Run-of-the-Mill Dating App Meet-Up

I lock my bike to the metal railing of the empty bar patio. I press my face up against the glass window to mitigate the glare from the neon bright lights from both sides. The bar is the only dark spot on the whole block. Chairs are stacked on tables and the liquor cabinets are empty.

I lean against the brick exterior, one foot pressed on the storefront, arms folded in front, waiting for an I-told-you-so and Darius’ counter-offer.

He looks like one of those frat guys: khakis, a button-up mostly obscured by a down vest, boat shoes some showy color in the middle of this desert state.

“I hate to be right, but—” I gesture to the obviously closed bar. He had insisted this bar was still open despite my misgivings.

He shrugs. “I want to dance.”

“Uhhh, I don’t really dance.”

“Let’s go to a club.”

“I don’t really like clubs.”

“C’mon, we can dance there.”

I try a new line of reason. “I don’t think I’m dressed for it. There are a lot of good restaurants and bars in this area, though. Why don’t we go to one of those?”

“What’s that bar? The one next to the pizza place?”

“Which pizza place?”

“The one everyone goes to.”

“The one on Pierpont?”

“I don’t know where it is.”

“Floppy pizza and and graffiti everywhere?”

“Yes.”

“That bar?” I question in disbelief. Seedy and greasy, I had once witnessed a bar fight there.

“Yes! You know it.”

“No, sorry, we can’t go there.”

“Why?”

“Just—bad memories. Sorry. I know a great place nearby though.”

Over the short walk he complains about the weather and the traffic and the lack of clubs in the city and the fact that no one who does club in this city can dance well. “You know what I’m saying?” he wants to know after each grievance is spelled out in inconclusive detail. At first I tell him I don’t know, but quickly learn that questioning these grievances is an affront to his essence.

I’m always excited to share this place with others. The red brick feels sentimental and the wooden furniture is cozy. Darius, however, is skeptical. We are seated at a table with a booth on one side and a chair on the other. I quickly take the chair.

“Why are you sitting all the way over there?” he asks.

“I like it over here.”

“Why would you sit over there when you could be sitting next to me?”

“I’m actually comfortable over here,” I say, narrowing my eyes.

“Ahh c’mon.”

I raise my eyebrows, and smile mock menacingly, refraining from even the smallest shift of weight in the seat I am now forced to defend as my right.

“Hey look! My team’s on,” he says. I politely consult the menu for a moment so he can catch up on the score. His transfixion deepens and now he mumbles little mouthfuls of encouragement to the inch tall players on the screen. I ask him if he’s had a chance to look at the menu.

“Do you think they have Malibu here?” His eyes haven’t moved.

“Uh, no, I don’t think they have Malibu in this bar that specializes in exotic beers.”

“Okay, so I guess I want whisky, but what do you recommend?”

“A whisky sour is a good basic.”

“Sour! I don’t want something sour!”

“It’s well-balanced.”

“I don’t trust that.”

“You could ask for double the sweetener.”

“I’ll ask the waitress.”

When the waitress arrives, he pulls his eyes from the screen. Briefly. Naturally, she suggests a whisky sour. He doesn’t hear her.

“Sorry, sorry. My boy just caught an epic—”

“Sour. I said I recommend a whisky sour,” she repeats.

“I don’t want something sour.”

“It’s not actually sour.”

“Well I want something sweet.”

“I could do a whisky lemonade.”

“Ok. But make sure it’s sweet!”

I sip my drink quietly when it comes. Perhaps he has caught on to my disinterest because he begins commentating the game to me. I consider leaving, but I feel I’ll be missing out on the end of what could be an excellent story. In the meantime I take part in a thought experiment: what would make me similarly disengaged from the person sitting across the table from me?

When I come back from an extended trip to the restroom, he is raising his arms in the air in victory.

“Did you see that last play?” he asks excitedly.

“No.” Again taking the seat opposite him.

He goes on to describe the clinching moments of the game and then, while I am absently sipping my drink, “Hey, why are you not sitting next to me?”

Oh, was that the fulcrum to the fate of this date? Then why the hell not?

I saunter to the booth side and sit down petulantly. He puts his arm around my shoulder and after considering it for several moments I allow it.

