Let’s be clear. Nerds are hot right now. Sometimes I’m swiping on Tinder and the absolute bro-iest dudes write in their profiles, “Nerd at heart” or “Secretly nerdy” or “Nerdier than you are” or “Nerd out over nerdy things.”

These are men wearing tank tops that are basically a rag—no arm holes to speak of, just gaping voids down the sides of the body—in the gym, freelifting a Prius. Their necks are thicker than my thighs. Both my thighs. Put together. They have a tattoo of a Seahawk whose wings beat when they flex. Their heads are tipped back—because they’re simultaneously chugging two beers while lifting.

Yeah, I don’t know.

Anyway, Date #12 had the trend-aware glasses, and the trend-appropriate button-down, and the no-longer-a-trend-because-the-Internet-is-here-to-stay job in the tech field, and I’m willing to bet he spends more time reading than in the gym but still looks like he knows how to breathe fresh air. Aka, my kind of nerd.

I’m actually still a little baffled by Date #12. He was so cute! Smart! Had a sense of humor! Had lived all over the world!

And then…nothing. We just didn’t care about each other.

Not that we were supposed to “care-care” within 30 seconds of meeting, but we didn’t care. You know that moment when you first meet someone and your little antennas go off—that didn’t happen. Zilch. Nada.

So we had a very nice night exchanging pet stories. I reallydon’t even know how we got on the topic.

That’s a lie. I totally know.

When I went to Colorado, I changed my profile from “Just trying to date one lumberjack before I die” to:

Just trying to date one cowboy before I die.

I didn’t change it back when I returned to Seattle. Because, you know, I was ready for men to apply to be cowboys instead of lumberjacks. You’d be surprised how accommodating they were of both.

Him: How strict is this cowboy rule? I have an uncle with a sheep farm, how close does that get?

Me: Hahaha. Are sheep as dumb as they say?

Him: Oh my god, so f***ing dumb. But their babies are cute as hell.

Me: Right?? I’m with you.

Him: I did have to be around for lambing season, definitely felt pretty cowboy like. Maybe a cowboy horror movie. But certainly rugged.

(Note: I have a friend who quits talking to men if they have comma splices in their replies. I, um, am either more generous or have lower standards. Or my desire to make out with people overcomes the comma splice. Or I’m so aware of the fact that I don’t want to date English teachers that a lil’ comma splice is actually a good thing in my world. Jury’s still out on the exact reasons, but the result is the same: I hang in there.)

When we got to about minute 45, we turned back to the sheep. There’s always a point in a date when you reference either how you met—in real life—or the exchange you had leading up to this point—in online dating. It usually happens right before you start talking about your experiences on Tinder.

Am I starting to sound predictable? Should I mix it up? Every time I vow not to talk about Tinder on a date, whoever I’m with invariably says, “So how’s Tinder treating you?”

“Tell me more about this sheep farm,” I said, genuinely interested.

“Sheep are so dumb they just walk around with their babies falling out of them. Then they keep walking,” he said. “So during lambing season, you have to walk around behind them and pick up all the baby sheep.”

Did you guys know that? Online dating is the best. I learn so much. I’ve learned about online dating algorithms from that guy who worked at a start-up, and I’ve learned about glacial climbing, and about what sort of apartments Amazon refers new recruits to (Belltown or South Lake Union, air conditioning, built-in gyms and parking garages), and that no one can explain the difference between software engineers, coders, and programmers, but everyone thinks there probably is one.

Goldfish, newts, cats, dogs, sheep…car accidents, bathroom accidents, toy accidents, names, obedience school, breeds, tails, ears, two legs, four legs—Date #12 and I covered it all.

Pets are interesting Tinder date fodder. It can get sentimental really quick, or it can be funny. It lets you tell stories about your childhood without being overly personal or revealing or schmaltzy. People’s animals—and how they treat and/or talk about those animals—say a lot about them.

