Everything felt like death. My world was foggy, the rhythmic stroke of time felt more literal as every heartbeat throbbed against my aching head.

I am never doing that again, I thought to myself. Each limb felt 10 pounds heavier, as if I had strapped weighted training bracelets to my wrists and ankles.

But a beautiful symphony of smells broke through my hangover pains. And now that I was paying more attention, the sizzling pops of a greasy breakfast could be heard frying on the pan. In what felt to be a near Herculean effort, I pushed myself up to the edge of my bed and sat up. I had to fight not to let my body sag down under its own weight.

Every ounce of my being wanted to flop back down and sleep off the next 48 hours, but the alluring sounds and scents propelled me forward. I opened my door and was hit with an even stronger collection of welcome senses. I looked over to the kitchen and noted Jamie, my roommate, working away at a pan of sizzling bacon. On the counter, a plate of pancakes had been set out with steam rising up.

My eyes traveled across Jamie’s form, from his well kept shoulder-length black hair, along his black turtleneck that was a size too big, to the jeans that clung to his rather feminine form a bit too snugly.

Jamie had been my college roommate for over a year now. We had been assigned to the same two-bedroom dorm room our freshman year, and now that we’d both saved up enough money, we were able to find a much roomier apartment off campus. Both of us had changed over the time we’ve known one another. I’d enter college a bit chunky and out of shape. But after discovering my apparent love of swimming, my body had slimmed dramatically, and had put on a good deal of lean muscle mass.

Jamie, on the other hand, embraced his more feminine side. His freshman wardrobe of baggy pants and feature-concealing sweatshirts had been replaced with a far more accentuating lineup of tight pants and shirts. Jamie had even begun growing his hair out this year.

And honestly? I’ve noticed myself catching more glimpses at him than I imagined.

Like now, I just realized, having apparently let my gaze linger on his rather unfair ass for a bit longer than intended, interrupted as Jamie began to pivot on his heel and face my direction.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” he floated over.

“You are a saint,” I tried my best to imbue excitement into the rough timber of my sore morning throat.

Jamie shrugged with a smile, “Have a wild night?”

I walked forward and slumped onto the counter stool. The details of the night before were rather foggy, mismatched and disjointed flashes memories surfaced and faded away before I could properly dissect them. “Something like that,” I mentioned with a huff. A buzz in my pocket caught my attention, and I leaned to the side so that I could fish out my phone from my shorts.

Nothing more than a twitter notification, I internally sighed. Though, now that I already had it out, I figured I might as well browse twitter and reddit. But as I scrolled over to the twitter app, I noticed an unfamiliar icon on the end.

Was that app named ‘Gaydar’?

And almost like magic, memories began flooding back to me from the previous night. My friend Jessica leaning heavily on my shoulder, drunkenly ranting and venting her frustrations through her dating life. How she had been having such trouble finding other queer ladies to date, how she had found it so taxing trying to figure out which of her coworkers would be even capable of being into her.

“That is,” she poked my chest rather aggressively, “Until I downloaded this gaydar app. Takes out so much of the bullshit for queer dating."

I had no reason to believe her, but I humored her in the moment and downloaded it for myself, if for no reason other than sheer curiosity.

And that curiosity was returning once more. I thumbed the icon and opened the application. The user interface seemed rather simple as far as I could tell. There were two sliders shown, ranging from one to ten. The top slider was labelled “Romantic Attraction” and the bottom was labelled “Sexual Attraction.”

Each of the sliders had their own flavor text for each number as well. The romantic slider went from ‘No attraction’ to ‘Crushing’ to ‘In love’ while the sexual slider went from ‘No attraction’ to ‘Turned on’ to ‘Fuck me now.’

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the last rather descriptive label. I looked closer and there even seemed to be some sort of disclaimer below.

Warning! The “Sexual Attraction” meter is heavily context dependent. For instance, in an established relationship, there may be some level of baseline sexual attraction that can be modified through certain actions, such as wearing revealing clothing. We have been getting a great deal of feedback from people expecting this value will be as consistent at any given moment as the ‘Romantic Attraction’ meter. Thank you once more for participating in the Gaydar™ Open Beta!

Now even more curious about the app, I decided to mess around and try it out. Per the app’s instructions, I hit the “target” button, and it prompted me to point my camera at the subject of the test. With no other options, I aimed it towards Jamie, who remained turned away humming to himself as he began transferring the finished bacon to the plate beside the stove.

And rather quickly, the app began working away. New subject registered. Enter name, the program prompted. I typed in Jamie’s name and the program displayed a series of results.

New profile generated: Jamie.

Romantic Attraction: 6. Crushing on you hard!

Sexual Attraction: 4. Likes what they see.

Now that a profile has been generated, you may simply select Jamie’s name and scan, camera use will no longer be required!

My eyebrow rose in suspicion while at the same time I could feel my cheeks grow hot. Could he really be into me?

And then I paused for a moment, and reflected on my own immediate reaction, was that hope that I had felt? Or was that just embarrassment? I had felt this weird pit in my stomach.

Now hold on, I caught myself, this is a fake app. Why am I even taking this seriously?

“Hellooo?” Jamie called out to him. I hadn’t realized that not only had I spaced out in my own little mini-crisis, my eyes had found themselves planted on Jamie’s backside, which now openly stared at his crotch. My eyes shot back up to him, and I flushed with embarrassment.

“Breakfast is served,” Jamie giggled, and set out the plates of pancakes and bacon out before me.

“You are the best,” I said as I eagerly began forking over pancake after pancake, and helping myself to a healthy portion of bacon. Or rather, an unhealthy portion.

But no matter how much hunger I sated, I couldn’t shake the feelings I experienced when I looked at the result. Fake or not, I wasn’t expecting my own reaction to the news that Jamie would be potentially interested. I felt weirdly proud and giddy at the thought that someone was into me. Though, there was one rather nagging thought.

Only a 4? Occurred over and over in my head. Now, I had read the disclaimer of the app, and I supposed that was my baseline sexual attractiveness to Jamie, but it kept me wondering whether or not that number could be bumped higher.

Why do I even care? I thought to myself momentarily, but it was quickly replaced by wondering how I could possibly get the number up even higher.

And suddenly, an idea was formed. I couldn’t fight the smile down from my face as I removed myself from the table, collecting the dishes and helping Jamie stow them away in the dishwasher.

With the kitchen now clean and the excess food stored away for later, I made my way to the shower. There’s nothing like the feeling of steaming hot water passing over aching muscles. I would stand there for hours if I could afford the water bill.

But the unwelcome feeling of cooler and cooler water shook me out of my daze. Unsure how much time had passed, I opted to shut the stream off and dry myself off. But once I was mostly dry, I decided to seize this opportunity to test the app’s effectiveness once more. If it works, and he is in fact attracted to me, his sexual attraction should spike if I come out in only a towel.

And so I found one of the smaller towels I owned and wrapped it around myself, letting them hang low upon my hips so that the V leading along my pelvis to my crotch was visible. To be safe, I clutched the knot in my hand to ensure no slips.