Free Notes From the Internet Apocalypse by Wayne Gladstone Page B

“IRL,” but no need. This is the only life we know.
    *   *   *
    The morning came and the piles of magazines and DVDs didn’t make my bed any smaller or quiet the razor as it roared across my stubble. I was conscious of my toothbrush. Even the corduroy of my sports jacket. Every sound of morning was deafening, clearly defined and unmuted by another body to soften the tin-can room. A tree that falls alone in the forest still makes a sound. It just wishes it didn’t.
    So as soon as I could leave, I fled to Times Square again. It was a good and loud distraction, and looking for Oz forced me to talk to people. I wish I could have Googled “NYC strip clubs” and “peep shows,” but, instead, I just wandered the city following the smut and trying to avoid the Apocalypse’s newest Internet zombies. Unlike the others who moved in circles re-creating their departed websites, these men roam the streets in file like a string of suddenly naked Rockettes, their flapping dicks as overt and nonsensical as their desire. Of course, I’m talking about the Chatroulette zombies. I could call them flashers, and I guess that’s all they are, except I’m not sure they would have come to this if not for the Internet. The website was like a gateway drug to their perversity. But at this point, who am I to judge?
    I keep pretending I’m making progress, but when the Scotch runs out, the panic fills its place. Without Romaya, without a job, without the Internet, or even my companions, I have become too aware of time. And too aware of my attempts to kill it by describing a post-punk Aussie to random smut peddlers and strip-club bouncers. No one has seen her, and I wonder if she’s found a real job. A place to live. Her friend. But then why wouldn’t she leave word at the hotel desk? Could I really just be forgotten, defriended, blocked like some random name on the Internet?
    For the first time as a New Yorker, I’m accepting the things people are trying to hand me because I don’t want to miss a lead. I gobble up the useless fliers being fed to me, but the barkers don’t know the girls, and the bouncers think I’m a cop so they don’t talk much. The girls talk, but only when you drop a twenty for a dance, and they’re too used to telling men what they want to hear to be helpful.
    In one place, a blue-haired girl named “Osiris” approached me for a dance. Cleopatra eye makeup, torn fishnets, and Doc Martens. Maybe buds with Oz. It was worth a shot at least.
    I set my fifteen-dollar Scotch aside in safety and offered up my lap.
    I instantly got a dirty look from the black stripper I’d rejected minutes earlier, and it made me feel racist, but I didn’t have twenties for everyone, and I had to pick the girls I thought Oz would know. (That kind of makes Oz sound superracist.) In any event, Osiris turned her back, and bent to the floor so I could see what was about to be ground into me. Then she went to work.
    “I’m looking for a girl,” I said.
    “Well, you found her.”
    “No, I don’t mean like that.”
    My words were lost into the back of her head. She was sensing the pulse of the music with her outstretched arms while feeling for my rising erection with her ass. It was important to get proper alignment to facilitate the grind.
    “What?” she asked.
    “Could you turn around?”
    She did a quick mental calculation. “Okay, but no touching.”
    “No touching.”
    She turned to straddle me, her thighs over mine.
    “I’m looking for an Australian girl,” I said.
    “I can be Australian,” she said in quite possibly the worst accent ever.
    “No, you don’t understand—”
    She took my hat and placed it on her head. “Crikey! Wanna come to the champagne room with me, mate?”
    “You want to be an actress, don’t you?”
    “I am an actress,” she said defensively, then returned to character. “And a crocodile hunter! Whaddya say? Champagne room?”
    “No. I didgeridon’t, love,” I said. (She didn’t