I can be sort of callous about the cats I had as a child, but I tear up when talking about my first dog if I’m being honest. And I talk about the family dog like she’s a person, calling her a “weirdo and a goofball.” This dog also happens to look like a lamb when her fur is clipped short. FULL CIRCLE.

We still had some fries left in the basket, so I started telling my grossest animal stories.

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When I was living in San Diego, my best friend came to visit for my birthday one year. We drove up to La Jolla, where there’s a little cove called Children’s Pool Beach. It’s always covered in dozens of harbor seals and sea lions. The website says you’re allowed to swim there, but I’ve never seen anyone in the water.

This time, we noticed there was one seal pretty far up the beach by herself. Maybe she’s dying, we thought. I wandered by a volunteer table and overheard the woman sitting there saying that the lone seal was in labor. “I’m here for eight hours today,” she said. “She’ll probably give birth five minutes after I leave.”

Dying, giving birth. You know. They look awfully alike from a distance.

We hung around for another five minutes, keeping an eye on the uncomfortable mother. She inched forward, and her body grew longer. A smaller, browner version of herself slipped out and she began maneuvering her heavy, muscled body around to clean her pup.

Meanwhile, the seagulls were circling closer and closer.

“What are they going to do?” we wondered. “There’s no way they think they can take off with that baby. It’s got to be a hundred pounds.” (I just looked it up. Newborn seal pups are between 8 and 26 pounds. Same difference to a seagull, I say.)

The mama snapped at the seagulls occasionally, but they were little and quick and there were dozens at them. Down the beach, not one of the hundred other seals moved to help her.

I felt like I was watching the Animal Kingdom episode of the Bystander Effect.

The seagulls moved closer, inching around her back while she was focused on the newborn little one. One distracted her by flapping near her face. Another squawked loudly at her baby.

And a few stuck their sharp little beaks right up into her birth canal and dragged out the afterbirth. Together, they hauled it down the beach to eat.

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My other gross animal story also involves seagulls, and it’s much shorter:

When I was in Rome, I saw a seagull eviscerate a live pigeon. The sounds were indescribable.

Rome isn’t even on the sea, so it’s unclear to me why there are even seagulls in that city. Pigeons, of course, are rats with wings, but I’m still not sure it deserved to be disemboweled while it was still alive enough to talk us through the horrible amount of pain it felt while that seagull’s beak penetrated its soft underbelly and hauled its guts out into the street.

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Both of our inflections stayed pretty neutral, the french fries were just okay, and everything felt companionable.

On our walk towards home—I never let dates walk me home, but since Tinder is at least partially geography-based, I often go out with people who live in my neighborhood and in this case, we were headed in the same direction—I asked some more probing questions about what he does and it turned out he owns his own software development company.

Why do people always save interesting pieces of their lives until the end?

Look, first dates are essentially a black hole of 1.5–2 hours you have to fill with conversation. Don’t downplay the fact that you lived in Tokyo. Don’t omit the fact that you started your own company at the age of 25. Don’t assume I don’t want to hear who your favorite philosopher is when I just asked you who your favorite philosopher is. If you have a horrifying emergency room story, let’s hear it. If you met someone famous, tell me everything. If you recently bought an ant farm, tell me all the names of the ants.

Totally forgot that my dad gave me an ant farm for my 8th birthday. Dammit. I could have used that one.

Grade: Neither of us ever texted the other one. 

I really have almost nothing to say about Date #11.

He was nice? He was tall? He had a good smile.

Another programmer. He has a family? Friends? He reads books? I think he eats things sometimes, although he was very skinny, so perhaps not.

He told me that glacial climbing is just walking on ice. While this is probably true and I like the humility inherent in this statement, it also stopped a perfectly good conversation in its tracks.

Me: But, like, with clamps and spikes, right?

Him: Yes. Well, sometimes.

