Snapshot – Zannier Alejandra

Zannier Alejandra is a Bolivian writer, living in the United Kingdom. In a past life she was a credit analyst for an international bank but traded in her spreadsheets for more creative pursuits. Her fiction has appeared on Liar’s League and in the dieselpunk anthology Grimm, Grit & Gasoline. Her story The Milliner’s Daughter was published in the first edition of The Quiet Reader.

 

 

I always thought nightclubs were good places for people with nothing interesting to say. I can only hope that won’t be the case with my date, but why did he choose to meet here?

On my profile, I wrote I like to have fun. So, maybe that’s why. I should probably have said my idea of fun is a quiet dinner or a trip to the theater, but that would make me sound… Well, not fun.

I always like to arrive early; make myself comfortable and think about what to do if the date doesn’t go well. Case the joint and look for escape routes, if you will. It’s important to have an exit plan. Over the years, I’ve refined my strategies. The trick is to make an excuse that sounds urgent (I have an early meeting won’t cut it), but not tragic (fake deaths or accidents are a step too far). My current favorite is: My sister has just gone into labor.

I don’t really have a sister. But I have at least seven imaginary nephews.

This type of excuse is a last resort, only used if the guy turns out to be an unbearable idiot, but I don’t get many of those nowadays. I’ve become pretty good at filtering out the questionable men. Shirtless mirror selfie, drinking from a funnel, wearing flip flops—instant swipe lefts. Then, there’s the one that really drives me crazy: The borrowed-baby picture. About seventy percent of straight men’s profiles feature a baby on loan from a sibling, best friend or stranger in the park. What’s the thinking behind this? That women of a certain age develop a Pavlovian response to small humans?

Guys with dogs are usually safe (even if the dog is borrowed). For more intellectual types, men sitting in front of bookshelves are good. However, if they listed the Oxford comma under their interests, probably best to move on.

A man comes through the door of the club. Average height, brown hair, nice jacket. I have to hold up my phone to compare him to the picture. It’s the fifth time I’ve done this since I arrived. Not him.

I decide to stop paying attention to the door. It’ll be easy enough for him to spot me when he arrives. I always make an effort to look like my profile picture as much as I can. It’s better that way. I’ve learned that even a different haircut can make the other person feel vaguely cat-fished.

And it’s not just about the looks. People actually expect their date’s personality to perfectly match their profile. A life in twenty-five words and five pictures. A snapshot of an infinite, moving cosmos.

Sometimes, when I’m bored, I look at my friends’ social media and pretend they are people I’ve never met. If all I had to go by were these collections of images and opinions on display, who would I think they were? In my imagination, the snippets take shape, conjuring up something that resembles a person. But the result is never quite right. That’s the problem with snapshots, they’re paper-thin and distorted by light.

Four young girls are sitting in the corner of the club. I can tell they are from outside the city. They’re too dolled-up for a weekday, wearing shoes never intended for public transport. Plus, this club stopped being trendy about six months ago. So my twenty-something colleague tells me.

This was probably their idea of a cosmopolitan night out on the town. And, judging from their bored faces, it was falling short of expectations.

A minute later, one of the girls pulls out a phone and they bunch up for a group photo. Mouths open in soundless hoots of excitement, drinks raised, arms up in the air. This is the image her friends back at home will see; four girls having the night of their lives.

As soon as they snap the photo, they slump back on their chairs, joylessly sipping their drinks while looking around disappointed.

I wonder if they’ll consider the night a success on account of taking that one picture.

Photographs used to be just that: static images of something deeper and more complex. Then they evolved into a secondary world. We have become a generation of people split, trapped between two parallel realities—the one we must endure and the one we can curate. A temptation always lurking, to let go of our true existence in favor of the museum exhibit that has become our online life.

With every new guy I meet, I have a choice. I can show him the well-lit snapshot, hiding all blemishes and cracks or I can invite him into my museum’s basement where I keep all the hidden treasures, incomplete masterpieces, and broken art. Most people I meet nowadays want to stay in the cozy reality of feeds, profiles and snaps.

My date finally arrives. He smiles the perfect smile of a camera-ready man. Someone who likes to have fun. I can’t even remember what it was that made me want to go out with him in the first place.

Sometimes I wonder why I still bother. I attempt to decipher that underlying longing that follows me like a shadow. Is it companionship I seek? Not precisely. I never minded being alone, but I yearn for a connection. I still hope that someone will invite me into their museum’s basement, and we can see the world as it is and not as it appears. I suppose I keep trying because I’m still interested in hidden art.