New York City. A city which seems to have as many pet names as it does lovers. Perhaps the most appropriate nickname for our beloved city is The Big Apple, or rather The Many Small Apples. For today was a monumental day in the lives of all New Yorkers: the release of the iPhone 7.
Crowds lined up at every store to get their hands on the latest technological miracle. But the miracle I needed was not one that could be produced by an increased battery life...or so I thought.
After a morning of long lines and Genius bars, the ladies and I stopped for brunch on the Lower West Side. As we ate our oatmeal with cinnamon and fresh apple slices, Samantha brought us up to speed on her latest Tinder triumphs and troubles.
As I listened to her tell story after story of men, some of whom she would only know in profile picture form, I realized that the true technological advancement was not in our pockets but in our pants. It seemed that cell phones had cleaned up what used to be awkward or uncomfortable about meeting new people.
When it comes to dating in the digital age, I couldn't help but wonder: do relationships have to be messy, or are they as simple as swiping right or left?
Charlotte was absent from brunch because she was picking apples upstate with Jack, a man she had been seeing for the past two weeks. She thought everything was going great...until she found Jack naked among the apple trees, wanting to have sex in plain sight of the other pickers.
Charlotte refused, and an embarrassed Jack ran away, down the rows of trees. She bent down to collect his clothes, and a pair of headphones fell out of his khaki pants. She had lost her Jack, and all she was left with was his old headphones.
Meanwhile, back in the city, Miranda had fallen behind in her housekeeping and was finally getting around to last year’s spring cleaning. Although she wasn’t sure what to expect to find in the cracks and crevices of her bathroom tile, she was expecting a call from a guy she had met the night before.
As she reached for the toilet wand, her phone started to ring, but she struggled to pick it up with her rubber gloves still covering her hands. She lost control of her phone and dropped it. Miranda watched as her new phone getting a call from her new guy dropped right into her yet-to-be-cleaned toilet. In an all too real way, her love life was in the toilet.
That night, I was walking home after a full day of retail therapy. As I checked the time on my Apple phone, my Louis Vuitton heel got caught in a sewer grate. I screamed and lost my balance. The shopping bags broke my fall, and the concrete sidewalk broke my phone screen.
I sat on the curb like last year’s iPhone 6 and stared at the shattered remains of my new phone. As I tried desperately to clean up the mess, not willing to accept the brokenness, I pricked my finger on a shard of glass. I looked up, not wanting to see the blood...and there he was.
Big.
Maybe relationships are always messy. Hearts, like phones, are necessary to keep us connected, but they’re also fragile and can break.
But just when everything seems beyond repair, you never know who will show up to help you pick up the pieces.
