05.25.24
Scrap blog! Scrap blog! Scrap blog!
The below is an excerpt of an essay I’ve been working on about a date I went on a couple years ago, which I’ve just decided to nix. Remember to kill your darlings!
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It brings me no pleasure to be the person who creates the odd number, but it seems I always am. As I crept into my late twenties, I started noticing that I was often the only single person in the room when I hung out with some groups of my friends. I would look up from answering a text or return from the bathroom and find everyone amid small conversations with their significant others, intimacies I don’t feel comfortable elbowing my way into, and felt cripplingly alone — like I didn’t have a landing pad because there was no one waiting to whisper with me (and what a waste, because I am always rife with snide little comments to whisper!). With most of my friends coupled up and my affinity for only ever hanging out with people I already knew, my dating prospects were starting to feel frighteningly limited. Historically, I’d had pretty good luck meeting people in real life (a real source of pride for me, like people who love to talk about how they don’t own TVs), but unless I wanted to sign up for another improv class (humiliating) or continue making my way around in the same group of high school friends until their class reunion is just a perplexing symposium of Men Emma Dated, it seemed I would have to start (reluctantly, begrudgingly) engaging with the apps in earnest — your Tinders, your Hinges, your Farmers Only dot coms. I, at the ripe age of twenty-six with several years’ worth of various semi-active dating app accounts, had never actually gone on an app date. I fancied myself more of a flighty in-app chatterbox: occasional swiping and never meeting, brief and bright conversations like shooting stars lending themselves to stalled replies, attention when I wanted it and zero boyfriends to be disappointed by. Perfect system!
But I was lonely. I lived by myself, in large part because I had a boyfriend when I moved in and figured there’d be someone coming by semi-consistently (joke’s on me! We did not last a month after my lease began. By the way, have you seen my basket? I seem to have lost it and it has all of my eggs in it). I was by myself all the time in my first year of living alone, doing some relationship mourning and paying a woman seventy dollars a month to tell me to love myself by working out (I did not accomplish either thing). At some point, laying on my couch alone in my pretty little apartment, trying to decide which Real Housewives franchise I’d be revisiting that day, I realized that if I wanted to find a new man to join me on that couch and get unwittingly invested in the goings on of Kyle Richards’ marriage, I would have to actually try.
On a Tuesday evening in July, I had a couple of glasses of wine and swiped my way through Hinge. Part of the reason I never liked using dating apps is because they turn me into the most judgmental version of myself. I see these men’s profiles and I find myself thinking about the person who built them. Why would you choose that picture? What kind of person would answer this stupid prompt in this stupid way? Why are so many people so into The Office in the year of our lord 2022? I viciously nit pick at people, both in relation to their looks and their presented personality. And this is not something I do to people in real life! Do you know how many men have told me that I am the nicest person they’ve ever dated? Enough that I’m starting to think I’m really ugly.
I happened upon a non-threatening-looking man who I will call Andrew. He had multiple pictures where he was smiling and zero pictures in the gym (these are the two things I look for in swipe-rights — you would be amazed how hard it is to check both of these boxes! It’s because I live closer to Jersey than Brooklyn). He doesn’t really look like my type but he seems like he’s nice and like it wouldn’t be the worst thing to ever happen to me to talk to him for an hour. The thing about talking to new people and maintaining a conversation with a sense of ease is that it’s a skill — you have to do it to get better at it. So even if it doesn’t go well I will get something out of it (conversational reps, sure, but also an essay to post on the internet — just like my last relationship! Sorry Scott).
We matched and started chatting immediately. I told myself to keep it light and bright. Be friendly and charming, not brash and rude (my only two settings). Don’t bring up any ex-boyfriends, don’t talk about the Muppets more than once, don’t mention any medications you take (an almost-impossible rubric for me — these are my top three favorite topics of conversation. I am a nightmare!). He asks me within a few exchanges if I am free for a drink on Thursday. I am free on Thursday and don’t give myself enough time to lie, so I say sure, give him my number, and agree to meet him at a bar on 163rd & Broadway at 8pm. Check me out! No three weeks of in-app getting to know each other! No concerns over how long is too long to talk to someone before you can just ghost them! Just a date on Thursday and a little bit of anxiety that I’m going to get murdered because I came of age in the era of the Craigslist Killer!
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This essay will be up in its entirety…soon. Who can say when! Don’t hold me to any timelines because I am currently experiencing a particularly challenging time of my life! Get off my back! Love you!
