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I never faked my identity online; I was too naïve, living on an upper middle class island off the coast of Miami. I blushed while looking over the screen of a grey Toshiba, which I now consider to have been a well-designed machine. My mom caught sight of my rose cheeks while my eyes stayed fixed on the screen. I always sat slouched. I bridged the computer between my knees and chest so that the heat radiating from the chassis didn’t become unbearable. I always sat on a then-blue Eero Saarinen womb chair that had belonged to my grandparents. I blushed when girls from the island who wore blue and grey plaid skirts to the private school messaged. I blushed when a boy named Felix—who lived between his divorced parents in Chicago and Germany—messaged. It feels redundant to note we never met, but we didn’t.

On this island men wear suede-driving loafers with higher frequency than in any other part of the United States. In a casual-visual poll I took last time I was home I concluded that the color preferred by men, ages 16 to 70, is pink. Canary yellow is alarmingly on the rise. Most people there agree that the acceptable compliments to suede driving loafers are chinos and polo shirts, in two other colors. The shoes, the chinos and the polo don’t exist together on the color wheel: They never seem to be calculated in any way that hints at the existence of an organizing system by which to pair colors.

Eduardo Andres Alfonso is an artist and writer who has always lived on islands.