We got coffee and watched people flying kites in the park. Two were flying so high they held steady, their tails unfurled, drifting this way and that. Taking care of themselves. Their pilot sat on the ground, relaxed. Two went up, and went down. They popped up into the sky and dropped as quickly. They held, and their pilots turned away, and they dove like they wanted to kiss the ground.

Grade: You guys, I’m supposed to be writing a date review and I’m talking about kites. 

I went on a date with an Amazon guy.

Oh man, you guys are thinking, she finally hit an Amazon guy! It was inevitable.

It probably is inevitable in Seattle’s dating scene. I also, however, don’t think it’s nearly the catastrophe that some people have made it out to be. It can’t be worse than dating in Los Angeles, for example, and always dating people who are connected to Hollywood in some form or another. Or dating in New York, and always running into Wall Street brokers. Or dating in the midwest, and being like, another farmer?

Anyway. He told me that he’s going to try specifically to make friends outside of Amazon, because when you work at a giant corporation and only hang out with your coworkers, it’s easy to become an entitled asshole.

Which was a great and funny thing to say.

We went to this cool little bar, and it turned out he’d moved to Seattle just five days ago for his new job. He was from Ghana, by way of Boston and then Chicago. We had a good conversation. He was enthusiastic about a lot of things—the drinks, my writing career, my new job, his new apartment, Seattle, the chance to explore. He quizzed me about my favorite Seattle spots, asked me about all the museums, and had me list restaurants and parks and activities I like.

I love Seattle. I can talk about Seattle for hours. I’m more than happy to play tour guide for new Tinder arrivals.

Whenever I go on dates with transplants, they say, “Wow! A local! I didn’t know you existed.”

And I’m like, “Ummm, I can introduce you to a couple hundred, personally, and we could throw a rock in this bar and hit 10.”

I half-buy into the Seattle Freeze theory on every 5th Leap Year when the groundhog sees his shadow, but the rest of the time—eh. I think it’s hard to meet people everywhere. I think it might be easier to meet people in places in New York because there are so many transplants. Also no one eats dinner at home. Also in the summer it’s unbearably hot in your apartment so you go out and meet people. I bet—since this summer is so hot—Seattle will feel less frozen. People will be driven out of their hot little solitary artsy literary craft brewing habits and into the streets and parks and bars at night. Unless they work at Amazon. Then they’ll have air conditioning.

Partway through the date, we started talking about Tinder. I’m telling you, every Tinder date has a Tinder moment. If you don’t, I really don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad sign. Because it’s never happened to me.

He asked about things you see on Tinder as a woman, and I’d just seen a whole slew of guys who said, “not here for hook-ups,” so I mentioned it. He fell strongly in the camp that feels that’s a line designed to get more action, not less.

It’s just confusing to me, I said. Even if you’re on Tinder for hook-ups, don’t you have to meet and see what you think in person before you can truly decide?

We had a funny little back-and-forth where he managed to delicately say that men always find it a bonus if something happens. But yes, it depends on the people involved and actual human interaction. And if nothing happens, no problem. And somehow he managed to indicate that he knew nothing would happen between us, but make me feel like he really was having a good time—no even thoughs, no anyways, no despite. Just: tonight, this is fun.

It simultaneously let me off the hook—he’d read the situation and knew I wasn’t looking for that sort of interaction—at least not with him and/or not at that moment—and also expressed appreciation of our actual interaction.

It was quite a feat and I wish I could remember exactly how he did it—but it also wasn’t overly complicated. Being kind and generous to people and their varying desires and intentions and limitations is hard sometimes, but it isn’t complicated.

He just looked at me and said something like, “Instead of laying down all these rules about what you want, why not get together? Worst case scenario, you meet people who you never would have met otherwise. And sometimes those people are fun and smart and it’s truly enjoyable, and you’ve made a new friend in a new city.”

Cheers.

Him: I mostly use the Internet so I can buy stuff from targeted advertising based on the “which character are you from (insert popular tv show/movie quizzes).” I’m still paying off my credit card debt from when I bought that crate of Twilight glitter. Seemed like a sound investment at the time.

