The Issue with Dating — A Fictional Story Told 100 Times Before
You’re standing in front of the mirror, your eyes resting on your chest area while wondering whether he’ll like that new top you bought specifically for today. It would be your power top, with its red colours compensating for the confidence you don’t have but still show off, and the rollneck being an indication that you’re the type of intelligent and sophisticated that goes to modern art museums and cheese nights for fun. A very pleased smile appears on your face concealed with three layers of concealer, foundation and a highlighter so bright, he can’t possibly fail to see you when you make the most dramatic and rehearsed entrance in the history of blind date performances. The only thing lacking was some background dancers and an orchestra accompanying you while falling into the arms of the potential love of your life. Let’s just hope that he didn’t lie about his height, so we don’t completely set ourselves up for failure.
A very well-respected and reliable dating guide with a 2.3% success rate told you once that being five minutes early is a good way of giving yourself enough time to relax and collect your thoughts. You spend your time waiting by going through all the jokes written on your mental cue cards in your brain before having to perform them somewhere else other than in your bedroom before falling asleep at night. You turn your head around in micro movements, so you don’t look too desperate for your date to arrive, because after all, you’re a strong independent woman who enjoys taking advantage of singlehood by focusing completely on her career and personal development. The whole dating thing is nothing but a nice distraction from your busy everyday life, and a good way to spice things up a little. Do you ever get lonely? Of course not, only unsuccessful people have time for that.
There he finally is in his V-neck jumper, showing off his testosterone and steroid pumped chest, which he obviously doesn’t spend any time obsessing over, since it’s all 98% natural anyway. You immediately get your ego levels a little higher up by complimenting each other for tonight’s looks — an attribute that of course doesn’t matter much since you’re both all about that personality, which you’re just about to find out more about. How exciting. But first, drinks! Because how can you start an evening full of performances and unashamed fakery about who you are without getting into the relaxed and confident mindset first, that only our loyal friend Alcohol can get us to? A glass of red wine would go well with your whole art-and-cheese-lover facade, you think, and you decide very kindly not to pay attention to how your date winces just slightly every time he takes a sip from his glass of straight Whiskey with ice.
It’s finally getting late enough to make an excuse to go to the bathroom, contemplating whether you should find a window to escape through or simply touch up your makeup and think of the rest of all the conversational topics you had prepared for tonight. You decide to go for the latter, since the report your reflection in the mirror gives you is quite positive and encouraging: It looks like your date has been having a good night, he laughed approximately 12 times and smiled 80% of the time when he wasn’t busy focusing on his drink, and he had definitely not lied about his height. So far so good. Only one more witty remark about women’s inability to go to the bathroom alone, and perhaps one more glass of wine and you’ll see whether you’ve really passed the test or not. Fingers crossed that he didn’t take the opportunity to exit through the door to make it an obvious post-date report.
Luckily, he was still sitting there, waiting patiently while just checking the news on his phone. He asks whether you’d like to go for another drink and you wittily point out that you two haven’t even come to the end of tonight’s date yet. Him not getting the joke corrects you and rephrases his question saying that what he actually meant was whether you’d like him to get you another drink now, but that this also might be an indication that it’s time to stop now. You laugh nervously while fakely lifting your chest up and down to show some signs that you’re not mentally suffocating, right before he asks you whether he could walk you home. You nod in agreement and make your way out into the cold, hoping he’d come closer to warm you up, because after all, we must’ve learnt at least something from all of those lonely nights accompanied by Ben & Jerry’s and the Notebook.
There it is. The front door of your apartment that’s only seen male visitors such as the delivery man and your dad. You stop and stare at it for a second, giving your date enough time to ask whether he’d be OK to come inside. Following the right protocol as expected, you touch the door handle just about too suspiciously the same second he asks to come in, but decide that in about 2 minutes and one stubborn bra that refuses to come off, all the embarrassment from the previous hours can finally be forgotten.
The last stage of the performance is now coming to an end, and you can only hope that the future will bring just a couple of more joint rehearsals and drunken embarrassments. Despite your endorphin and self-esteem levels being higher up than normally, you’re already aware of the fact that they will easily go down after the next disappointment, which means you’ll soon be craving for more validation and verification. Very promisingly though, you get a text only minutes after he exits the building and leaves memories of last night’s escapade with you, dropping the only line that was left to say in his part of the script: “So, how was I? xx”
You never meet again.
Originally published at www.madrebelblog.com on March 7, 2018.
