Last month I met a guy when I was walking in the park, and we texted for a while, and it was fine enough that I met up with him in person again. We met for lunch and drank all afternoon until I had to meet up with friends at 8, and it was fine enough to meet him for a second date. It was always fine enough but I was only seeing him because I thought I probably should, and it seemed like an easy enough script to follow. He said a lot of nice things about me and I wanted to feel pleased about that, but mostly I just couldn't understand how he liked me so much when I just felt like he was a stranger.
Except that on the third date, I said something and he looked at me like he was actually looking at me and said, "Holy fuck you're smart," and suddenly I thought maybe I could like him.
Yesterday, I told my friend that over brunch and she said, "Yeah, because anyone can be pretty. Pretty's a trap. Eventually that's going to run out."
I went out with him again on Friday, which was the fourth date. He ordered a beer and when the can came to the table, it said it was a raspberry wheat ale.
"Did you mean to order that?" I asked him.
"No," he said.
"I'll trade with you," I said, and he said it was okay, but pushed the beer across the table for me to try.
"It's good," I said.
"Right? It's not too strongly raspberry."
"You did mean to order it."
"Yeah," he admitted.
"I thought you'd be better at lying."
"You're just better at catching me than anyone else I've ever met."
He's a lawyer and he said that he wanted to be caught and that he liked that I still party like an 18 year old and that his friends always said he would never be happy until he met someone who challenged him and that day to day he never even knew if I liked him but he was into that. And that he wished that he met me years ago.
He said that a lot, every time we got together: "I wish I'd met you years ago."
I wouldn't have even gone on a first date with him back then, and on Friday I said, "You wouldn't have been able to pin me down years ago."
"I might not be able to pin you down now," he said.
We went back to his house and I asked who his favorite band was. He said Nine Inch Nails, so I stayed the night. Almost stayed the night - I was wide awake by six with my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and the early morning threat of a hangover. I woke him to say I was leaving but he feel immediately back to sleep, which was such a relief because I didn't want him to walk me to the door. The night before I'd put my contact lenses in spoons and filled them with water, but in the morning I realized how stupid that was and washed the lenses down the drain.
The sun was rising but in that winter way where it's just a thin grey glow, no bright streaks of light or pretty colours in the sky. There were people on runs passing me and I wondered how obvious it was that I was still awake from the night before. Morning people are mysterious to me and it seemed blatant that I was an outsider walking through their world. They seem like the kind of people who would want to wake up the same place they fell asleep the night before.
I made it home and in one of those glorious moments of friendship ESP, knew that Karen, who I was meeting for brunch, would be up already and that we could go straight there. I texted her and she phoned me back immediately.
"You're not allowed to shower first," Karen said after I'd said I'd come get her in the car. "I want to see the bedhead."
When I first met her, working on five years ago, she said that she had a few friends for life. That once someone was in, they were in. But that most people never got in.
Over brunch, Karen was making fun of the guy she was dating and I said, "You're always mean about him."
"Yeah."
"You're never mean about your friends. You're never mean to me."
And she said, without a moment's pause, "Yeah, because you're in."
