J: Hola (that is Spanish for “hi”) [SHE THUMBS DOWNS IT]

Why are you quitting bumble

E: im not gonna use it anymore

it’s basically all finance bros anyway

J: They can’t all be assholes

E: no they def are

but doesn’t matter anyway

i’m done for now

J: Damn

E: i told you

i can’t do it

J: i’m just one person

E: this is like the 4th time i’ve tried

J: in a span of what

E: since i moved here

J: [PIC]

was watching a movie called “Black Orpheus” yesterday

took me a min to make the connection

E: orpheus and eurydiceeee

J: yeah

 

*     *     *

 

It still bugs me that I never understood why she’d seen Hadestown eleven times (our first date was her twelfth). She had jumped at my near-midnight suggestion we go watch it and agreed to go the very next day (improv date!).

When I arrived at 30 Rock, I ran around the indoor plaza looking for shoes, but the one shop I found turned me down from across the glass door, insisting they were closed. When I stepped outside it was raining, and I went looking for a bodega to buy mints, knowing deep down I was thinking too highly of myself (“You never know,” I kept thinking). When I arrived at Walter Kerr, I waited nervously in the back of the line while a petite figure drifted her way to me, looking for her date.

She approached me and we hugged quickly, and that is where our brief five-month friendship began. She wore a gray-black checkered gingham skirt that cut just above the knee, stockings, and Mary Janes, all true to her crisp, prep-school aesthetic.

When we reached our central-top row, there was a group of elderly ladies blocking our path, and I knew it would be an awkward matter getting through–better to hop up from the empty row below! The usher scolded me in front of everyone, telling me never to do that again, then she facilitated Emily’s civilized passage to the seat to my right. We laughed the whole thing off, and I was glad the lights went off then because I felt my skin burning in the dark.

The actual drama of the play I found only okay, focusing more on the live band. I was honest about this during the intermission, which was the first time we truly met.

“Do you play any instruments?” she said.

“I can play three chords on guitar. I can’t like, seamlessly move between them, but I can play each one very well—in isolation.”

She had a beautiful smile. I’m not sure she knows how beautiful she is, and it feels stupid that I never told her.

“You?”

“I played flute in middle school and high school.”

You really ought to have done it. It would be nice to know what it feels like to call someone beautiful.

“So you’re a…I was gonna say ‘flutist,’ but that doesn’t sound right.”

“ ‘Flautist.’ ”

“Okay, you can’t just be making up words.”

Such a beautiful smile.

I was super distracted during the play. I kept noticing the way she played with her cuticles, and the cute bird-silhouettes on her press-ons. In retrospect, my mind was failing to adjust to her aura, which was not at all how her Bumble profile had portrayed it. I thought I would have to catch up to a yappy and overly bubbly white girl, and was instead astounded to find her vibe closely resembled my own: reserved, shy, but also gentle (when I’m not having a manic high/low). I don’t know how else to put it: I felt safer and more relaxed with her than I thought I’d be.

When the crowd dispersed at the end of the play, I remember how good it felt to constantly check up on someone behind me. I loved the constant confirmation that she was real, and that others could see me and subconsciously process me as that boy in the theater who, after the play, had been checking up on his girl trailing behind him, the way boys do with their girls at these kinds of public proceedings.

Afterwards we walked through Times Square down to Tacos No. 1 (her message, "I'll wait for tacos with you" is still one of the most romantic things anyone's ever said to me). I made a show of completing my order in Spanish, and I felt myself suppressing a smile when she sipped from my tamarind drink while we waited for three tacos de pastor (she had kindly declined to eat). I carried my plate and arrived at a corner of the establishment: a window-side bar-style table overlooking the sea of nocturnal pedestrians outside. I walked in front of her and firmly committed to a side, in effect granting her the most personal-space-friendly spot in the whole establishment. Our conversation was pleasant and relaxed, and I was once again periodically distracted by the sudden out-of-body recognition that this whole thing was actually happening: that I was having a date with such a lovely, proper, beautiful girl.

When we walked back into the night I led the way towards nowhere for a while (my happiness peaked then, but she must have been at her most anxious). We took the same train until Penn Station, and she signaled with a look that it was my stop and I, taken aback, and having been distracted by her eyes, whose gray-blue hues I was determined to imprint in my memory for all time, blurted some kind of goodbye as she smiled saying,

“Thanks for paying for the tickets.”

And my mind rushed to say “Remember this! Remember this!” when she smiled and spoke those words. My novice heart must have suspected, even then, the possibility that I’d already been deemed inadequate, and that this whole affair would shortly be snatched away from me: I would be thrown back into my life as a loner who anxiously conflates his demisexuality with inceldom, constantly ashamed of his “stunted maturity” and intensely paranoid that one day he would wake up to find himself a grumpy old man, withered and weathered and all alone…and that departing smile, from that pretty-preppy girl with gray-blue eyes bidding me goodbye in Penn Station that rainy May night, would be nothing more than a dream, from a life that was briefly bestowed me due to some cosmic glitch, but that was never truly my own.

 

*     *     *

 

One of my Bumble prompts, since deleted, read:

 

 “My first date is—I don’t know, I’ve never been on one (hope you don’t hold that against me).”

 

Our first exchange, (she’d liked me first) developed as such:

 

E: have you really never been on a first date? (not holding it against you)

J: really

E: i’ve been on like, two real dates

J: So you’re the experienced one here

E: sooo experienced

J: Be my first date?

E: potentially

J: Hm…I’ve never made it this far before

E: lol

J: Tell me what to do

E: you panic and then you cry about it afterwards

J: In that order?

E: definitely

 

*     *     *

 

I came to New York a year ago to confirm I too could partake in the festival of life. Now my heart is broken, but I feel alive, more so than I’ve felt in nearly seven years. As thirty neared, I was afraid my debilitating indifference towards everyone and everything would lead me to do something silly, so I impulsively picked up my bags and left the Bay Area before I could admit to myself the reason for my leave: “You are going to die here.”

Three dates, and all of 12-15 hours I spent with her physically, but it was enough to feel tethered to the Earth once more, to feel I too can take part in this festival.

 

*     *     *

 

E: you should let me give you money for my hadestown ticket

J: no (that is Spanish for “no”) [SHE THUMBS DOWNS IT]

I know you did not just thumbs down me [SHE THUMBS DOWNS IT]

J: thank you for being my first first date [SHE LOVES IT]

E: was it as terrifying as i told you it was going to be

J: definitely [SHE LOVES IT]

 

*     *     *

 

Gracias, Emily (that is Spanish for “Thank you, Emily”).