THE DATE

Written in collaboration with every woman in Los Angeles (and probably New York).

He’ll choose the location—a cozy, dimly lit hole-in-the-wall that boasts a casually refined menu and a robust selection of natural wines. As you enter the restaurant, you will feel a flicker of prickly heat—some combination of anticipation, anxiety, and maybe a small flame of hope. The slender, pretty hostess will greet you cheerfully, and you will surveil the entire length and breadth of her figure—better than most, certainly better than yours. You’ll swallow any ill feelings of insecurity, mumbling absently that you’re “meeting someone” as you glide past her and begin to scan the room. It won’t be long before you catch sight of him—your date. In the flesh, he’ll be just as you expected him to look—perfectly, unequivocally average.

The decision to meet in person will not have been one you made lightly—in fact, thousands of billable hours will have been spent discussing the idea with your therapist. She will have used some Socratic line of questioning to reach the overplayed conclusion that your fear of getting hurt has created an impenetrable wall around your heart. “Mmm, mmm, mhm, and could letting someone in actually destroy you?” She will have asked you this—a potential breakthrough moment, in her opinion, but the truth is that you actually tend to open your heart to everyone, having found the value in allowing reckless, insincere vulnerability to act as a bonding adhesive. Regardless, you will have choked back tears at this final query, allowing your therapist a moment of victory. This will have caused a muddled mix of emotions, both pride in the convincing nature of your storytelling and disappointment that you’ll probably have to find someone new to talk to soon.

After some fumbling with introductions, you and your date will fast-track your way to mild intoxication, and mistaking this for some spark of intimacy, you will both begin to share the “traumas” of your lives—his originating from his parent’s divorce at ten years old, and yours an amalgam papier-mâché mask of many romantic failings and foibles that have all boiled down to what you label as a singular issue with “trust.” As you study the too-large collection of pores dotting the mountain range of his nose, you will secretly hope that this exchange of tragedies may act as a pact of sorts—an unspoken agreement that things will be different between the pair of you.

You will leave the restaurant and maybe try for another bar before he suggests casually that the two of you could continue the date in a more private setting. His proposition will be made in the likeness of some thoughtful discovery, having scratched his chin and squinted up at the sky for dramatic effect before remembering that you both have apartments of your own, though his, he informs you with regret, is currently occupied by several roommates.

You will offer your home as a place of refuge and before long, you will find yourself enclosed within the four walls of your doll-sized studio apartment with this stranger. He will take in the landscape, studying your taste in art and space-saving furniture with a slight air of judgment before settling in on the sofa while you hunt for more alcohol. For the next two hours, the two of you will close the gap between you, delving deeper into the topic of dating—more specifically, what you’re both looking for. On the subject, he will reveal that he is regrettably still reeling from a recently explosive, many-cycled situationship that only just ended two years ago. “It messed me up,” he'll say, explaining the reason for his hiatus from all monogamous relationships as your stomach begins to drop. You will choke on your drink a little when he says it—dismayed, but somehow not at all surprised. After all, you will have heard this somber monologue before, having watched many a suitor sit right where he is now, brow furrowed in some performance of loss and victimhood. You will begin to drink for the head trip instead of the nerves—you will suddenly have the overwhelming desire to be asleep, unconscious.

After an evening spent jumping on the fringes of your every sentence, barely skirting impoliteness, he will begin to trade rambling answers for single-word responses and slow, rolling nods. You will feel it immediately—the attempt to create a moment of silence, a space for some move to be made. This covert seduction, though a natural progression of the evening’s events, will make you uncomfortable. You will feel angry and dismayed by his false advertisement, wishing you could order him out and erase the memory—but you can’t, not now. You’d rather be a martyr than a prude. You’d rather leave him shaking his head and clicking his tongue at the thought of you, even if the thought of him will turn your stomach for years to come.

Your brooding and mulling will leave an opening—you’ll brace for impact as he sets his glass on the coffee table sans coaster and moves closer. He'll sigh contentedly, reaching forward as he takes your face in his hands and assumes a thoughtful look that makes you want to laugh. You’ll recall several hours earlier when he told you he was an actor—a memory that you seem to have repressed until this moment. Before you have a chance to suggest a career change, he will open his mouth like a catfish and shove his tongue into your mouth—his warm breath singing notes of garlic, mashed potato, and medium-well hangar steak. You will battle said tongue, fending off his invasion with awkwardly broken efforts to offer your neck in sacrifice for your mouth, but he will intentionally or ignorantly thwart these attempts, returning to your lips as if he means to feed on your immortal soul.

“Should we…?” He’ll ask, his eyes crossing the floor to your bed, which will suddenly seem far too exposed. His question will be perfectly clear, but you’ll glance behind you in feigned curiosity all the same. This is the moment—you’ll swallow hard, trying not to be sickened by the chapped crags of his lips or the scent of his sweat, all the while smiling like you’re being paid to do so. You’ll feel paralyzed—after all, you’ve been here before, laying your neck within the lunette of a self-made guillotine, one you could be saved from so easily with just a few words of gentle protest. You’ll consider taking his hand and giving some excuse. Maybe you could say you’d like to take it slow, to wait until next time—but you know there won’t be a next time. No, there’s only tonight and the choice between courage and self-betrayal.

You will sleep with him. It will feel like a too-long handshake—uncomfortable, impersonal. He will say things, and you will once again remember his Hollywood high hopes—the pomp and fanfare of it all will feel like a one-man show. Your mind will wander as you imagine yourself wriggling out from under him while he continues on with gusto, grinding against your memory foam pillows like a neutered dog remembering the glory days, unaware of your absence. You will struggle to find organic rhythm in motion within what he has so clearly rehearsed—you’ll be fairly certain he can’t look you in the eyes because your forehead is serving as a projector screen for some previously enjoyed porn compilation. In the end, he will shudder and roll away from you, remarking from somewhere in the darkness that you were “amazing” in your role as a Law and Order Special Victim’s Unit crime scene corpse. You will tell him he was great, too.