“I hardly know anything about you.” He comments, his face too close, his arm heavy. I raise my eyebrows.

“What would you like to know?”

“I don’t know. What do you like to do?”

“I don’t know. A lot of things. Read…”

“Ah, I just read reread my favorite book.”

“What is it?”

“Forgot what it’s called, but it’s by this guy, this like teacher, but Eastern.”

“Guru?”

“Yeah, but like for business and for people starting businesses. What are they called?”

“Entrepreneurs?”

“Yeah, and this guy learns about them by talking to the devil, and it’s like, whatever the devil says he does the opposite and gets rich.”

“So, he rewrote The Screwtape Letters as a capitalist instead of a Christian?”

“What?”

“You know, C.S. Lewis’ book? It’s about Christian theology and the Christian life, as learned through letters from the devil.”

“No this guy is a Christian. He’s got to be.”

“But the book isn’t about Christianity, right?”

“No, it’s not like that at all. There aren’t any letters.”

“Okay, so, what did you like?”

“It told me a lot about people.”

“What about them?”

“What motivates them.”

“Explain.”

While he cracks stupid jokes I am buoyant and hyperbolic and laugh heartily because I know I’m never seeing him again. I can be whoever I want to be.

He asks me the secret to my happiness. And as the words telling him that in fact I am not very happy tumbled out, I realize that I do want to myself after all. It’s crushing to realize that you own your own misery. You know, but you can forget for so long.

He tells me that I am missing something in my life and nature has showed us that humans are meant to create and that I need to do the things I loved. I ask if that is from the entrepreneurial anti-devil book. He says it is.

I tell him my sadness is especially piercing when I am doing exactly what I think I want to do.

Instead of responding, he puts his hand on my knee. I remove it and gesture to the waitress. We ask her to split the check in half, but I’m glad to see she has only charged me for what I ordered, his several drinks to my pint of draft beer.

We make our way back to my bike and his parked car. He’s grown bolder and I feel his eyes run me over from behind. His words aren’t to me but to somewhere beyond me: tacit, carnal inquiries. He has that devouring, pleading look that men can get.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I unlock my bike and see him stalling in the driver’s seat. At the red light he pulls up next to me. “You know, I’m not really ready to go home.”

“Bye,” I say coldly and change course, grateful for the road to sidewalk ambidextrity of the bike. Though there’s no sign of him behind me, I wind through the streets, inadvertently pass Black Dog Cafe, cross the bridge a block from one of Manuel’s venues, lights still bright inside. I arch my back and spread my chest for no lover but the moon. Contentment settles upon me as my breathing steadies. It’s silly, but I haul my bike up the stairs to my apartment so it can’t be seen. I delete the new messages from my phone and place it face down on the crate next to the futon and double check that the door is locked.

*****

Grant and Omar are stunned by the story of my date with Darius when I retell it in their apartment a few nights later.

“I say put a restraining order on the guy.”

“C’mon, Grant. It wasn’t like that.”

“You should have at least ditched the guy and told him what an ass he was,” Omar says.

“No, it was like—he didn’t even understand what he was doing—he wasn’t aware of himself enough to understand why these things were inappropriate.”

“Well, then he’s going to rape someone or something.”

“It was more like he thought I was really into him because I didn’t find there to be anything interesting about him when I disagreed with him. So, I said yes all night, but knew that one night was more than enough.”

“Damn girl, that was dangerous in this situation!”

“Grant,” I’m beginning to get frustrated. “I attract two kinds of men: babies and weirdos. He was eighty percent baby and twenty percent weirdo. He was fine. He just hadn’t developed the capacity to self-reflect yet.”

I like the babies for their wonderment of the world, their joy and simplicity. I like the weirdos for their brains. They like me because I can straddle worlds for them. I can get inside their minds, yet traverse the social scenarios that beset them competently.

“What was Manuel?”

“Baby, I guess. That one might have had more to do with me.”

Omar finishes: “So, what you’re telling me is that you’re going to marry one of those seventeen year old PhD.s?”

“Jesus!”

“I’m kidding, Ro. This is a serious societal problem with men and women. You should tell him to not be an ass, but he shouldn't behave in such a way that you should ever have to tell him he’s being as ass. And you shouldn’t be afraid to do it, because he shouldn’t make you feel afraid to do it.”