Kerry Feltner

Buzzing

You decide, after two years of self-imposed celibacy, to download a dating app again. You choose the one that gives you the control of the conversation, where if you “connect” with a man, you have the upper hand. You have the power to talk to him or ignore him before he gets to say stupid things to you like, “I bet you’re fun,” or crude things like telling you where he’d like your legs to be (by your ears). On this app, women start the conversation. You wonder what you can say to start it. 

You want to say, “don’t be another prick,” but you figure that is not the right tone, at least not immediately. You are past the point of being too insecure about dating, but you’re on your way to being really jaded. You’re in the land of cynical malaise regarding partnership at the moment. You keep setting yourself up for disappointment, but you continue arriving at this crossroads of inaction or action about your dating future. You know why you return to this notion of connection and all its promises: you feel like you should be doing something to help yourself find love, and yet, dating apps make you miserable. 

This choice to join the stupid app’s “hive” is prompted by a global pandemic. After four months of isolation, you begin to realize that you may never interact with a man who isn’t your father or your brothers or your elderly landlord for what could end up being another full year. You decide that virtual dating must be easier: there’s no money spent, there’s no travel time, and there’s no need to dress up as much as you would in-person. There’s also an easy exit. Internet problems could manifest at any time and poof, the obnoxious man could disappear from your life, a power you have always wanted to exercise. You are not desperate; you are just bored. And you are lonely.

You figure the virtual experience could also be great material for an essay, one you have been wanting to write ever since the real world stopped and the online world took over. Lately, most of your life has been spent on Zoom, the video conferencing app that constantly makes you hear that song from the remake of the old PBS children’s television series. In the early 2000s, kids—like you were then—made things like paper bridges or learned about water density or showcased their tap-dancing talent or cooked a pizza bagel. The cast sang the catchy theme song together, “C’mon and Zoom, C’mon and Zoom” in front of giant, orange and yellow-streaked letters spelling out “Z-O-O-M,” all the while dancing in matching t-shirts and corny synchronization. 

You think of this theme song every time you start a Zoom meeting, which is every day of the week now, as you’re trying to teach college freshmen something about writing in a semester where they have had to return to their hometowns, and you were given one week to figure out how to teach them on a screen. You Zoom with your student in Shanghai who no longer can be part of the whole class because your U.S. East Coast class meets at 2 a.m. her time. You Zoom with another student who is worried about her father’s upcoming stint in rehab, which was prompted by the pandemic’s break of his routine. You comfort her and give her the link to the college’s website for counseling services. You Zoom with a student who’s recovering from major surgery and another student who’s recovering from the virus itself. Both work extremely hard to catch up on what they missed, despite their life-threatening situations. You Zoom with other students who aren’t recovering from illness or surgery but who don’t want to do work anymore, which you can understand. When your students have their video screens on during class, many of them are lying down, their heads barely upright in a hoodie, not really paying attention. Their childhood bedrooms are on display in the background, some with posters of bands or pop stars like Justin Bieber. Knowing these things makes you feel strange and intrusive. You Zoom so often you forget what it was like to have a great class discussion or to feel the energy of a classroom, the kind that teaching is a wonderful vessel for, the kind that makes you want to teach forever. 

So, another Zoom meeting will be fine, you think. Dating can’t be that hard virtually and after a few terrible dates, you’ll have plenty of material. You will never have to leave the comfort of your apartment. You think that virtual dating must weed out the men who are only looking for a hookup, the men who usually, in a non-pandemic world, talk to you just enough to make you think they are more deeply invested, the ones who just want to get laid and get on with their lives. These are the men of your past, you tell yourself. 

You feel modern. You’re a woman who's really making the most of the technology of the time, a person willing to try something new, notions you tell yourself when you feel most pathetic that your romantic life has come to this. The dating you have access to and are willing to partake in is robotic, without touch, and it requires significant bandwidth. “C’mon and Zoom” replays in your head, the phrase you repeat to yourself as half-hearted encouragement when you think that maybe you are just meant to be alone.

You “connect” with the first man you are attracted to and start up a conversation. You will ask him on the app what he reads, something he said he likes to do in his profile, something rare that you think is a good omen. Reading along with his strong jawline, his photo of running in the snow, and his dark, handsome, and mysterious vibe, is highly attractive. His intellect is what you are really after and if he has that, this could get interesting. But this will probably lead to another disaster, you think. It’s too good to be true.

Yes, this reading habit is definitely what you will decide to start with, your opening line of questioning for him. Your first move. You don’t have time for frivolous flirtation. You are thirty and by now have tried five different apps over the last ten years and you’re tired of the whole song and dance of courtship. You are tired of trying to be wittier or wondering what you do wrong. You are happy this man doesn’t have a bio like the lame ones you’ve seen for years that say, “I take all my grocery bags in one trip” or “Looking for my partner in crime” or “Looking for the Pam to my Jim or Bonnie to my Clyde” or “Must love cats.” 

