So yeah, thanks, the dating scene in the real world sucks. All the actual dudes my age are online, so who am I supposed to date? A bunch of bearded, gray-haired millennials all trying to be retro and calling any dinner date they take me on vintage. For real? This past New Year’s Eve—New Year’s fucking Eve—I worked a double with this cute busser that seemed really cool, superintelligent and funny. He was studying immersive design and knew all these avant-garde atmosphere artists. We were having a smoke break out back and it started snowing, big flakes landing on the dumpster and the cars, and it was really beautiful. I was brushing the flakes out of his hair and flirting with him. We’d snuck out a bottle of champagne and were trading swigs, and it felt really good. Like how my parents described what it was like back in the day when they fell in love. And so I said, Fuck it, and I put my hand behind his head and kissed him. And he literally didn’t know what to do. He just kept flicking his tongue from side to side over my lips like he was trying to activate my mouth sensor, and I was, like, No. Fucking. Way. Then he pulls away and says, “We should meet online after work.” And I’m like, Yeah, that’d be cool, but I have to get up early to virtual-sit my friend’s puppy. But, whatever, I was feeling lonely, so I logged on that night after I got home and we had sex, because I didn’t want to be by myself for the start of the New Year.

So, yeah, I guess two times a week, maybe three. Sometimes more.

JEROME

Call me old-fashioned, but I enjoy them. Are they a waste of money? Maybe. But do you watch 9D films? Listen to audio-immersive novels? And just because you’re not actually in that film or book, are those a waste of money? Isn’t all pleasure constructed through immaterial worlds and virtual bodies just a form of aesthetic preference? And maybe this is the Buddhist in me speaking—but what are any of these sensory delights if not our own projections of desire in drag? Better yet, I have a friend who collects books. You probably think that’s an antiquated hobby, but that’s what gives him pleasure. He doesn’t read them, just loves their smell, their feel, how they look lined up on his shelves. That’s his delight.