Marcus contemplated the cascading implications of his latest dating app match while nursing an artisanal pour-over coffee, its precise 201-degree Fahrenheit temperature providing the optimal extraction of his single-origin Ethiopian beans. The girl—no, woman, he corrected himself, ever mindful of the patriarchal undertones implicit in such diminutive nomenclature—had listed David Foster Wallace among her literary influences.
The sheer banality of it all nearly caused him to close the application permanently. How utterly predictable that she would choose the most obvious touchstone of contemporary literary complexity. Had she even attempted to parse the geometric implications of Infinite Jest’s narrative structure? He doubted it.
Still, her profile photo showed her reading Proust in what appeared to be a locally-owned bookstore, not one of those soulless corporate chains that had come to dominate the retail landscape like metastatic capitalism incarnate. Perhaps there was hope.
He spent forty-three minutes crafting his opening message, carefully balancing intellectual prowess with just a hint of vulnerability—the latter being a concession to modern therapeutic culture that he found distasteful but necessary. “I couldn’t help but notice your interest in Wallace,” he began, already wincing at the cliché of his own opening gambit. “Though I’ve always found his work derivative of the earlier postmodernists, particularly Gaddis, whose influence on contemporary metacognitive narrative structures remains criminally underappreciated.”
Three days passed. Marcus occupied himself with his doctoral thesis on the socioeconomic implications of meme culture in late-stage capitalism, occasionally glancing at his phone with studied nonchalance. When the notification finally arrived, he allowed himself exactly fifteen seconds to center his chi before opening it.
“lol yeah infinite jest is pretty good”
Marcus deleted the app and returned to his coffee, now cooled to an unacceptable 183 degrees. Some minds, he mused, were simply not prepared for the depths of true intellectual discourse. He made a mental note to update his Goodreads account with a scathing review of Wallace’s entire oeuvre, then opened his laptop to begin work on a think piece about the death of meaningful human connection in the digital age.
The barista called out another order, interrupting his flow of consciousness. Marcus sighed deeply. She had pronounced “macchiato” with an American accent.
As he contemplated the metaphysical implications of leaving a one-star review on the café’s Yelp page, a woman settled into the reclaimed wood chair across from him, uninvited. She wore thick-rimmed glasses that Marcus instantly recognized as non-prescription, a calculated affectation that spoke volumes about the performative nature of modern intellectualism.
“I couldn’t help but notice you’re reading Žižek,” she said, gesturing to his deliberately positioned book. Her pronunciation of the philosopher’s name was flawless, Marcus noted with reluctant interest. “Though I find his later work becomes increasingly tautological, don’t you think?”
Marcus adjusted his artisanal wool scarf, handcrafted by indigenous artisans from a small village in Peru whose name he took great pleasure in pronouncing correctly at dinner parties. “One could argue that the tautological nature of his recent works serves as a metacommentary on the circular reasoning inherent in contemporary political discourse,” he responded, performing a dismissive gesture he’d spent weeks perfecting in his bathroom mirror.
“Interesting,” she smiled, reaching into her locally-sourced hemp tote bag. “Have you read his latest piece in the New Left Review? The one about the ontological implications of TikTok dance trends?”
Marcus felt his carefully curated world view crumbling around him. He had not, in fact, read this piece, an oversight that threatened to unravel his entire intellectual persona. He considered making a quick excuse about needing to attend a underground poetry reading in a converted industrial space, but she was already pulling out the journal.
“I have an extra copy,” she said, her smile taking on an edge that suggested she knew exactly what game they were both playing. “I find it pairs well with a properly temperature-controlled oat milk cortado.”
Marcus felt his pulse quicken, though he immediately chastised himself for succumbing to such biological determinism. Could this be it? Had he finally found someone who could match his capacity for intellectual pretension? He opened his mouth to respond with a carefully crafted observation about the commodification of revolutionary thought in academic journals, but what came out instead was far more horrifying:
“Would you like to get coffee sometime?”
She raised an eyebrow. “We’re already having coffee.”
“I meant… perhaps at an even more obscure location? I know a place that only serves beans digested by free-range Indonesian palm civets.”
“How delightfully bourgeois,” she replied. “I accept, but only if we can spend the entire time deconstructing the neocolonial implications of our beverage choices.”
For the first time in years, Marcus smiled without first considering the socio-political implications of the act.
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