In this context, the dick pic was apparently intended less as a come-on than an innocuous greeting, the same way your grandma might send you an eBaum’s World card on Earth Day. Yet while most dick pics I had received were either a prelude to or an invitation for sex, that was not the case in this instance: I am straight and married, as was Andrew (though his relationship was open), while Noah is gay and has a boyfriend. Aesthetically, it resembled any other dick pic I had ever received: slightly grainy and poorly lit, as if Calvin Klein had art-directed it back in the 1990s. It didn’t make me want to see Andrew’s dick IRL, and it certainly didn’t make me want to see Paranormal Activity 6. I didn’t quite know how to answer that question. Instead, I saw Andrew jerking off his erect penis, framed by a promotional filter for one of the Paranormal Activity movies. I swiped it open, expecting it to be similar to Andrew’s previous snaps: a photo of one of his dogs, perhaps, or the comically overwrought title of a poetry volume sold at the bookstore where he works.
Apparently, he had sent it to me and Noah. “Did you see Andrew*’s snap?” my friend Noah texted me.
