At a far table lies an open lap top, shining in the middle of the dark room, as if saying “come here, join me, you are lonely anyway.”

You would think that sudden realizations of the state of contemporary defense mechanisms wouldn’t come to you in a group sex setting. But that is how my epiphany, or at least the visual proof of it, came about.

I walk in to this dimly lit Shorewood apartment making sure none of my expensive belongings are on me. I check for keys, untied shoes and coffee stains. I run my tongue around my teeth. Try to floss them with the tip of a fingernail — to no avail. Note to self: remember not to smile widely.

As I walk up the stairs to the second floor of this stranger’s home, I take off my headphones, turn off my phone and think: it is when we turn our gadgets off that we turn our lives back on.

Instead of sprinkling the hours with MP3 files, texting, e-mailing and instant messaging, we fill up the day “interacting” with personal technology, only punctuating them with brief moments of real life events.

Still, I have to go inside. No matter how much we skillfully efface the likelihood for true human bonding, the need for human touch remains undeniably inevitable.

The living room has no scent and the neighbors are exceptionally silent. Three very similar-looking guys stare at a television. One of those extreme winter sports competitions is on.

They kind of watch the screen, they kind of look at me, they kind of say hello.

They are all white and blond and polite and mute and dress conservatively, the kind of American guys who are capable of spending one hour spiking their hair every morning but wouldn’t hesitate before borrowing someone’s chapstick.

They say nothing — like the neighbors — until I ask a question. And they kind of answer it, by re-adjusting the position of their bodies. Two of them begin making out while the third one and I stare at the coffee table. A tangled-up iPod lying on it, along with an unopened magazine he must subscribe to — one of those pieces of literature non-West Coast people read to feel a little West Coast.

I quickly scan the apartment not overtly concerned if someone finds it rude. A foursome’s etiquette can’t be that clear-cut. At a far table lies an open laptop, shining in the middle of the dark room, as if saying “come here, join me, you are lonely anyway.”

A bookshelf with six books in the middle of the room, two of which are dictionaries. One reads “Class of ’01.” And I remember someone telling me how the first thing gay white men in Milwaukee will do when they take you home is show you their yearbook and the brand new Dell desktop their parents gave them, and that that was their way of saying, “I like you, I hope you like me too.”

This complete, unsurprisingly awkward situation echoes our contemporary allergy to silence, to anything so unbearably calm it could actually enable us to create something, or reflect.

No, we have learned to accept and promptly enjoy our capability to sedate our humanity. Numb nothingness with intensive aural pollution so time can go by faster and our failures go conveniently unnoticed, unchallenged.

Back in this living room of lost men seeking out a masculinity more believable than their own (to no avail), the as-of-yet non-participating blond guy starts taking off his clothes, awaiting a clear signal that may welcome his joining in.

Someone’s cell phone rings and no one answers it. When we think the evil thing will keep quiet, it starts a series of beeps once again denouncing new voicemail.

They are all touching one another like they know each others’ names. I stare and see three children so desperately hungry for a never-received touch they would believe anything someone told them — including “I love you” and “I am HIV negative.”

One question that no one has ever been able to answer me: what kind of horror must happen to an American child to make us such emotionally impaired adults? But tonight I can’t help but wonder if only owning six books, two of which are dictionaries, has something to do with it.

It’s like watching paint dry, except you get to criticize, like you aren’t in that situation too. It seems like our incapability to do anything with moderation applies to political correctness too. The paranoia has plagued even the most anonymous of all sex acts.

When setting up group sex becomes a matter of clicking a few buttons, you know it is up to you to create a warning device that says: “enough, over ethical limit.”

The thing about being “able” to do anything fast and with no one watching is that you can develop yourself into a human monster and no one will scream.

The laptop in the hallway keeps on flashing and beeping, like ads are popping out of Web sites with no one to control them.

One of them asks for sex. Not sure which one — they merge into each other so easily; same hairstyle, same ring tones, same complacency for the facile, same tendency to never filter any proposition.

They go about their business completely oblivious to the two other strangers who happen to be sharing that space.

One has got to be either desperate to the point of blindness or incredibly naive to find pleasure out of the synthetic version of his objects of desire. Men caressing the nothingness of one another, pretending that the pretending versions of themselves suffice. Maybe conventional courtship and old-school romance will soon become the hot new transgressions.

Inside the room a man is getting it and no one is making a sound. Perhaps he’s been so well-trained to lock everything inside, like a read-only Word file, he can’t even make himself utter his own joy.

I try to remember what a real phone ring sounds like and it is not easy. The mute guys in the bedroom are done. The men freestyle ski jumping on TV are still at it.

The blond that had been left behind in the insipidness of the living room floor decides to put his clothes back on too, perhaps too eager to check his messages, perhaps too self-conscious to endure more of this mouse-less scenario.

They roll their scarves around their necks, plug their white headphones in their ears, open up their flip phones (maybe it’s just a 21st century tick), and they leave without saying goodbye.

I suppose saying nothing may be the best way to part after a foursome with people who go to the same university you do but whose identities you ignore. “See you later” may sound too hopeful. “Thanks, man,” perhaps borderline humiliating. “We should do this again,” downright delusional.

One of them says he is late and that his girlfriend will be mad. The host says something about being glad he doesn’t have school tomorrow.

So that’s what they do when they graduate, I think. They move to Shorewood, buy an iBook and have sex with strangers. Without the nuisance of roommates. Or the grounding force of school work. They are free.

Everything is upside down. We do it first, get numbers later. We don’t ask for their names at all. And letting someone inside of you seems somehow less intimate than letting them get to know you.

We listen and we watch, and we touch. But love, that’s just too much work. We’d have to wait and count on chance. We’d have to accept our ultimate impotence. Maybe even fail.

Or maybe that’s how it should always have been and we simply had it wrong for so long that it seemed like that was the right way. Maybe this romantic notion of love is overrated and it is dollars that matter most. And ass.

Either way, I hope that guy utters a sound next time. Whatever it is. He has got to have something to say.

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