Is a hot dog a sandwich? Is cereal a soup? I looked at the man’s hairline, the center of which formed a widow’s peak, unable to remember if it was a desirable or undesirable trait in sexual selection. A low, jutting browbone is desirable because it indicates high testosterone. A smooth browbone that gently slopes from forehead to eye socket is undesirable because it indicates low testosterone. High testosterone in a man is good, unless you want monogamy and devotion, which might seem fine and good, but are actually bad because they aren’t desirable traits in one’s offspring, for whom you wish ambition and success—objectives not correlated with monogamy and devotion that also make one’s offspring less likely to care for them in old age—which is bad, unless you’re a Good Mother who values the happiness of her children over her own, though she still puts the oxygen mask over her own face first.
Then it’s good, very good.
I scrolled through a few more photos of Benji 33 and considered once more the questions posed in his profile. No, a hot dog is not a sandwich and No, cereal is certainly not a soup. I hated Benji 33 but not enough to swipe left. I flushed the toilet and stepped back into the light where a woman stood waiting by the door, swiping on her phone.
I walked back to the bar where Lane 36 sat. He was wearing a navy blue sweater with the sleeves rolled up and dark pants so perfectly nondescript that I thought he might be The One when I first saw him. He had good hair, and he had said he liked mine. We both had dark, thick hair with the same enviable wave pattern. Later this would make me paranoid because nobody likes it when two people with similarly attractive features go out with each other. It just looks narcissistic.
He turned around and smiled. Great teeth. I imagined him picking up our daughter from preschool and all the other moms noticing his pants and teeth as he bent down to scoop her up into his lean, intellectual arms. Look, I say to the imaginary audience as I break the fourth wall in my head, I’m not a jealous person; I just don’t handle jealousy very well. We moved to the ledge that lined the floor to ceiling glass panels of the bar. Passersby would be able to see his pants.
He asked me if I always drank Fernet. Not always, I said, just sometimes. I like that it tastes like Chinese medicine. Like it’s good in this gross, familiar way.
Oh, he says, can I try some?
He took a sip and nodded knowingly. He was drinking a beer from the bottle, and he looked good doing it. I like men who can drink and men who once drank so much that they no longer drink, but this line of thinking has never done me any good. Unfortunately, Lane 36 was neither, which was good, but I was still in the very beginning stages of learning to like what was good for me, so this was not good. I was still a baby. Just a giant infant.
I like your pants, I said.
Thanks. They’re from Alpha dot me.
What? Alpha what?
Dot me. It’s a website.
I guess I’ve never heard someone say it out loud, I said.
Lane 36 took a swig of his beer, the weight of which caused his forearm to flex, rippling in the moonlight. It was enough to distract me from the fact that Alpha.me was an e-tailer that sold luxury commuter pants to men who biked to the train that shuttled them to jobs where they programmed algorithms to optimize the sale of other luxury commuter pants.
I didn’t pay full price for them, he said. He seemed to pick up on the disdain I had for the prison-industrial complex of luxury commuter pants.
Of course not, I said. How did he know? I looked at my reflection in the window to check if my lips were pursed in an upside-down croissant of contempt, but they were in fact expressively neutral, compressed into one long, flat line in the dark. It’s true that I have very little control over my own face. I should finally take an acting class to fix that, which might also fix my life, contouring the fallout of my mistakes until they recessed back into the abyss of my id where they belonged. I wanted to leave my body. I tipped the rest of the Fernet into my mouth. Well, I said, I bet they’re really well-made.
I bent down toward his pants as if to get a closer look at their construction and material, at whether or not the pattern lined up at the seams. This was a pretense I sometimes put on at expensive vintage stores so that the owner could identify me as an educated shopper, someone who knew the provenance of viscose and the drape of a bias cut. But really I was doing anything to escape his gaze, which was apparently omniscient. What else was written on my face and across my psyche? That I hadn’t actually read Sons and Lovers? That my gut microbiome was uncooperative? The next deficiency was about to scroll across my face when I noticed that his pants had specks of something sparkling in them. The weave shimmered even from below the ledge where moonlight did not strike. The stitching itself was so glittery that it was almost prismatic, bending light around his crotch.