He will have some reason as to why he cannot stay the night and even though you will have waited for him to exit as soon as he walked in the door, you will feel lonely watching him leave. You will busy yourself with your typical evening routine of cleansing and washing and scrubbing, with special attention paid towards destroying all evidence of him. You will lie in bed, lobotomized, watching a show you’ve seen many times before as your hangover makes an early appearance.

He will message you the next day, and you will feel disgusted, but you will answer him anyway. You will retell the story to friends with verve, using humor to mask the shame as you denigrate and destroy him before a jury of your peers. You will tell them he’s poorly endowed and moves like a newborn foal, and they will laugh, and you will laugh, and it will soothe the burn for a little while—until a few days have passed without another word from him. You will begin to tongue at the absence of his desire like a canker sore—checking and rechecking, monitoring his socials, combing for intelligence like he’s a threat to national security. You will begin to paint him differently in your mind's eye—excusing his monotonous tone and penchant for interrupting in favor of his towering stature and clear blue eyes.

Against your better judgment, you will send him a message and wait eagerly for a reply—it will take him several hours to do so, and he will boast a busy, tiring schedule that has made it difficult for him to keep in contact. You will ignore this lie and ask if he’s free over the weekend for a drink, cutting to the chase as your blood boils with the fear of rejection. His next response will come in triple the amount of time that his last did—leaving you to stew in the mortification of your earnest invitation.

Evening will come, and you will lie in bed alternating between scrolling and rechecking your messages to be certain that his answer hasn’t gone unnoticed as the dread and humiliation shred your internal organs to smithereens and your stress rash burns every moment of conversation you shared previously in angry red brail bumps over your thighs. At last, your phone will buzz and his name will light up the darkness.

“Ahh would love to but got kind of a busy one coming up. I’ll lyk if something changes”

Your eyes will brim with tears of frustration as you bury your face in the pillows and thrust your phone aside. You will begin to pour over every element of that fateful night, puzzling out what you could have done to turn him off. You will wonder if you drank too much or didn’t laugh heartily enough at his jokes. If you frightened him with the scent of desperation on your clothes or if your body didn’t look enough like the slender, pretty hostess from dinner. He could have been the one you will decide (despite all evidence to the contrary) and it’s your fault that he turned tail and ran for the hills. You will mentally self-flagellate, brutalized by the anguish of being unwanted and unchosen.

The weekend will come and go with no word from your date. You will slowly begin to accept defeat, even allowing yourself to be comforted by friends who generalize lazily that all men are horrible and this man was simply behaving in accordance with his entire species. You will begin to shake free of the fantasy, stealing another look at his dating app photos and remembering your irritation with the repetitive tight-lipped face he makes in every last one— a face you watched him make in real life too, much to your subtle repulsion. You will decide that it’s his loss—that you’re above him in every imaginable way.

From this new vantage point, you will tell your therapist about the whole ordeal—enjoying the sound of your own voice as you recount the details of a promising inception, disappointing climax, and crushing conclusion. You will stick to a script you’ve rehearsed a few times by now, informing her that it was you who decided in the end not to pursue the relationship any further, knowing that the healthy, loving, reciprocal partnership you desire can only be found when you fortify your boundaries against all those who would offer you anything less than what you deserve. Your therapist will tell you how impressed she is with your revelation, commending you for your strong will and unbreakable spirit. You will become high with praise and leave the session feeling ten feet tall.

Later at home, satisfied with the professional confirmation of your stability, you will decide to redownload Instagram, having deleted it briefly to avoid compulsively checking your date’s most recent follows. Though short-lived, you will feel confident that your hiatus did for your sense of self what it needed to, and so, in celebration, you will post a subtly sexy photo on your story—lips pouting and a hint of cleavage with come-hither eyes.

Pleased with your progress, you will busy yourself with making a healthy dinner and settling in for an evening of self-care, but your burning desire for a rush of dopamine will have your trigger finger re-opening and refreshing the app again and again in pursuit of praise. As you absently push your homemade broccoli stir fry around the sizzling pan with one hand and check the responses to your fishing expedition with the other, one notification, in particular, will send an electric shock through your body: a single unread response from your date.

“What are you up to tonight?”

The words will rob you of your appetite in a matter of seconds. You will abandon your meal as your mouth runs dry and your mind races. You will consider ignoring him, taking a brief moment to calculate the value of your pride versus the validation you will receive if you engage and he asks you out again.

“Nothing. U?” Your fingers will fly over the keys before you even have a chance to reconsider. You will feel a strange cocktail of exhilaration and shame. You were so remarkably busy just moments ago, having plotted out a whole evening of mental, spiritual, and emotional rest and rejuvenation, and now—you’re on the hook. Pining away for someone whose romantic goals are in direct opposition to yours. Someone you likely wouldn’t even enjoy as a friend. Someone whose touch provided all the pleasure of being humped by an unruly dog. He’s dull, self-important, boorish, and uses the word ‘alas’ (incorrectly) ad nauseam. You don’t like him—but you don’t like being rejected most of all.

“Thinking about grabbing a bite somewhere. Have u eaten?” He will respond after what feels like eons

The smell of burning florets will bring your attention back to the stove as you see your feast reduced to ash in the charred pan. No, you haven’t eaten. You’re starving, and you will do anything to get your fill.

Ophelia - John Everett Millais (1851-1852)