Changes

Whatever happened to simply enjoying meeting a person and talking to them?

Just imagining the world through another's eyes for a brief moment, recognizing the streaming similar patterns of our human minds connected in the ethereal and truly seeing a vision you chose to share?

Now when it happens, all hell seems to break loose in the emotional depths of our nerve-wracking egomania and the need to profess and the want to be loved as to remember being loved.

"Let me get your social ID," she said smiling casually as she opened her bag, reached in for her phone. It was a brick- I imagined her hitting me over the head with it before lights flashed onto her dilated eyes.

"What's that?" I asked?

"Your messenger name! Stupid!" She was laughing, ridiculing my obvious stab at delaying.

"Oh! A-i don't really use it."

My eyes were on my feet - silence-" I don't like using devices to communicate with people. It's context-less and keeps people occupied in pointless exchanges by calling it a friendship connection, and then uses it to profile us like they do in prisons." I looked up.

Her mouth was slightly open, as if she had re-thought saying something after starting to say it.
She closed it, but her head remained tilted. Narrow slats had replaced her eyes. For some reason, I remembered I had been here in this room, before.

"You mean to-tell-me..." she dragged it, probably not wanting to but sounding condescending anyway - "you're saying, you don't have a phone?"

"Huh? Yeah , no, I mean of course I Use a phone. When I need to, or to order something, u know. I just..."

I was panicking - shit! Did this mean I actually wanted to see her again?"

I raced to the closest explanation I had but still I hoped it wouldn't tarnish all the work I had done on repressing it -

"My dad was talking on his phone when he ran over our dog in the driveway one morning, because he was on his phone- and he wouldn't even admit that it was actually the phones fault for distracting him, but he kept on blaming our dog for it.

She didn't look away, but something in her eyes had unfocused and she looked at the wall, right through me.

"Lol" she said.

Red? No - a hot light flashed through my brain and stabbed at the migraine that was just starting to recede.

"Look" I said. You know where I live. Just write me, or something. Or drop by, whenever, you know, you wanna meet up or ... talk, or watch Movies" - shit! Was my voice rising in anger, or because I thought she was tactless in flipping my reasoning into a garbage bin? Whatever it was, it was not the time to analyze it.

"Ohh Alriteee then" she sneered, but it was sing-song in a way that made mye question my own honesty And sanity.

She grabbed her coat, came up to me, wrapped her hands around me briefly, maintaining a distance with her chest held back a centimeter away as if my shirt was going to get hers dirty. "I had a nice time," she whispered, her hot breath on my earlobe. "I thought you did too. But you don't have to say you love me or anything. I'm a big girl. I understand... I just..I don't really like labels, y'know, like I like doing everything , like whatever you wanna do, yknow, hang out , or watch football and then shack up. But I feel like you don't wanna keep in touch anymore."

I sighed. Keeping in touch, the metaphor that made absolutely no sense when you knew the meanings of the word touch and it's applications. I withdrew and she instinctively did too, but I could tell she thought I was going to hug her back too and it was unexpected -

"No one makes plan to Not keep in touch, babe. And people make plans to remain together for their whole lives and leave each other every where all the time. I'm just saying that I Love technology but I refuse to use it to make a farm animal rotate on a basic green pixel light-up code."

"You don't make the animal, silly" she sang on. "You Buy them, like in real life. And you can plant trees and water them, and grow your farms and make deals with others. I'll show you how sometime." Her phone had flashed in the middle of this sentence and her voice was getting quieter mid sentence as she concentrated on the unlock pattern and squinted to look for a tiny icon simulating a zooming taxi cab ride.

"I gotta go, Ubers here and I don't wanna make him wait like last time...where's my umbrella...shit, did I take my keys.. here we go...ok!"

She looked back at me. "Find me in the club this weekend" she said and it didn't really sound like a direct order. "I'd like to see you again! Byee"

She trailed out the door, and it swung inwards into the hollowed out space pushing the air into my face. I felt tired.

Time to get to work... It was getting late. I took out my latex gloves from my pocket and looked at the clock hands on the wall. I was going to have to work on telling people I'm not on the internet when I introduce myself. I can't let wandering emotion get the better of me. Yes, she was fun to hang out with. Yes, I probably loved her just the same as I love myself. Which wasn't saying a lot. I locked the door and headed toward the back door to check it too, just in case.

Then I headed down into the basement.