Katie’s never heard of it, so I show her the app, tell her how easy it is to create a profile, explain how it could’ve helped her during her lonely period. “There’s check boxes for everything from bondage to group sex,” I tell her, but Katie doesn’t reply, she’s just scrolling through the men. “Most of the guys you’re looking at spent their teenage years jerking off to facials, so you have to check that box or you just end up with a bunch of old dudes pretending to be gentlemanly. Sure enough, when they’re ready to come, they all want facials!” I say, and laugh. I’ve given that monologue a dozen times at Hang-Out events, and whenever I do, the women will be cracking up or nodding their heads and telling me to preach. But Katie’s just sitting there, looking at me like I told her I drowned a bag of kittens.

“What?” I finally ask.

She lifts the screen to show me a penis with a smiley face drawn on it in Sharpie. “This is what you do for a living? You edit these?”

“Not that site, it’s another one called Aphrodite. I can show you.”

“It’s just…” She looks at the photo of the smiley-face penis again. “It’s sick. I mean, can’t you close down your account?”

“And do what? Talk to these guys?” I gesture to all the screen-cocked heads and thumb-typing sunbathers. “I’d have to ask them to take out their earbuds first.”

“Mandy, you can’t live like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like choosing positions as if you’re ordering pizza.”

“Jeez,” I say, taking back my phone. “I didn’t realize you were so sex-shamey. This is how people date now. You’ve just been upstate making blueberry jam.”

“I’ve been overcoming cancer.”

“Well, you lost track of how things are. People don’t talk and they don’t date. They fuck and get on with their lives. Trust me, it’s way easier that way.”

“But this isn’t how people are supposed to live. You need love. You need friendship.”

“I have friends,” I say, and I want to list off a dozen names to prove her wrong, but the only name I can come up with is Jeff’s.

“Mandy,” Katie reaches for my hands, “this wasn’t why you wanted to move to New York. You wanted to make art, remember?”

“Yeah, I know, you keep reminding me of that. I got it, thanks, you think I suck now. Is that why you came to visit, to tell me my life is crap?”

“No, I came to see you because I missed you—”

“And what else? To ask for money? To get my old art? To sleep with me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything from you.”