“I’m the nerd on the sales team,” the man at the table nearby says to his female companion, who doesn’t seem to understand.
“The nerd?” she asks, as I realize English isn’t her first language.
“Do you know… nerd?” he asks again.
I can’t hear what she says, and they seem to move on awkwardly.
This is very clearly a first date. Exploratory questions like ‘Where are you from?’ and ‘What do you do?’ and the difficult-to-read-what-it-means, ‘Do you see yourself here forever?’ are stilted and awkward, but mostly I wish the guy had steamed out the bold horizontal wrinkle in the middle of his short-sleeved sweater. But maybe that’s a good sign – at least he cares to fold his sweaters neatly instead of jumbling them up in a ball. Or maybe he’s a serial killer. Always so hard to read a first date… Still, a little steam on a wrinkled sweater never hurt anything.
With English not being her first language, some of his jokes are falling flat, taken literally and then followed by her questions on what was said; repeating a joke takes all the life out of it. (At one point she said she was traveling to Puerto Rico soon and he said he was jealous. She earnestly asked why he was jealous of her, and he awkwardly said, “Oh, of your going to Puerto Rico…”)
Ahh, first dates… are they still for finding lifelong love? Are they just perfunctory foreplay for sex? I have no idea, and no interest in really finding out. They talk of what they did during COVID, where they went to school, former roommates… and I think that the lives we lead seem so mundane when put into bullet points for first date fodder. And at the same time, how absolutely fascinating all those things become when you are interested in the person sitting across from you.
I can’t tell if this minutes-old couple is feeling any of that. Does love at first sight exist? The closest I’ve come would be Andy. It was pretty instantaneous for my part (though he’s the one who said ‘I love you’ first, in the very bar where we first met, and in his own special way).
Listening to this couple it sounds as excruciating as it does exquisite, if they are into each other. Abruptly, it ends. She says something and he exhibits a surprised look. They put on their coats and walk outside, separating and going to their respective cars. Based on his look of dejection, I don’t think it went well.
This is cafe culture.
