“you’re not just gonna ghost me right?”

was the last message she ever sent me. my behavior was becoming so scummy it bordered on parody. i would've been giving girls a fake number in the 90s.

maybe not. maybe the apps themselves make you cruel. maybe something about the way you meet and communicate with people on those screens makes you this way. makes it easier to treat people like this. to see them as tally-marks. as practice. i hope to never cross paths with a girl like me. 

my current girlfriend never had a "dating app phase," she tells me. she wonders about it aloud. she wants to know what I was up to those apps. she wants to know “how easy is it really” to have sex whenever you want, as a girl, on tinder. i speak of my experiences scarcely, like a veteran of war.