Are your pants made with…glitter thread? I asked.
Lane 36 laughed in a soft, ideal way. They’re Supima cotton, he said, infused with synthetic diamonds, which makes them incredibly strong. They’ll never rip or even wear down, but in the impossible scenario where they do, the company will replace them free of charge. Lifetime warranty.
I’d read in a book once that people will keep talking as long as you don’t, and that letting them do so was one of the forty-eight secrets to success. I was never able to implement this technique because I could never remember to do it, but in this moment, out of a de facto speechlessness, I did.
It was a limited-edition release, he went on. They’re meant to last a lifetime such that you won’t ever need to buy another pair of pants. They’re the only pants I’ve owned for almost fifteen years. Threw out all the rest.
But don’t you need more than one pair of pants? I asked.
They’re all-weather pants. Temperature moderating and moisture wicking. I’ve worn them in a sweat lodge in Sedona. I’ve snowboarded in them with nothing underneath. Saved my legs in a motorcycle crash last week, too. They’re basically armor, equipped with a top-of-the-line HVAC system sealed in Gore-tex.
Sorry, wait, you wore them in a sweat lodge? Like the one where people died because the guru guy wouldn’t let them leave the hut?
He nodded. James Arthur Ray. I was actually at that retreat, but the pants saved me, in a way. I couldn’t find them the morning of the final sweat. So I couldn’t leave my motel room. Since they’re my only pair, I just stayed inside all day. Turns out they were behind the curtains.
Ok, I said. But wouldn’t the pants have saved you if you went in anyway?
Lane 36 looked through the floor to ceiling windows and off into the distance where a group of men stood hunched over their phones, blue light reflecting off their faces. They would have saved my mortal life, he said, but seeing those poor people die would have killed my soul.
§
If tomato is a fruit, then is ketchup a jelly? The thing about me is that I have a lot to scream into the void, not only on this topic but especially on this topic, which is that of essence, of what makes a thing the thing that it is. Its thingness above all things. What makes water wet? The sky blue? Everyone agrees that an essential feature of the sandwich is that its contents are sandwiched between two slices of bread, but somehow we allow Scandinavians an exception to this rule. I think we let them get away with it because we subconsciously fear their PR team, which has us believe that the Danish word for cozy is somehow different and better than the English word for cozy.
Lane 36 : Hey. You left your scarf here.
[blurry photo of an Eames lounge chair]
[ ]: Oops
Nice Eames
Don’t remember seeing it
Lane 36 : What are you doing today?
Everyone can also agree that the two slices of bread can be connected, as in a baguette sliced open down the middle, like a book, which proves that the hot dog’s sandwichness has nothing to do with its bun. This leaves the onus on the wiener, and nothing but the wiener.
Lane 36 : Want to take a drive?
[ ]: Sure
An overlooked but essential feature of the sandwich is its flatness, the feature that should put an end to the question of the hot dog once and for all. Flatness is that which renders a pita sandwich a sandwich, but a hot dog not a sandwich. A hot dog is a cylinder. A meat finger. A tube.
Lane 36 : I’ll bring your scarf. Pick you up at 1?
[ ]: See you soon
At 12:55 a motorcycle pulled up in front of my building. I could tell by the driver’s pants that it was Lane 36.
[ ]: Back on the bike already?
Lane 36 : I’ll go slow.
Tomatoes may have seeds, but everyone knows that what really distinguishes a vegetable from a fruit is its flavor profile, its function, its place in the order of things. Its acidity, if not its sweetness. I stepped out the front door and into the San Francisco fog, which obscured a horizon that I trusted was there. Lane 36 wrapped my scarf around my neck, looping it through itself, and then again, and then again.