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We live in ridiculous times.

He glanced up at me from the screen. He was in deep. Gone were the days when your friends might at least have bad habits that seemed outwardly cool. A cocain addiction. A cigarette hanging limply between two fingers, or behind the ear waiting to be reached. No, like most others he was simply not really here. Not really there. He didn’t exist in the three dimensional space that I did. No, he occupied a 3G space. Probably he had wet dreams about one day being able to afford to suckle from the sweet tit of an iphone.
“Mmm…yeah?”, he said, looking up from the screen, eyes as glazed as its sheen coating. “Yeah, that might be cool.” He looked unhealthy. His palid colour could have been from its glow or from his hours of staring into it. It was impossible to tell.
I had asked him to come on a “quad date”. That was a term we had coined for four of us (J and G, as well as I and him) taking four girls out at the same time, to the same place without letting any of them in on it. His being on his phone at the minute was of course to use a dating app; I could see his thumbs swipe in the tell-tale way. And yet he exhibited little interest in the prospect of actually meeting them. This irked me, but was in no way surprising.
When he glanced back down I slipped my hand into my pocket and stroked its cool surface. I took a sick pleasure in him not knowing I had it. I knew it was wrong, but I was much too far gone now.
“Yeman, come on. It’ll be hilarious.”
He looked a little annoyed now that I had interrupted him again, but hid it behind a smile. “Yeah, alright dude. I’ll talk to you about it later, I better be getting back to class”. He got up from the bench, and after stretching out an arm for a fist bump he said what I knew he would:

“Just a quick one for the gram man, yeah?”
It had all pointed to this. Why would we go to the park on a day like today if we couldn’t show the world? Why would he have spent those extra five minutes combing his hair back and tying it neatly into a manbun if he couldn’t show the audience?
He had his beard neatly trimmed, and his thick-rimmed glasses donned like a perfect intellectual. If I were Medusa and turned him now he wouldn’t look out of place beside Socrates or any other great thinker.
He leaned in, and I could smell his shit. His thick scent of pure bullshit, and I abhorred it. I abhorred him.
Inside my pocket I pressed my finger on the little button, relishing the feel of it submission to my will.
He posed a little longer leaning into me, arm now over my shoulder. We both smiled, his that fake smirk I knew so well, and mine for once totally genuine. Pure delight lit my face, as I looked at the camera at the end of his outstretched arm.
“Haha, sound man!”, he chuckled. “Ahh, shit no-“

“Connection.” I finished for him. He looked at me a little unnerved at my quickness. “Because I blocked the signal, you little slug”, I thought.