Photos are the currency of our online affair. Brinkmanship. A coy smile quickly progresses to a
yielding neck becomes bared breasts. We up the ante with each intimate still, our exposed flesh
cashing the checks our texts are writing.

Reciprocity requires me to look at my body and anticipate the way you’d see it, and I’m taking
off my clothes, unabashedly naked in the bathroom examining every flaw under the stark
fluorescent lights. Each angry vein, pocket of fat, rough scar and silvered stretch mark—the
unflattering evidence of my age. Proof of the poor choices I’ve made. And the poor choice I am
about to make.

But it’s part of the deal. Evidently digital lovers get to see you naked. In still photos. Taken in
bathrooms with bad lighting. A toilet paper roll positioned behind a hand extended to cover a
dusky pink nipple as I stand topless with my phone in hand trying to figure out if there is indeed
a magic angle that will make all my flaws disappear or at least a magic angle that will give me
the confidence to stand bare in the reality of my body because that is how I know what we have
is real.

When you look at me. See me. The woman I really am. Naked in these photos.