“Can you hear me?” is my least favorite way to start an interaction. Every culture has a bland, language-defying “how do you do?” greeting that any foreigner with an ounce of social awareness can answer with an “and you?” and a warm smile. An open question begets an open answer, and is the foundation of a mutually caring conversation and relationship. Bad interactions begin with something that is impossible to respond to, like mentioning the death of a loved one or a Fox News talking point. Beginning a conversation with asking to validate one’s capacity to communicate is impersonal, insecure, and insincere.
But it’s how we started every date after the Covid pandemic forced our relationship online. Listening to her say it in her voice, like she was genuinely curious to hear my response, made me feel like the most important boyfriend in the world. She has information for my ears only, and its importance demands it not be repeated. She made the impersonal personal, and the insecure secure. For me, at least.
Hearing her voice awakens the rest of my senses and I often lose my focus daydreaming about the few precious hours we spent together in the previous month. Her hair is coarse but orderly, like a perfectly engineered piece of velcro. She’s passionate about fashion, and while my eveningwear is nothing that isn’t under my clothes during the day, she wears two-piece nightgowns and adorns her hair with ribbons and bows. She certainly gives my eyes plenty to think about, but she interrupts my mental journey by asking again if I can hear her. The dumb expression on my face probably gave away the notion that I wasn’t listening. I tell her my internet took a shit and I can hear her now. I have to be careful not to let my brain conjure non-existent sensations while we videochat, lest I come across as digitally unattentive.
Tonight we planned on playing games. Not playing games together, we already plowed through every free Heads-Up! category last weekend. She’s the type of girl who likes watching other people play games, which in retrospect was an obvious red flag. I can’t wrap my head around them, the same people who like watching first-person Youtube videos of rollercoasters. The most interesting part of playing a game is being immersed in someone else’s art. Watching someone else play a game is like listening to a podcast about a painting. But she insisted on wanting to watch me play through something, so I bought a few things on the weekend’s Steam sale in preparation. We settle on “Stairs”, a five-dollar first-person horror game that I snagged for eighty cents. It looks like the developers spent more money on Unity assets than they recuperated in sales, but it’s a pleasantly creepy experience. We let out sarcastic gasps at every flight of stairs we encountered until we reached a door that I missed a key for. After a few minutes of meandering backtracking, she pulls up a walkthrough and guides me through the next hour of the game. We made a great team that night. On account of the game’s shitty level design.
It’s getting late. We’ve stopped talking completely other than the occasional “check for the basement key next to the burnt corpse on your way through the next blood-soaked living room.” She assures me that we’re approaching the end of the game, so we trudge through the graveyard to see the ending.
The game ends with your character dying of course, but not from falling down an endless flight of stairs like we predicted. We’re both disappointed.
“I have to pee,” she says, “but can you stay on a bit longer? I still want to talk to you about something.” I assumed this was the end of our date, but I haven’t slept well in weeks so it’s no bother to me.
“Sure, me too!” I say. While I’m peeing I realize the mistake in my wording. Maybe she thinks I meant I have something to talk to her about too! What should I say? We already talked about everything new this morning over text, so my options were limited. I don’t want to talk about my dog again, and there’s nothing to say about the rest of my week. I decide I’ll just immediately ask her to tell me what’s on her mind so I don’t have to come up with anything. I wash my hands and rejoin the call.
“Can you hear me?” she asks.
“Yep!” I say enthusiastically. I’m genuinely excited to hear her voice uninterrupted by subterranean monster noises. “So, what’s on your mind?”
“Well, this isn’t going to be fun,” she says.
My face freezes. I’ve heard those words before. She throws my heart down an endless flight of stairs.
“I’ve been feeling really anxious lately, and it hasn’t been good for me. You know I lost my job last month, and the Corona situation isn’t getting any better either, I might not be able to go back to work for a really long time, and I thought I was doing better without my antidepressants but I’m not anymore and it isn’t because of you, you’re so amazing and I seriously love spending time with you but I just don’t think I can handle doing this with you anymore. I’m so sorry.”
I don’t remember exactly what I said, it was something about being supportive of her difficult decision to put her mental health first and how I have to delete her number from my phone so I can’t drunk text her when, but I’ll always be here if she needs me. The only thing to say, really. We ended the call with warm smiles and goodnights.
I spent the rest of the night thinking about how planned-out her breakup speech sounded. It had been about a month since we’d seen each other because of our pandemic situations. Had she been contemplating this since then? At the very least, she didn’t have to string me along for the length of a shitty Steam asset flip, right?
The void she left was quickly filled with memories of my dog. She was independent for an Aussie, but I could only imagine how birthing ten puppies alone in an alfalfa field and only keeping eight alive could change a person. She never learned how to play fetch with me, she would chase the ball once and would get me to chase her to get it back. She loved laying in spots where she had a view of the whole house, so she was always looking out for me. And even though she would act like a stuck-up bitch when I was in the mood to gift her with pets and affection, she ALWAYS could tell when I was depressed. I didn’t even have to find her, she would just look up at me with her giant gold eyes and rest her chin in my open palm.
It had been exactly seven days since she lost her months-long battle with kidney cancer.
Because I literally had to schedule the appointment to put her down, I thought I was prepared.
But the tears started flowing before I could call her name.