Connectivity Issues with a Cobra 🐍

Chapter 1: Same but different?

Johnny's latest drunken debacle turned out to be blurting out to his karate student that he was, in fact, lonely and blatantly "moped" about not having any friends he could really talk to about things.

Something he would never have admitted had he not been completely sloshed.

Miguel saw his drunken confession as a "cry for help," which it certainly was not, and immediately went to work that night creating an internet profile for him on several sites that catered to "bromances".

That was actually the word the site used to describe the kinds of friendships they helped mediate.

It should have been the first glaring red sign.

Predictably, Johnny was horrified the following morning when he woke up with a killer hangover and found himself confronted with a profile. "I'm not going to troll the internet looking for a hook-up, ok? I'm not that desperate."

Miguel shrugged nonchalantly. "A lot of people these days use these kinds of apps to find some common ground so they can talk to other people who have similar interests. According to Doug, his mom found one of her closest friends on a site like this one, and they've been friends for close to a decade."

Johnny pulled a face. "Who?"

"Doug Rickenberger?" Miguel said as if it were obvious.

His sensei looked at him blankly.

"The student who flipped the teacher during the school brawl."

"Oh, yeah. Kid's got spirit and a nasty right hook."

Miguel gave him a weird look but then remembered that his sensei wasn't the best with names and often gave the kids nicknames that pertained to some quality about them to make it easier (even if those names were kind of crass and offensive at times). "Anyway, Doug insists these apps really work. It's worth a try, right?"

"I don't know," Johnny was a bit on the fence about using technology to meet people. "The idea of meeting someone on a screen just seems so impersonal."

"What have you got to lose?" his student asked sincerely.

That's a good point?

~~♥️~~♥️~~♥️~~♥️~~♥️~~♥️~~♥️~~♥️~~♥️~~♥️~~♥️~~♥️~~♥️~~

Miguel had to assure him multiple times that a lot of men talked to people on the internet nowadays. It didn't make him a loser or a social reject to form a connection with someone online.

Johnny didn't even have to use it, but he would leave the app on his sensei's phone just in case he decided to change his mind.

Every day, he saw the app on his phone like it was taunting him, and his thumb would hover over the button. All it would take was a single 'click,' and he'd have access to a whole bunch of men he could talk to.

'I'm not some loser who doesn't know how to talk to people,' Johnny reminded himself.

Except he did find it hard to talk to people, especially now when everyone seemed obsessed with their smart-watches, and he could barely keep up with the wide variety of topics that were required in order to have a conversation.

Who knew men had to be experts in politics, economics and have a degree in feminism these days just to get through a meal? 

Needless to say, it took over a week before Johnny mustered the courage to finally open the app and begin scrolling through the available profiles.