Accept his offer of a Zoom call. He sends you a passcode, meeting ID and a link. The details of modern romance. You are nervous as you sit in your room and check your makeup, worried that you don’t know how to navigate flirting when you are not able to really look him in the eyes, or really get a sense of his body language. But you remind yourself, this doesn’t matter. If you don’t fall in love, if you don’t end your loneliness, a goal at the very least, is to have a good story to tell your married friends about the virtual dating world, that after a few Zoom dates you were sorry to not move onto the next phase of dating in 2020 which you envision is sitting on a park bench together, holding hands through the rubber gloves of your hazmat suits, staring into his eyes through a hood which includes a clear plastic window frame for your face. And then later, if you’re lucky, that sex doesn’t kill either of you, that you don’t give each other the deadly virus when you’re just trying to feel pleasure. But you’re getting ahead of yourself. There won’t be any physical interaction at a time where kissing a stranger is so dangerous for you, and by proximity, your friends or family. You think it is nice that a man cannot be focusing on your body for once instead of your brain.

You sign on. You wait for him to join, nerves and the summer heat making you sweat. You smile and he smiles back when you both have connected into the call. You wait for him to unmute himself and adjust your hair. You hear his voice for the first time. You turn up your volume. He is wearing a button-down shirt which is nice, you think, the kind of thing you would want a man to wear for a date. You adjust your tank top and sweater, wondering why you chose this combination when you feel the sweat forming on your top lip. You both stumble over your words a bit to start the conversation, and you’re happy that he seems a little nervous too. You had forgotten that you could make a man nervous, that you had that power. You talk about what is happening, first bonding over this strange experience, one that you are undertaking together. You feel an instant relief that he thinks it is as odd as you do. 

You notice his background as he talks about his life. He appears to be at a desk, in front of a lamp on an end table, a white couch with gold-orange pillows and a tall bookcase in the way back of the screen, each shelf filled. You are comforted to see no signs of hoarding, no pets, no guns, no taxidermy, no La-Z-Boy leather recliner, no elements of a “man cave” that you figured could be revealed in this new world of dating. He asks you questions, and you begin to relax, enjoying this rare attention you receive, this person seeking to understand who you are. 

You don’t notice two hours go by. You are laughing and fixing your hair and, as you watch yourself on the date on the screen, you find the experience excruciating but also interesting. You have not seen yourself in this way before. You have not seen yourself flirting. There are no distractions in this virtual dating world, no loud music or waiters or waitresses to interrupt your interaction with each other. There’s no food. Or alcohol. Or check to split. When it’s over, you say an awkward goodbye and wave to him, your face frozen in a smile when the meeting ends. You close your laptop and put on your pajamas. You are home and your house is quiet. You think about what he may have thought of you—the person in a box on his screen—until you fall asleep.

You have six more virtual dates, each over two hours long. You feel like you’re actually getting to know him. You wonder how to quantify a virtual date compared with an in-person date, but you think one virtual date must equal two in-person dates given the amount of information shared. On each call you look into his home and continue to see that bookshelf filled with books, some that he shows you when he references them which you think is sweet. He can see the mint green walls of your bedroom and the postcards you’ve taped to your wall from your trip to Holland and the artwork hanging on your wall from your trip to Target. 

You have never been in the same room together and yet you know what each other’s personal space looks like, something that feels so out of order to you. You remind yourself that any date now he will lose interest and you’ll be able to write your essay. You are gaining interest despite your best efforts not to. You think he must be planning his exit because you haven’t had something last over three dates in a while, especially without any physical contact. 

Finally, you decide to meet in person. You walk together through the Arboretum at a safe distance from one another. You wear your favorite red dress, and he brings you water and you walk, together but apart, talking while masked. You forget what his mouth looks like now, unable to connect the man on the Zoom meetings to this man next to you. You notice his body language and note his eye color: hazel. You think there is something romantic about not being able to touch him. That it allows you to hear him, to be more engaged without worrying about your body and what he hopes to do to it. Or if he will kiss you. You know he won’t. You reach the top of a hill and you both take in the view. The whole city is in front of you. Another couple is nearby. They are mask-less and making out. You envy them. You wonder if you will ever be able to kiss him or to feel that carefree again out in the world, the one where your country has the leading mortality rate.

Later, you drive home. You have taken off your mask. You keep thinking about what you can possibly write, how much this plan has backfired. You think of how you feel less alone. You think about the way he remembered what you said to him, the way he kept your gaze. How he moved his car for you to park in his spot, how he remembered your middle name, and how he will be cooking for you in a couple of days. You allow yourself to feel a small kernel of hope. 

When you get home, you unlock your phone. While buzzed, you delete the dating app and with it, all possibilities of meeting anyone else. You figure that this is what real connection means.

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KERRY FELTNER IS A CREATIVE WRITER, PROFESSOR, AND JOURNALIST BASED OUT OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS. SHE HAS AN MFA DEGREE FROM EMERSON COLLEGE, WHERE SHE STUDIED CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING. HER WORK DELVES INTO A RANGE OF TOPICS INCLUDING THE AGING PROCESS, RELATIONSHIPS, AND THE STATE OF LOCAL JOURNALISM. SHE IS THE SOLE COMMUNITY REPORTER AT ONE OF THE STATE’S OLDEST PRINTED NEWSPAPERS AND TEACHES FIRST-YEAR WRITING AT EMERSON COLLEGE. HER ESSAY, “METHUSELAH” WAS RECENTLY PUBLISHED IN TRINITY COLLEGE’S NEW SQUARE LITERARY MAGAZINE IN THE FALL 2020 ISSUE.