Me: Pics please!

Him: No such pics exist. Only a shirtless bathroom selfie holding a fish I caught in Machu Picchu while petting a tiger.

Me: You had me at shirtless bathroom selfie holding a fish you caught in Machu Picchu while petting a tiger.

Him: I forgot to mention the bathroom mirror has toothpaste splatter build-up from, like, several months.

Me: Shhh. Don’t ruin it. Quick, ask me out.

Him: Hey, so I was thinking we should go out sometime. Interested?

This is Archie.

Here’s what you need to know about our date: it was a rainy, cold spring night. He showed up wearing a hoodie and cowboy boots. You know how I’ve said that everyone is 20% less hot than in their pictures? And you should only be swiping on people whose pictures you want to make out with, because let’s not pretend this isn’t a dating site. Archie turns out to be 20% hotter.

The bartender was profusely apologetic whenever he came over to check on us. In fact, he apologized so much for interrupting to ask if we wanted a second drink that I started to wonder if he was making fun of us, but he didn’t seem to be—I have no idea where it came from or why, but I think he was rooting for the date? He seemed genuinely invested. I’d say he had a bet going with his co-workers, but he would have had no way of verifying the outcome. He looked really happy when Archie ordered a second drink and we stayed a little while longer.

By the end of the date, I wanted to curl up into Archie’s hoodie. I wrote my phone number on a coaster and gave it to him—a ridiculously old-fashioned move but I’ve had whooping cough, so I’m already stuck in the Victorian era, and I’m here to report that it still works.

(It gets bonus points for not involving phones. Here’s the thing with phones: you can’t just give someone your number. You have to either ask for theirs—which is fine, but not what I was trying to accomplish in that moment—or ask them if they want yours, or start reciting your phone number unprompted and hope they catch up real fast to what’s going on. Either way, one of you is going to have your phone out and be awkwardly typing while the other stares. Sure, I could have just waited and sent him my number over Tinder once I got home. But this was much more immediately satisfying, and I can’t quite explain how silly and fun it felt to write my name and number on a coaster. Hey, everyone always says my apartment building looks like the one in Singles. I’m just doing my best to re-enact that movie in real-time and document it here for you. I’m doing this for you. I am flirting with handsome, charming men for you.)

Archie and I hugged at the end of the date, and it was the nicest, warmest hug at the end of a first date yet. See: Handsome man. Hoodie. Curl into.

Archie texted me. I texted Archie. Then he didn’t text me for five days.

I was like, “Ok. See you later.” Then I was like, “Oh man, it’s spring. It’s sunny. Reggie isn’t texting me either. Boys are stupid. Too bad they’re so fun. Good thing I have no pride ego and two thumbs which are terrible at playing video games but good at texting.”

I lured him with tacos. Everybody loves tacos, but especially people who say they love tacos in their Tinder profiles.

We went on a second date. Archie’s from Georgia, which in Seattle is basically like being from the dark side of the moon. I realized I was asking him questions just to get him to talk so I could look at listen to him. I’m not someone who’s that interested in hearing men talk just to talk. They do enough of that on their own. I have to a) like you b) find you interesting and c) like the sound of your voice for this to happen.

I traded by telling him about my speech impediment. Think of this as the part of the Bachelor where every contestant comes up with a sob story about a personal journey that resulted in “growth” or a “defining” moment of some kind—and if you don’t have one, the Bachelor says he just doesn’t feel like you’re opening up, you’re not being vulnerable, and you must not want love. Read: you don’t deserve love. So in Bachelor terms, this was episode 6, and our first one-on-one date, and the rose was on the table, and I had to pull out all the stops and go for my most tragic yet simultaneously attractive story. This is crucial. No gory stitches or unladylike food poisoning for your tragic story. No details about mental health struggles. No information about your period.

