Ones and Zeros (Warning: Sexual Subject Matter)

[Leah S.]

He leaned over me, gaining leverage, showing his face:
mixed, 20, top.
I leaned into the bed, bracing and nervous for the first time.

My eyes were caked-over
as I pulled out my iPhone, clicking the yellow masquerade icon*,
latent, behind a folder.
His profile picture was touched-up.
I accepted, and he entered my address into his iPhone.
I told him my name was Chase, to shield me;
I also told him I was 18, to shield him.

The screen was glossy.
His skin was cold.
My hands were moist.

I had scrolled through a catalog of human faces,
and chosen the square photograph he had uploaded:
not a face, but a mechanical display of ones and zeros,
adjacent in an endless list without a pattern: 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0. . .

He loomed over me.
I felt a metal rod puncture me.
I shivered in simultaneous success and pain.

I let out a forced grunt, lowering my voice to a socially accepted pitch.

He continued, with his one in my zero,
intermittently sending out signals,
like a metal antenna,
mechanical, with no passionate rhythm.

*The display for Grindr, a gay hookup app for smartphones.

I got lost in the jargon. On first read (without benefit of the explanations in the comments) I could not make any sense of it. It was obvious it was a sexual event, but I originally read it that the narrator was pulling out his iPhone and scrolling through the dating site at the same time (s)he was being penetrated. I think the poem is all mixed up, and the nascent metaphor of ones and zeros (as in a computer) doesn't go anywhere or shed any light on what the poem is supposed to be about. May I suggest that you go back and review what you intend the theme of the poem to be. I see at least two: A first, nervous and tentative, sexual experience that turned out to be disappointing; or an unemotional, purely convenient, digitally arranged rendezvous between two thrill seekers. If the first, you need to get the reader to empathize; if the second, you need to make the reader feel the vicarious thrill. Carry on. Leah.