is that you in the photograph? Of course it is. Who else would it—

BELLA

I have no idea who that is … Please sit.

(Christopher sits.)

(To the audience) Now he’s at the height that I’m used to.

(To Christopher) Do me a favor. Next time you want to stop by without an appointment at least shoot me an email first.

CHRISTOPHER

Yeah, I don’t really do that.

BELLA

You don’t email?

(To the audience) He smiles. He suddenly looks impossibly young, like an oversized fourteen year old.

I remind him that each incoming freshman is issued an official Yale University email address.

(To Christopher) You should’ve received one during orientation.

CHRISTOPHER

Email’s just not my style.

BELLA

(To the audience) I ask him what he has against it and he tells—

CHRISTOPHER

I prefer penmanship. Getting ink on your fingers. The human effort.

BELLA

How Victorian of you.

(To the audience) He adds something about how one’s signature has lost significance in a world obsessed with the selfie.

CHRISTOPHER

Plus, I like the option of drawing the impulsive, inappropriate picture or two in the margins.

BELLA

Oh.

CHRISTOPHER

Nothing too inappropriate. No nudes or anything like that. Just the occasional escaped circus clown playing with a naked toddler or two …

(Awkward pause.)

Please don’t call campus security. I don’t actually have a clown thing. Naked toddlers on the other hand …

BELLA

(To the audience) Suddenly remembering this now: one day in class we’d just completed an automatic writing exercise and after a few of the more adventurous students shared their work, we took the customary ten-minute break. While everyone else was updating their Facebook statuses and checking their Instagrams and Snapchats, Christopher Dunn stayed in his seat and looked over his work. It had been years since I’d seen anything like this.

I ask him if he owns a computer and he says that indeed he does.

CHRISTOPHER

MacBook Air, newest generation.

BELLA

So you’re not such a luddite, after all.

CHRISTOPHER

I never said I was a luddite.

BELLA

You just don’t like email.

CHRISTOPHER

It’s more hyperbolic than that. I actually hate it. And don’t get me started about Twitter.

BELLA

Yes, Twitter, yes.

CHRISTOPHER

Twitter’s for people who are terrified by the idea of solitude.

BELLA

Although from what I hear there’s some interesting flash fiction happening on Twitter.

CHRISTOPHER

A hundred and forty fucking characters. Limitation is the mother of innovation? It’s more like the mother of mental syphilis! Twitter’s basically cheap haiku for the overly caffeinated. I’m not saying I don’t drink coffee. I drink coffee. I just don’t go to the campus cafés.

It’s the baristas who really freak me out. With their Civil War beards and artisanal body odor and those stupid fucking doorknobs in their ears. They’re like these New Age, unshowered, tatted-out Hobbits. A life spent perfecting the intricacies of carefully crafted foam art. Gimme a black coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts any day of the week, Skippy!