is a series about love in all its forms, with one new essay appearing each day until Valentine’s Day.
We had first met at a cocktail party in Ukraine. All journalists specializing in Eastern Europe, whether in fashion or politics , eventually connect. He added me on Facebook, but we never spoke. A few months later, I was in a sun-drenched hotel room in Georgia. I hadn’t slept the night before. I knew I had to leave soon—back to Brooklyn, where I was living in a windowless room across from a chicken slaughterhouse that reeked of shit. Sometimes I’d wake up at 3 a.m.
When I got on the plane and found a blip of service, like a life-saving air bubble in a sunken ship, we switched to WhatsApp. The app is the most dependable way of communicating. No internet is really necessary; no sending symbol gets stuck in a rotating, Sisyphean purgatory. Figuring out whether a WhatsApp message was sent, successfully received, and eventually read by the other party is as easy as checking a pregnancy test.
Even over all those years of traveling to Eastern Europe and meeting David, I never really knew him. But he was always there. I met him late at night or early in the morning after I’d get done with work. His coat collar and his beard smelled like butter and apples and car exhaust, as if he were a pie being baked on an engine. Cabs would be called. Pierogis would be ordered. Tea would be poured. It didn’t matter who I was seeing or who he was seeing. Nights would warp into mornings.
I closed out of the app. In the end, I never met David. I just balled up and disappeared. I thought about my dry salads for lunch at work. I thought about my mother’s roof caving in. I thought about my student loan. I thought about the article on shirts that I hadn’t started yet. I thought about David in the flesh, no longer on a screen—for longer than a morning or a walk. Eternity is easier behind the LED light.
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