Pro tip: Save the period talk for date 5.

Preferably you should look beautiful and wear full make-up and a bikini while you tell your story about finding out you had asthma at a young age, which changed your life forever. Definitely don’t talk about how your asthma sometimes makes it sound like you’re a dying whale having sex with a monkey. Just say it’s sad because when you were four you wanted to be a marathon runner. Ignore the fact that people with asthma run marathons every day and that you thought a marathon was something to do with being too busy to help with the dishes (you were right). Your eyes can well with tears but they can’t spill over. But if they do spill over, you’re wearing waterproof mascara.

So I watch the Bachelor every season I’ve seen one or two episodes of the Bachelor, I know what’s up, I’m sitting there and I’m like it’s date 2, which remember in Tinder terms means it’s date 1.5 or 1.75, I’ve got to do it or die alone, it’s either the sinus surgery which made my face hurt so much I threw up, the dog dying of cancer which made me cry so hard I threw up, the whooping cough which made me cough so hard I threw up, the sinus infections for which the antibiotics made me throw up, the allergies which cause vertigo which makes me throw up, the migraines which make me throw up, the mysterious illness which made me unable to drink alcohol and made me feel hungover for two years when I finally stopped throwing up, the fact that I’m a poet which is basically a guaranteed existential crisis every day (gross), or the speech impediment.

I’m really quite healthy. In the grand scheme of things.

Instead of a camera crew, though, at this moment I’m looking at a remarkably short prep cook chopping cilantro for tacos.

But I did have a speech impediment as a child that made me sound like I was from Boston. Really close relatives—like my aunts, my mother’s sisters—would ask my mother if I was from Boston. This despite knowing that I wasn’t adopted and my parents have never lived in Boston. My speech impediment meant I said w’s instead of r’s. R’s at the beginning of words are particularly hard for me.

Things really came to a tongue-twisting climax when I was cast as a lion in the Wizard of Oz. We were quadruple-cast—4 tin men, 4 scarecrows, 4 cowardly lions. Which means it was nothing other than pure evil which made the adults in charge of the summer camp assign me the line “I will roar my terrible roar.”

Better known as: I will woar my tewwible woar.

When the audience roared with laughter, by some miracle of development and self-preservation, I was just enough of a ham to bask in it instead of doing my standard move when things didn’t go well and I perceived myself to have been less than perfect, which was to cry and grind my teeth. People act like adults have it hard, but being a perfectionist as a child, when you’re in even less control of the world and not even in control of your own body (tongue, teeth, mouth), is the worst.

Now I’ve gone and told the whole world my story about overcoming hardship and I have to admit, I’m not wearing any make-up and my sweatpants have a hole in them and my right sinus feels a little congested.

A) I will never find love.

B) I am undeserving of love.

C) My mascara hasn’t been used in so long it probably has bacteria in it.

D) These are only reasons 1–3 of 2,346 (more reasons being added every day) of why I can’t go on the Bachelor, including the fact that there really aren’t 25 people in the world I’m willing to make out with simultaneously.

E) They don’t let Bachelor contestants bring books on the show with them, so that all they have to do all day is drink, work out, and fight.

F) If you’ve ever seen me drink, you know that I would literally die if I had to drink that much, and yes, I know what literally means. See aforementioned mystery illness which appears to have been (and potentially will be again) triggered by alcohol.

G) I’d have to pretend to be one of the religions that doesn’t allow drinking, and we all know that everything that happens on reality TV has to be wholly authentic.

H) Did you see that season with the blogger from Chicago who went on the show and before the first impression rose was given, she was hiding in the bathroom crying, an anxious mess? It’s so easy to wonder what’s wrong with her—she can’t make it one night?—until you stop and put yourself in that situation: Here are your new 24 roommates. Half already hate you. Try to make the one person who’s going to be nice to you fall in love with you while everybody watches. Slow dance on a stage in front of a band playing in an empty theater just for you. That isn’t awkward at all. You’re scared of heights? Here, rappel down the side of the Chrysler building with a man you’ve never met who knows nothing about climbing. Drink. Drink more. Drink again. No books. No phone. No contact with anyone from home. Why don’t you have hair extensions?

