I laugh as I kick off my shoes and walk over to her couch, scrubbing my teeth with my finger. A laptop is open on the coffee table facing it, and I immediately spot my face on the screen.
“Wait. Did you start creating a profile without me?”
Jazzy scans the room, shifting her eyes guiltily. “Maybe.”
I look at the pictures she’s chosen of me. One of them is me in a bikini.
“No, no, absolutely not,” I say adamantly. “Take that down right now.”
“Why?” Jazz asks innocently. “You look hot.”
“Firstly, because this picture was taken six years ago.” I point to the screen. “My hair is even a different color.” This picture was taken when I had a terrible addiction to peroxide. I’m surprised Jazz and Ella didn’t hold an intervention for me then. “Secondly, I don’t want some guy I don’t know beating off to this.”
“Ah, I forgot about that. Men tend to do that, don’t they?” Jazz says, furrowing her brow. “Fine, you can delete that one.”
I delete it and scroll through the rest of the pictures. One catches my eye. I squint slightly as I inspect it. “Did you...did you Photoshop a tattoo onto my right bicep?” I click on the picture to enlarge it and lo and behold, there’s a rainbow sugar skull decorating my arm.
“I thought it looked cool. Guys compliment my tattoos all the time. Everyone loves an edgy chick. Wear a long-sleeved shirt on the first date. Problem solved.”
“But Jazz, I’m the opposite of an edgy chick. Last week I got excited when a skirt I had been eyeing at The Limited went on sale. Now what did you write in my profile?”
“Here, take a look,” she says, angling the screen towards me.
I scan through it and it looks like a select mute filled it out. Almost all of the questions have short, one-sentence answers. Under the What I’m Doing with My Life header, Jazz wrote “Lovin’ it.” I look at the About Me section and it simply reads “I like yoga.”
“Jazzy, there’s barely anything there. Here, let me fill it out a little more,” I offer as I reach for the computer.
“No need,” Jazz says. “When it comes to online dating, especially straight online dating, no one cares. You could write entirely in a foreign language and guys wouldn’t give a shit. You could be a professional unicyclist who lives at home with her parents and it wouldn’t matter. It’s all about the pictures.”
“Point taken.”
Jasmine shows me the rest of the profile and it seems good enough. Even though the page is filled out with cavewoman answers, at least I’m fully clothed in each picture now.
“Are we ready to publish this now?”
I take a deep breath. “I guess.”
“Going live in three...two...” Jasmine counts me down with the intensity she reserves for New Year’s Eve. I cover my eyes with my hands, spreading my fingers the way I do at a horror movie so I can kind of see as Jasmine clicks a button with a dramatic flourish.
“One!” she exclaims giddily as she raises both arms in the air. She turns to me and peels one of my hands off my face to shake it enthusiastically. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, Miss Grant. Congratulations, you are now part of the wonderful New York dating pool.”
I hear a dinging noise. Then it happens again. And again. Ding! Ding! Ding!
“What’s that?” I ask, looking around. “Did you leave something in the microwave?”
Jasmine beams at me. “It’s coming from the computer, silly! They’re messages!”
“Already?” I scoff. “How is that even possible? I’ve been on here for a grand total of five seconds.”
“Believe it, babe,” Jasmine says as she picks up the laptop and starts going through them.
“Oh-ho-ho, these are good. These are real good,” she guffaws. The computer dings at least five more times in rapid succession. “You certainly are popular.”
“Last time I checked, they were my messages. Let me see!”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Five of my eight messages are just the phrase, “What’s up?” Two of them ask my bra size. The last one I have to reread twice before I can convince myself that this is real life and an actual human being wrote this: “Hey, you are cute like a little mouse. Wanna play a game? And no, it’s not sexual before you think that’s what I’m insinuating you perv.”
“Did you read this one?” I ask Jazz, pointing to the screen. “Do guys in their mid-twenties know how to talk to women at all? Do they really think this is an effective way to get intelligent women to talk to them? I mean, who would fall for something like this?”
“I would!” Jazzy says, cackling as she forms a peace sign with her hand and puts it behind her head. “Look! I’m a mouse!”
“Those are rabbit ears, Jazz.”
“Same difference.” She hands me the bottle of red wine and I take a long swig. “What’s next?”
“Look, this guy’s profile picture is him with a parrot on his shoulder.”
“Now that’s confusing. I don’t know which one is Jeff—the dude or the parrot.”
“Oh, shit. I think I accidentally signed you up for a parrot dating service.”
I read another one. “Can I pleasure you with my ten-inch meat sword?” My mouth hangs open. “This is just plain disgusting. Why are they all so vulgar?”
“Are you kidding? That’s mild. That’s practically a ‘how do you do?’ in this day and age.”
Curious to see the face that belongs to such a twisted mind, I click on his picture to see him better.
“Jazz, this kid looks like he’s twelve! You are too young for that kind of language,” I admonish the computer screen. I go back to my inbox and search the webpage. “How do I delete all these gross ones?”
“Why would you delete that one? He’s ten inches for crying out loud, Mace.”
I give her a pointed look.
“Kidding.” Jasmine puts up her hands. “No, but really, if you delete all the gross ones, there won’t be many left. Just sayin’. There’s always my cli-ent,” she says in a singsong voice like she’s dangling a bone for a starved dog.
“No, no, I’m not done yet,” I insist as another message comes through. It says, “So you like yoga? Which kind do you practice?”
I turn to Jazz, almost a little smug. “See? This guy seems okay. And I’m kind of impressed that he knows that there are different kinds of yoga, to be honest.”
“Open his page,” Jazzy requests.
I click through a couple pictures. “He’s pretty cute,” I admit before going back to scroll through what he filled out. “He’s a dentist—that’s good, I may need a new crown put in, always a plus...”
Jazzy laughs. “Go on.”
“He likes pets. Always good.” A small smile begins to form on my lips, but then my hand stops cold. I see it. Under The Most Private Thing I’m Willing to Admit it says: “I own a sarcophagus. I refer to it as my roommate.”
I scrunch my nose for a second and open a new tab to look up the word sarcophagus. I think I know what it means, but I have to double-check. When the definition loads, a breath