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July 19, 2024

Panopticon

Frances Klein

Looking up a date on Facebook is some Junior High shit. By the time we’re sitting down for drinks, I already know the zestimate on your house, how your property taxes have increased over time, and I’ve watched two and a half episodes of the true crime documentary they made about the murders in your neighborhood. I know your mother’s maiden name, sure, but I’ve also climbed the family tree she made on Ancestry.com. I know most of the men in your family die in their early 70’s, so I’m already planning my late in life third act, sensual widowhood. I know which of your exes are trying to be influencers (on Instagram, we’re all too old for TikTok) and which got married right out of high school and have conservative politics and identical blonde girls with ten syllable names. I’ve gone so far down this rabbit hole I’ve read all the source texts of every insipid, quasi-philosophical quote you’ve ever tweeted—Nietzsche and Smith, Kant and Keynes, Bentham and Rand—and I know that you haven’t read any of them. And yet. There are slight lines at the corners of your eyes and mouth that mean you smile a great deal, and the only answers I cannot find online are what bait pulls those smiles to the surface, how they must taste to the one who catches them.