Chapter Four #3
Alyssa shook her head in agreeable disbelief. She was religious, but not that kind of religious.
“‘Would you and your ideal match feel comfortable farting around each other?’” I asked.
Sue burst into laughter.
“Yes,” I said.
Alyssa raised a judgmental eyebrow. “That was quick.”
“Are you suggesting that you and Tim don’t?” Sue asked.
“No!” Alyssa laughed. “We’re polite. We hold it in and take it out of the room.”
“Oh, Russell and I are decades past that. There’s joy in letting it rip.”
They dissolved into even deeper laughter, which I interrupted. “‘Do you own any dice with more than six sides?’ I don’t, but I should check yes, right? A D&D guy would be fine.”
“Check yes, then,” Alyssa said.
Sue agreed. “You have to read between the lines.”
“‘Do you think women have an obligation to shave their legs?’” I asked.
“Jesus,” Macon finally said, though he still refused to swivel in our direction.
I clicked no, obviously. “‘Do spelling and grammar mistakes irritate you?’”
“Yes,” Alyssa said.
“Some people just aren’t wired for it,” Sue said. “Unless they’re willfully ignoring spell-check, I wouldn’t hold it against someone.”
“Do these questions irritate you?” Macon asked in a tone that eviscerated.
I put away my phone, chagrined. But that weekend, I lived on it.
I answered more questions, tweaked my profile and liked others, waited for contact.
Received contact. It didn’t take long for me to line up multiple dates.
I hadn’t realized I would be messaging several different people at the same time, feeling them out and testing who was worthy of further pursuit.
I’d been naive to have found Adam’s “most of the women I meet for drinks” line to be off-putting.
That’s just what dating was: quick interactions with tons of people until something stuck.
Sometimes the textual flirtations were dizzying, sometimes disgusting.
But I was gaining the experience that Cory and I had wanted. Finally, I was doing something right.
I swiped past the shirtless pics and the guys posing with dead fish.
(I had no idea I would see so many deceased trout.) I set the age parameters from twenty-five to forty-five but then quickly bumped that first number up to twenty-seven.
In terms of message quality alone, those two years made a difference. And then I was off to the races.
My first date was with Brandon, a thirty-three-year-old welder with scarred hands and a big goofy laugh.
Like Adam, he had a library card, but it had expired.
We met at a cider house near the river—not the one with the friar and Cory’s car—and although we discovered we had nothing in common, we liked each other enough to make out in the parking lot afterward.
The skin of his fingers was rough, but his kisses were sloppy and gentle, and I drove home feeling bubbly and elated and wishing nothing but the best for him.
The next night, still buzzing with optimism, I went out with Lawrence, a twenty-eight-year-old sous-chef with a handsomely crooked face.
No library card. We met for dinner at a Korean barbecue joint, where he spent most of the meal complaining about his job at a restaurant that served Southern gourmet.
I heard about his interests, his education, his friends.
He only cared about the details of my life as they related to his.
He didn’t try to kiss me, which was surprising because he seemed so into himself that I figured he’d assume I was, too.
But then, as we parted ways, he said this: “Just so you know”—he tapped his teeth—“bulgogi. Right there.”
I did not wish the best for Lawrence, and I did not make the mistake of accepting a sit-down meal invitation again.
Two days later, I met Geoff (thirty-two, wildlife rehabilitator, active library card but nothing checked out) for coffee on my lunch break and then Mike (thirty-eight, surveyor, possible library card because two people had his same name) for drinks after work.
Geoff removed a purple sweet potato from the bulging pocket of his cargo pants and gave it to me as a gift, claiming the purple ones would make me live longer.
Macon often gifted me produce from his garden, so I’d never realized that there was an off-putting way to do it.
And then Mike waxed on and on about weed strains, which caught me off guard because he was wearing khakis.
This was fine, but also not for me. Neither getting high nor khaki pants had ever been my thing.
I did not make out with Geoff or Mike.
My next date was with a different Brandon—twenty-nine, paramedic, no library card—and I was pleased that we did make out.
Again, the only thing we had in common was enough physical chemistry to press our bodies against each other inside my car, but he was more intense than the first Brandon in a way that transformed me back into a horny, groping teenager.
He asked if I wanted to go out again. I said yes and then waited nearly a week for him to text.
Finally, I texted him. He never responded, and I realized I’d been ghosted for the first time.
I wasn’t even that upset. Another adult merit badge earned.
But I was annoyed about the lost time and dove back into the dating pool with frenzied desperation.
