From the moment I clicked CREATE YOUR PROFILE the whole endeavor felt exhausting. I didn’t want a new set of protocols to optimize: what to write in the profile fields, what to say in an initial message, when to escalate from email to brunch — all the crap I’d wasted my life on, only now I was doing it alongside millions of extroverted and apparently well-adjusted people.
And then I had to go on these dates, dozens of them, one after another, all formally identical, struggling each time to remember that I was seated across from an entire human being with a unique consciousness and a full set of private associations, each of us iterating on our questions and answers like algorithms trying to mate. I was at the point of giving up when I met Annabelle. I liked her photo, with her overstyled clothes and wide-open face, and I liked the earnest way she actually answered the generic questions in the profile form instead of taking a meta approach like everyone else. We went to a sushi restaurant where I’d been with half a dozen other girls, but I found myself saying different things to her. She was shy and unostentatiously perceptive, and I began cultivating a crush on her. It’s going OK.
That was just over a month ago. Tonight I’m meeting her at a bar around the corner from her apartment, where she’ll introduce me to some of her college friends. They’re at a table in the back, five or six in all, more than I was expecting. You can tell they’re younger than me. Annabelle sees me and waves, and they start to shuffle around to make room. And between here and there, Maya is sitting in a booth looking unsurprised to see me.
Her hair is different. In my absence she has continued living her life, setting and achieving goals, making decisions about her hair. Other than that, I’m not sure whether her features have grown sharper or the memory I’m comparing her to has blurred around the edges. She’s with two women and a man, a friendly group. The jukebox is turned up loud, and I suddenly become aware that everyone in the bar is shouting.
Annabelle and Maya have each seen me acknowledge the other, so the calculations are multithreaded. My only option is to signal one second to Annabelle with an apologetic index finger, then say hello to Maya as if I were not in the process of crumbling into pieces all over the sticky floor of the bar. And so our final encounter is conducted with me acting as though I had something more important to get to, while she sees through me yet again.
She feels like a celebrity now, like someone with whom you have an intimate relationship in your mind. She smiles from the other side of a chasm.
What do we do now? Do we have a conversation? I no longer imagine that you’re about to call. I’ve almost stopped comparing other people to you. Sometimes I wonder what picture of me exists in your mind, and I have no idea.
“So you’re here on a date,” she says as I crouch next to her seat.
“How did you know that?”
“The way she’s looking at me right now,” she says. I can’t turn to look at Annabelle, so we’re in a conspiracy again, which is impossibly sweet and painful. “You’d better go.”
You are the only person I will ever love, I say, but only in my head, where it can’t do any harm to anyone but me. “Hey, it’s good to see you.” As I stand up I touch her amicably on the shoulder, then wish I hadn’t, and then head to the back of the bar to begin apologizing.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Heather Abel, Nick Garland, Andrew Kidd, Anna Stein, and Laura Tisdel.
Thanks also to Reagan Arthur, Michael Pietsch, Marlena Bittner, Amanda Heller, Michael Noon, and everyone else at Little, Brown; Clare Alexander, Imogen Pelham, and Sally Riley at Aitken Alexander; Kate Harvey at Picador; Philip Hoy at the Waywiser Press; Michael Heyward at Text Publishing; and to Francie Barnard, Cynthia Barton, Wendy Brandchaft, Maxine Chernoff, Cassi Feldman, Alex Garland, Jake Kasdan, Alice LaPlante, Jim Nelson, Kate Nitze, John O’Brien, Peter Orner, Brian L. Perkins, Chuck Plotkin, Priscilla Roth, Zachary Roth, Kevin Shay, Wesley Stace, Jean Strouse, Annie Wedekind, Bob Woodward, and the Brooklyn Writers Space.
Maximum thanks to my wife Tali Woodward, who makes everything possible.
About the Author
GABRIEL ROTH has worked as a journalist and a web developer. He lives with his family in Brooklyn.
gabrielroth.com