I) I’m crying in a ball on my couch just thinking about it.

J) I really need to live-blog this next season of the Bachelor.

K) Did I tell you guys that I ran into Catherine and Sean—I went to school with Catherine—this fall and I have a picture with them?

L) US Weekly contacted me after that blog post, you guys, and asked me for more dirt on Catherine.

M) I didn’t have any.

N) I also saw Catherine at my 10 year high school reunion. She remembered everyone’s names without needing their name tags. Yes, she’s as nice as she seems on TV, which was poet Sharon Olds’s first question.

O) Yes, Sharon Olds watches the Bachelor. But what she’s really into is America’s Next Top Model. Yes, this is what I talked to one of America’s most famous poets about when I had the chance.

P) All of the above.

The point is, clearly my seductive story about humiliating myself as an 8-year-old worked, because Archie kissed me. Attraction is weird.

(I mean, who knows what he would say about why he kissed me—to keep me from throwing him over the rooftop in a reverse axe-murderer online dating twist of fate because I can’t stand a cliche?—but I’m going with the speech impediment story.)

In fact, Archie kissed me on my rooftop overlooking the city. I’m not kidding. I sort of wish I were. I’m what’s known as not a romantic—you can ask my ex-boyfriends, who have had to endure blank looks and vague murmuring noises when I’m presented with romantic gestures.

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This is my favorite story about romantics dating non-romantics:

My friend Sally was dating Harry (just go with it). It was their one-year anniversary. Harry handed Sally a card, which surprised her, because she’d forgotten it was their anniversary. She thought they were eating pizza because pizza is delicious, and not because it was the first thing they’d ever eaten together. Sally was wrong, though.

Inside the card was a rock.

Sally: Why are you giving me a rock?

Harry (hurt): It’s from the hike we went on together for our first date.

Sally: You saved this for a year?

Harry: ….

Sally: ….

Harry: It’s romantic.

Sally: It’s a rock.

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So you can see how admitting this whole rooftop thing is actually sort of difficult for me. The fact that it was my fault—I mean, it’s my building, he didn’t wander up there on his own—just makes it worst. He had the good grace not to comment on it, which I appreciate it.

Grade: I stopped using the peach emoji to signal a butt and started using it to reference Georgia. I mean, it’s still a butt, too. It will never stop being a butt. Now it just depends on context. 

I’m going to call this date Reggie after the Archie comic books, which were a formative part of my childhood. I always thought Reggie got kind of a bad rep, but I also wanted to play Captain Hook in Peter Pan (I got cast as Smee), so take it with a grain of salt.

Quick recap:

Archie Andrews: Redhead. Universally adored. Perpetually fought over by Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge.

Reggie Mantle: Rival to Archie. Good looking. Drives a cool car. Confident to the point of brash. Particularly interested in Veronica, but also interested in Betty, when she seems to be taken.

Betty Cooper: Blond. Girl next door. Faithful and kind to a fault.

Veronica Lodge: Brunette. Rich. Always gets what she wants—including Archie. Frenemies with Betty.

I don’t know whether I’m Betty or Veronica in this scenario, and besides, binaries that set up the virgin and the vixen to compete are harmful enactments of a patriarchal society that doesn’t know how to allow women to be full characters in fiction and real, complicated people with agency, wants, and desires in real life.

Let’s just focus on what’s important here: the use of known cultural duos, pairings, or rivals as pseudonyms for men I’ve gone on dates with for the purpose of your entertainment.

I met Reggie IRL over the weekend when I was hanging out in the sunshine with my friend Laurel. In real life, you guys! It too could happen to you!