I met up with Kenji (cute and nerdy and extremely my type but could not have been less interested in me), Jay (slow-moving and depressed except when he spoke about radio antennas), Cameron (showed me pictures of his 3,400-square-foot house and kept repeating that it was 3,400 square feet), and Sunil (asked if I’d be willing to keep my toenails painted year-round).
I did give in and kiss Sunil goodbye after several uncomfortable seconds of pressure and guilt, which left me feeling icky and angry and mad at myself instead of him.
Kenji had an active library card but nothing checked out.
Jay had an expired card and $4.25 in fines for a book about, I am not making this up, radio antennas.
Cameron and Sunil did not have cards, and I was not surprised.
Back on the app, I exchanged messages with a nice guy named Chad who talked about what a bummer it was to be named Chad, and then I felt bad when I decided not to meet up with him either.
(He wanted to take me out to karaoke. Cory also liked karaoke, and I dreaded those nights when we went out with his coworkers, and I had to pretend to enjoy them all singing songs that felt three times as long as the original versions.)
I considered messaging the first Brandon again.
Sweet Brandon with the goofy laugh! Had I judged him too quickly?
February was approaching rapidly. I still hadn’t slept with anybody and was positive that Cory had.
I’d never thought of myself as competitive, but now I felt its sting.
Nor had I thought of myself as prudish, but now I wondered if I was.
The truth was, I just hadn’t wanted to sleep with any of them.
During my giddier shifts at work, the swollen-lipped days after a night of heady fumbling and bumbling and making out, I attempted to be friendly with Macon again.
I tried engaging him in conversations but received monosyllabic answers.
I leapt to assist the woman whose clothing always reeked of gag-inducing mildew, and I volunteered to kick out the guy who’d been permanently banned the previous summer for public masturbation to a tome on horse anatomy.
Once I even slid a travel photography book toward Macon’s side of the desk, open to a spread with a sweeping ocean cliffside on one page and a bluebell-carpeted forest on the other.
Did he want to meet me at either for lunch?
The phone rang, and he grabbed it. He never answered the phone if he could help it, and as he testily guided the patron through placing an online hold for the new Kazuo Ishiguro, he closed the photography book and filed it away on a cart.
On my own phone, a prolonged and heated argument was raging between my mother and Riley. My holiday-loving sister wanted a Christmas wedding, and our practical mom was doing everything in her power to convince her that civilization itself might collapse if that happened.
I ignored them and refreshed, refreshed, refreshed the dating app.
Sue and Alyssa asked how I felt about the forthcoming end of the experiment.
I didn’t know how to respond. I had only just gotten started, and I was still an inexperienced beginner.
It wasn’t as if I had expected to become an expert—or even advanced—in one month, but shouldn’t I have at least graduated to intermediate?
I felt disappointed and frustrated. Overwhelmed and underwhelmed.
What might have happened if I’d had more time?
And what had Cory been able to accomplish in the same number of weeks?
I hadn’t considered the possibility before that we might no longer be equals when we reunited.
Our experiences with other people were still supposed to represent a shared experience.
We were supposed to have similar months.
And although I didn’t know how his month was going, it was difficult to imagine him second-guessing any opportunities.
He was, by nature, a go-getter. Up for anything.
I had missed the friend half of my boyfriend.
I’d missed him during the downtimes, the hanging out times, the cooking dinner and cleaning up times.
I had also missed his warm presence in bed, despite not missing the sex, because I was so consumed by the notion of having it with somebody else.
If only I’d had more time, I could have gotten out of my head and made it happen.
Then the two of us would still be on the same page.
On the last day of January, I jolted awake in a panic reminiscent of my first week alone.
Our plan was to meet in a restaurant the following evening after work.
That was where we would discuss our future, and then he would either come home with me or never come home again.
But of course Cory was coming home. My panic was because I wasn’t ready.
Our apartment wasn’t ready. Because he hadn’t been there—because I’d barely been there—discarded clothes were heaped in piles all over the floor, makeup was caked on the bathroom sink and countertop, and dirty dishes and frozen food wrappers littered the entire kitchen.
I cleaned for two hours before work and then kept cleaning afterward until three in the morning.
Will he have a ring? I wondered, scrubbing furiously at the face powder that had become one with my toothpaste scum.
Were we about to get engaged? I scrubbed so hard that the handle snapped off our cleaning brush.
He would wait until we’d had a chance to discuss it, I assured myself, running my finger over the jagged plastic edge.
We had both always been so practical and rational.