“It’s my cat’s name.” He says this in reference to the collection of poorly tattooed letters on a tofu slab of a bicep halfway through our marathon date—a first date that encompassed 12 hours, St. Patrick’s Day, a bookstore, a house-warming party and one fire. It all started with breakfast rosé.
11:25 a.m.: L and I met on Tinder, because this is how most of us meet now— through screens and swiping. It’s Saturday morning, and I’m walking to a fancy bar because we’ve agreed that meals on first dates are terrible, so we are meeting for a drink before most people have had breakfast bacon.
11:28 a.m.: I am going to be approximately 3.4 minutes late. L has been sending me a myriad of text messages since last week, and I’m curious to meet him in person and find out if he’s a sociopath or just very honest.
11:34 a.m.: He’s wearing glasses and has a glass of rosé in front of him in the window seat. I outweigh him by approximately 24 pounds and have at least 24 times as much hair. We discuss dating apps and first dates and decide to get coffee at a coffee shop that is also a laundromat.
12:34 p.m.: There are plants that are dying in this laundromat-turned-coffee-shop, and I really wish someone would water them, but I keep it to myself.
12:44 p.m.: We are both hungry and decide that the only solution to this hunger is sushi-boat sushi. We take a Lyft to Japantown for little bits of raw fish, which are paraded around like pageant queens on a circular belt, and I can’t decide if I like him or not.
2:00 p.m.: We discover rescue puppies up for adoption in the neighborhood. Mangy little things, and every middle-aged woman in Pacific Heights seems to be picking up the terrified canines and pressing them to their fake tits.
2:11 p.m.: We walk down the street — moving around strollers and babies—and decide to have a drink at an Irish pub because it’s St. Patrick’s Day, after all. We discuss money and ex-lovers, and the bar fills with polo-shirt-wearing Marina men who have Ubered up the hill.
2:33 p.m.: L is more interested in laying out his eccentricities like folded laundry than in asking me about myself. He likes all-black clothing. He doesn’t like matching pajamas. Has a penchant for female friends he once fucked and/or dated, which surfaces in almost every conversation. But who are you, really? I want to ask him but don’t.
3:14 p.m.: The bartender gives us more beer, and L tells me a disturbing story about a woman who fell from his loft bed and split open her labia. He tells me how traumatic it was for him. “For her, you mean?” I ask him. And he looks at me like it’s something he’s never considered — that the experience of losing blood from injured genitals may have been worse than his requirement of care.
3:32 p.m.: We leave and push past the labia-trauma conversation and venture back to the neighborhood we share. I’m not comforted to find that he lives in my neighborhood, a few houses down from one of my ex-boyfriends.
3:36 p.m.: I realize that he’s a combination of every ex-boyfriend I’ve ever had. Skinny, glasses-wearing, artsy, narcissistic little creatures who like to smoke cigarettes and whine about their stepdads.
3:37 p.m.:I make a mental note to reevaluate the type of man I’m attracted to during therapy this week.
3:44 p.m.: We mosey through a bookstore, and L buys a $30 book of poetry by a white man who lives in the Pacific Northwest and writes about his childhood. I look at the memoirs. Would I like to come over? I say yes.
4:04 p.m.: There are no drapes in his room, only soft afternoon sun through tall windows and a blow dryer and a cat on the floor. I try to scoop her up, but she would rather not be held, and I get it.
4:21 p.m.: I’m not sure why I feel so comfortable. It may have something to do with the wine we are drinking from short plastic mugs. I ask for sweatpants.
5:11 p.m.: He quotes an internet meme but doesn’t acknowledge it as such and tries to spin it as his original joke and then begins throwing books at me. “Have you read this? Or this?” He’s tossing the books onto the bed while I sit in the middle like a bookworm queen.
5:43 p.m.: We kiss eventually, and he reads poetry to me from the book he has just bought. I read one poem to him, and he rereads it, and I don’t know if it’s because he likes it or hates the way I have said the words.
6:11 p.m.: I’m squashed into his neck nook and wipe eye makeup from under my eyes, dripped and messed up from kissing in a pile of books. My hair is in his beard hair; his hair is on my arms. I meet his roommate while she’s in her bra and we are like this.
7:32 p.m.: L says he’d like to come to my friend’s St Patrick’s Day gathering that evening. Usually, I am conservative about bringing people into my social circles, but I have had a lot of wine from a plastic mug; and I’m wearing sweatpants; and restricting oneself can be awfully exhausting, so I decide it is all right.
8:03 p.m.: It’s dark now, and we leave to find food in Chinatown before the party. L insists on going to a Michelin-star restaurant and sitting at the bar and eating oysters. And yes, they are delicious, but I am fucking hungry, and I don’t care about stars or small bites of food. I want something with substance—meat, a steak, a baked potato dripping with butter and cream.
10:02 p.m.: We detour to go to a market in North Beach for wine. We are late. I am still hungry. We are slightly drunk, and when we arrive, there are firetrucks and sirens and smoke and a crowd of people standing on the sidewalk. The liquor store is on fire. A man stands with his dog, watching the scene, and I bend down to pet him. “Careful—he bites,” the man tells me. I understand because I feel the same way.
10:11 p.m.: We make the trek to the party empty handed and up a large hill.
10:21 p.m.: I introduce L as my friend and grab us beers from the bathtub. He asks the hostess for a cigarette and thinks it’s funny to pretend the Holocaust didn’t happen. I don’t think it’s funny.
11: 21 p.m.: No one has a cigarette, and after an hour, L asks if we can leave. We determine that we will have breakfast tomorrow. I’ve already said yes before knowing if it’s what I actually want.
12:01 a.m.: Dead streets, and I’m on my way home. I’m not easygoing by nature, and I’ve been conscious of my people-pleasing tendencies on this date. It isn’t conscious, but they are shown in the nods and in the quick falling back of steps to see what he’s looking at and eating oysters when I want a potato.
The next morning I wake up and have seven missed calls from L.
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