“CHOKE ME, Daddy,” you used to tell me. “I’m your dirty little sapiosexual slut.”
Of course, it was one of your little jokes, one of your ironic takes on self-proclaimed sapiosexuals. You hated them, remember?
It made me wonder sometimes, though, because you once said you were a sapiosexual yourself. “I think I’m what people these days call a sapiosexual,” you told me the first time we chatted on Facebook. And then you told me you found my posts funny yet biting, that you thought I had, in your own words, “a beautiful mind.”
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I remember blushing, reading your confession on my phone. I thought of a reply for a while and came up with this: “While I appreciate being admired because of my mind, I’d rather be liked because of my body.”
“God,” you replied, “you really are so witty. You know what, I think I like you.”
My ears were burning. What could I say? I confessed that I followed your posts, too, that I liked your opinions on literature, on philosophy, on politics, on everything. Then I said: “Most of all, for some weird reason, I like the way you curse.”
“The fuck?”
“My heart just skipped a beat. I think I like you, too.”
“Fuck fuck fuck. The person I like also likes me. Is this even fucking real?”
But at that time, I guess, we deluded ourselves into thinking that our digital selves were necessarily the same as our real, unfiltered selves.
Soon enough, we found ourselves discussing René Descartes. My retort about my mind versus my body being the springboard, we talked about his dualistic distinction between Mind and Body. I’m pasting my favorite part of that conversation here:
Me: “I’ve read somewhere that all his life Descartes just thought and thought and thought that he forgot to have a sex life. That’s why he’s famous for ‘Cogito ergo sum,’ not for ‘Coitoergo cum.”
You: “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. THAT. ALMOST. KILLED. ME. I wonder what his wife felt.”
Me: “Well, he was famous for his ‘methodical doubt,’ too. He doubted his own existence. In fact, he doubted the existence of almost everything, including, I guess, his wife.”
You: “Please, stop. You’re fucking killing me. How do you come up with that shit?”
Me: “I read his Meditationslast week.”
You: “I hated that book. Didn’t finish it.”
Me: “Here’s the summary: Descartes proves (1) that God exists, (2) that the soul is immortal, and (3) that he’s not fun at parties. You’re welcome.”
You: “Why are you doing this to me? Fuck you. Hahaha. Anyway, I think I read the part about the demon who he felt always deceived him.”
Me: “Yeah, it’s in the book. I admit that at first I mistook that demon for his wife, though.”
I waited for your reply after that, but you told me the following morning that you’d fallen asleep. “I’m so sorry,” you said.
“No worries,” I said. “I also fell asleep when my philosophy prof discussed Descartes.”
Descartes proves (1) that God exists, (2) that the soul is immortal, and (3) that he’s not fun at parties. You’re welcome.
As usual, you found my remark funny, but when you changed the topic we soon forgot about Descartes. But I wanted to tell you more about Descartes actually, about how I love the Cartesian coordinate plane, which I think, though essentially mathematical, is the most philosophical of the concepts he came up with: (0,0) as the point of origin, nothingness as genesis, creation ex nihilo.
And more importantly, I joked to myself, I could also use it to plot your erogenous zones.
WE CHATTED and chatted and chatted for weeks. I knew you more, learned about your personal life, about your parents, about your dog. You had your own daddy issues. Then you told me, first thing one morning, that you hated sapiosexuals. “Since when did being pretentious become a sexual orientation?” you quipped. “Choke me, Daddy. I’m your dirty little sapiosexual slut!”
That was the origin of that silly in-joke of ours, and often when we’d run out of things to say you’d just crack it. And one time I even replied: “I’m coming, baby! Please quote Nietzsche!”
You found it disgusting. But we just laughed it off, as we always did.
That was the origin of that silly in-joke of ours, and often when we’d run out of things to say you’d just crack it.
At some point, we decided to finally meet each other in person. Our justification: the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. Maybe we were just each other’s creation, we told each other, and it was therefore necessary to see the real thing, to check if the persons we thought we were weren’t just figments of our imagination.
So we had dinner at a fancy restaurant. It was too awkward. For some reason, however, I can’t remember the things we talked about. Did we talk about books? Did we talk about politics? Was I really trying that hard to appear real to you?
When I got home after that dinner, I sent you a message on Facebook: “You were adorable.”
“Barthes hated the word adorable,” you replied.
“But you’re not Barthes, right? Hehe.”
“Haha.”
“Thank you so much. Tonight was fantastic.”
“Adorablefirst, now fantastic. Have you just discovered adjectives?”
“Hehe. I mean fantastic in a Todorovian kind of way.”
“Haha.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Luh. Why so serious? Hehe. Anyway, thank you so much, too.”
“For what?”
And that’s the last message in our conversation. You didn’t reply. I wanted to ask you why. I just couldn’t.
You’d blocked me.
YOU WERE GONE, ever so suddenly. Paradoxically, though, it was my own existence I doubted, in Cartesian proportions. I was thrown back into nothingness.
It haunted me for weeks. One day, I decided to create a dummy account and searched for you on Facebook. You were there, adorable as ever. I stalked you. I read all your previous posts and finally came across a photo of you, posing at a basketball court, with a guy wearing a jersey.
I read the comments.
“YAN NA. PINUSUAN KO NA PO,” one said, in all caps.
Another one just left a heart emoji.
Then the most liked of all comments: “Na-shoot na ba angball? LOL!”
I didn’t need to be so smart to know what all that meant.
I looked at the guy. Athletic. Perfect body shape. A basketball player, probably a member of the varsity team. But something bothered me. He looked so familiar. I visited his profile and found out that we’d gone to the same elementary school. Then it hit me: he was my classmate before, a bully, whose body strength was inversely proportional to his brain capacity.
I tell you: he’s the dumbest guy ever. Please believe me. He couldn’t even spell rendezvous. One time, he even brought a calculator in our English exam. “What do you need that for?” the proctor asked him. “It helps me in my spelling,” he answered. To this day, I still wonder how the fuck a goddamn calculator can help you spell words. He was allowed to use that calculator, but in the end he still flunked. To reiterate my point: he’s fucking stupid. You don’t need a calculator to do the math.
But maybe I’m just being bitter, you might say. Maybe. Maybe not.
And I don’t know. Maybe it would have been better if we had not decided to meet in person, if we had just settled with being mere sculptures.
And maybe I just created you—us—ex nihilo, out of nothing at all.
USING MY DUMMY account, I still visit your wall from time to time. Good thing your posts are public. I’m looking at your wall right now, as I write this.
Refresh.
Refresh.
Refresh.
Here comes a new post. Not yours, though. A Relationship Goals meme. That dumbshit deceiving demon shared it and tagged you.
You’ve just commented: “Choke me, Daddy.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. THAT. ALMOST. KILLED. ME.
Please, stop. You’re fucking killing me.
Why are you doing this to me? Fuck you. Hahaha.
It’s choking me.