orbiting

Orbiting is the name for a relationship conducted entirely through the list of people who viewed your story. Contact ends, usually after a few dates and a message about timing. The following evening the name appears in the viewer list. It appears again under the next photo. It keeps appearing for months, reliably, near the top.

The viewer list was built so that people could see their audience. It has become a daily attendance sheet for relationships that have been formally closed. Nothing is said and nothing is asked. Both parties know the other can see the record, and both leave it there, which gives the arrangement the tone of two neighbors who stopped speaking and still wave at each other’s recycling bins.

What makes orbiting durable is its pricing. It costs the orbiter nothing. It costs the orbited a small, measurable amount of attention, since someone will open the list late at night to confirm the name is still near the top. The data is precise and entirely uninterpretable. A view could mean fondness, boredom, or a thumb resting on a screen.

My own version has no platform and no viewer list. It has a file. For 100 days I have opened it the same night as each of the 10 dates and entered the minutes, the receipt, the questions in each direction, and who chose the venue, and she has never been shown a line of it. The orbiter watches an account that is closed. I am keeping an attendance sheet on an account that is open, which the other party cannot read and did not agree to. Both are records built from someone else’s evening. Only one of them is free to keep.