Sometimes
it’s better when you know a date isn’t going to work out. It takes some
of the pressure off. Instead of nervously trying to impress the person
sitting across from you with some overeager theatrical performance, you
can relax and just stuff your face with pad thai. You don’t even have to
take your elbows off the table.
If
the ultimate goal is to lock down a significant other, then sure, the
whole experience falls short. Otherwise, I totally recommend it.
Two
weeks ago this was, at a Thai restaurant on Congress Street in
Portland. Since it was a beautiful evening, I waited for my date,
“Lucy,” outside the eatery while watching city life unfurl before me –
bicyclists cutting across lanes of traffic, cabs honking horns,
panhandlers hitting up cash-rich pedestrians for beer money and pocket
change. It lulled me into a kind of dreamy Zen state. Then Lucy rounded a
corner and walked toward me, at which point she immediately earned a
check in the minus column: Too much makeup. Subtle and tastefully
applied, makeup can be alluring, a splash of color lending context to a
delicate painting. This wasn’t subtle, and it wasn’t tasteful. It was
like being approached by someone playing the Joker in an off-Broadway
production of “The Dark Knight,” minus the weird scars and propensity
for murdering investment bankers. I hoped.
Maybe
that isn’t fair. But each of has our own interior plus and minus
columns, and we use them when assessing people in these types of
scenarios; at the end of the night, we tally up the scores and use them
to determine whether said person deserves a second date, or will be
relegated to anecdote status and column fodder. I’m sure she was doing
the same with me, scoping out my bald pate and wondering silently how an
earthly object can possibly emit more light than a midday sun. The
answer: clean living. And turtle wax.
The
makeup wasn’t a deal breaker. Beyond the lipstick and pinched-bottom
rouge was a striking woman, beautiful in a way that weakens knees and
inspires poets to write rosy verse about handholding under summer
sunsets. When the restaurant hostess told us there’d be a wait, and that
she’d call us when a table was ready, I thought, “Okay, it’s a gorgeous
evening. Let’s kill some time with a little walk-and-talk through
downtown Portland. Let’s get to know this mysterious femme. Then we can
eat, and none too soon, ’cause I’m so hungry I could eat an airplane
fuselage.” I could have, too.
So
we walked, and in short order I discovered that that she had spent some
time last summer living with one of her older brothers in – wait for it
– Thailand!
Wow!
This
is the kind of thing you want on a date – a conversational meander that
has good traction to it, something you can work with. I was intrigued,
figuring it might be a fruitful avenue to explore. So I asked her about
Thailand, because that’s what you do.
If
I was a different sort of guy, I may have been satisfied by her
response. But I’m the sort of guy I am. I wanted to know what the
culture was like, what she saw, how the architecture looked, what
experiences she had there. Instead, I learned that Thailand is
expensive, which means I’ll probably never go there, and that the food
is awesome, which does me no good since I’ll probably never go there.
And that’s the long and short of it. I didn’t even find out why her
brother was living there in the first place, although I think it’s safe
to assume he’s some sort of secret agent, collecting state secrets by
bribing Thai officials with cheeseburgers and nudie magazines. These
were the kinds of blanks I had to fill in for myself.
This,
combined with the fact that she sought remarkably few details about my
own life, portended doom. By the time we sat down to dinner – Thai food,
though how authentic it was I guess I’ll never know – I knew she wasn’t
for me. There’s nothing wrong with her, per se; we just weren’t
compatible in the ways that mattered. I’d never be able to confide in
her my burning desire to construct a working Iron Man suit so I can fly
over buildings and punch bears in the face.
You’d
think this would disappoint me. And it did, to a degree. But I’ve been
in these situations before, and this is where the fun actually begins.
Because it’s like a free play at the arcade, where the pinball machines
are open and nothing you do has any consequences. It’s a weird and rare
freedom.
See,
I prepare for dates much the same way I prepare for an interview. I
come up with a list of basic questions, and if the interviewee – or date
– gives me an answer that propels us into an unexpected tangent, then
great, we can happily go off-script and traipse together in the
wilderness. If she’s giving me nothing, then at least I have those
baseline questions to fall back on, a safety net that keeps the
conversation moving and prevents it from becoming too awkward. In this
scenario, I cease to be Jeff Lagasse, earnest bachelor, and become David
Letterman, detached talk show guy. You haven’t had fun on a date until
you’ve pretended to be a late night host chatting up a movie starlet
about an upcoming project.
“So
Lucy, I hear you have four siblings! What’s that like? Great, great. Well I’m told
you have a new movie out. What can you tell us about this clip we’re
about to see?”
Sometimes you have to make your own fun.
In
a way, evenings like this are a best case scenario. When things are
awkward, a date is like a stay in a hospital waiting room, awaiting test
results you just know are gonna be crappy. When they go super well, and
there’s a spark, you go temporarily insane with infatuation, forget
your own name, and start wearing mismatched socks all the time. People
come out of electroshock with their brains less scrambled.
It’s
that middle ground where waters are the smoothest. That does no one any
good in the long run, of course, but in the short term, it makes for a
great segment in the zany variety show of life.
Coming up next: Animal trainer Nigel Marven shows us how to feed Raisinettes to a rabid baboon! Play us into the break, Paul!
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