Also, he lives in my building. “Don’t date people who live in your building,” I always say, “unless he lives in the other wing and you’ve both been there for at least a year, yet you’ve never before seen each other in your life, so you’ll likely not ever seen him again if things go south, and he’s rocking that cute thick-plastic-glasses look, in which case, what can one date hurt?”

I have a routine for Tinder dates: I meet them at 8 on a weeknight at a bar up the street from me. It’s strategically chosen: the bar is always busy enough to feel full and offer people watching, never so busy that you can’t find a seat. The drinks are good and if the company isn’t, there’s always the warm fudge brownie topped with ice cream.

But I’m a little more flexible with second dates and with IRL dates. I’ve presumably met the person, so I’ve scoped out their general creepiness from a scale of 1 to 10. I’ve looked them in the eye and generally exchanged at least a few words, which helps me verify whether or not I’m interested in spending an hour or two talking to this person. So Reggie and I were going on an early Friday date. And we didn’t go to my bar of choice—we went to a restaurant across the street and down the block.

I’m a risk-taker, folks. You should know that about me.

Here’s what you need to know about my date with Reggie: we had a long, tipsy dinner. We split a bottle of wine and ate paella while it poured outside. Reggie flirted with me outrageously, to the point where I couldn’t quite get a read on him. Constantly touching my arm, my hand, my hip? Check. Focusing intently on me whenever I talked? Check.

He said he’d guessed I had some native Hawaiian in me and followed it up by saying, “You probably get Jewish a lot. With those curls and voice—very sexy, foxy New York Jewish.”

When was the last time someone guessed at something that happens to you a lot, and called you sexy and foxy in the same sentence?

He also compared shamans to bloggers and called them both useless to society. Now, I’ll give you that bloggers are useless, but shamans are healers and I’m of the mind that Western medicine is a short, small subset of a much longer history of knowledge in the world.

But as my best friend pointed out later, “On the plus side, you blog. So…you are basically a shaman.”

Have I told you that the best part of dating is talking about it with your friends?

I’d just written about not having a sense of smell and my realization that I’ve perhaps replaced smell with attraction to people’s voices. I told Reggie that I don’t have a very good sense of smell anymore—and he immediately asked how that worked with pheromones. I didn’t answer. Just then our server said something to us that Reggie didn’t hear and I did.

Me: My hearing’s just fine, however.

Reggie: So…how’s my voice?

Me: Excuse me?

Reggie: How’s my voice? If you can’t smell but you can hear…how’s my voice? Is it turning you on?

I stared at him, paranoid that he’d already found and read this blog. Then I lost my goddamn mind. I laughed so hard I almost fell off my bar stool. I’m impressed he asked it with a straight face. When I came up for air he was just sitting there, blinking at me from behind those ubiquitous black plastic-rimmed glasses. I still half-think he was just f***ing with me.

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Me: He doesn’t watch TV. He only listens to NPR. And he only shops at the Farmer’s Market.

Mom: Don’t judge, honey, he could be perfectly nice anyway.

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When we walked outside into the cold rain, the cocoon from the meal and wine fell away. We walked home and he thanked me for hanging out, then practically ran off and ghosted hard.

Grade: I saw him two weeks later in front of my building and he told me I looked nice and asked if I was going out, so I told him—truthfully—I had a date. The next day I saw him in the laundry room, which means he literally saw my dirty laundry. Three days after that I saw him in the garden when I took my compost out. And the next day. Two days after that.  

My theory that you will never see him again is shot. 

How to behave when you run into a date who chose never to text you again: Like a human being. Say hi. Ask how he is. Look sympathetic when he says he’s exhausted. Stand in the sun for a few minutes. Make conversation. When you mention you went to see that museum he was interested in, and he asks why you didn’t text him to go, stare at him blankly. When this blog comes up and he says, “I can only assume the writing must be of the highest caliber,” say, “thank you,” and mean it. It’s the only proper response to a compliment. Smile. People are mysterious and unknowable.