first date

Friday

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrip. The tear in my favorite jeans has lengthened and is now visible under my right butt cheek. Shit. I take them off and throw them on my chair, now covered in discarded clothing. Rifling through the closet, I push aside the off-white dress tank dress, the gray pleated mini-skirt – outfits I wore with Clerk. I look sadly at the bright orange, silk blouse I had been wearing when I first met him, and push it to the back.

I settle on a beige, cocoa-flecked wool mini skirt with and an inch of lavender satin peeking out around the hem. I wriggle into a snug dark brown turtleneck and zip up my tall brown leather boots. I use the perfume I never brought to Washington.

My room is a disaster, and I love it. Unread New Yorkers magazines, unpaid bills, unframed photographs. No way is Nice Guy coming over tonight, I think.

I meet Nice Guy at a famous downtown rock club. From a distance, I see him standing, facing the street. Hands in the pockets of his black, wool pea coat, shoulders slightly hunched over. I bounce up to him, smiling.

He turns and sees me when I am a few feet away. He raises his eyebrows.
I give him a quick kiss on the mouth. “Hey.”

“You look awesome,” he says.

This breaks my heart.

Inside the club, we descend into the basement, a long spacious room with ratty couches and armchairs to the left, and an unremarkable bar on the right. It is an amateur “battle of the bands,” and we have arrived just in time to hear his friend’s boyfriend’s band, a guitarist/lead singer, a drummer, and a keyboardist. The lead singer looks exactly as he should. Lean and tall with longish hair. A rumpled t-shirt and corduroys.

I meet his friend, a slender, friendly blond woman in a fuzzy cardigan. I wonder how close they are, and what she knows about me.

After the band plays, we emerge from the club into the crisp, cold air. “You look good. Reeeaeal good.” He drawls in a fake Southern accent.

I have chosen three impossibly trendy restaurants on the Lower East Side, and he patiently accompanies me to each one, only to find enormous lines. I feel triumphant when we find the last, a precious, cozy spot at the end of a hidden alley, even if we refuse to wait for requisite two hours.

Finally, we settle on a loud, pan-Latino place, Paladar.

He asks, “Did you eat at any real paladars when you were in Cuba?”
And I remember that we have both visited Havana. He has been twice, for weeks at a time, to study music. Sheepishly, I ask him for details. “Why did you go, again?
When was that?”

His brow wrinkles, and I realize I have probably asked these questions before.
The waitress has no wine list, but describes the few available bottles. I look at him, and he shrugs. “Um,” I ask, “how much are those?” She lists a few more, and he asks about its price, as well. I study his face for signs of discomfort, and seeing none, order a bottle of a Spanish red

We munch on a basket of chips with garlicky black bean dip and consider the menu.

“I’m vegetarian, essentially,” he explains, “but I have been known to dig into a plate of ribs, if I’m drunk enough.”

“But you do eat seafood?” I ask, nervously.

He reassures me that he does, and I relax. We choose several small plates: arepas topped with sweet, roasted tomatoes; crunchy, salty, fried calamari; thick, dense sweet fried sticks of yucca; and a gooey mushroom quesadilla.

“This Cuban place on Christopher Street has fried yucca that’s so good, it’s like crack” he says, and I laugh. “We’ll go there,” he promises.

Hm.

We talk, and I start to fill in the blanks. He teaches music to children at a charter school in a troubled area of Brooklyn. He grew up dangerously close to Washington. After college in the Midwest, he moved to San Francisco, where he met our mutual friend, EB (at whose wedding we met.) He moved across the country to study music education in New York.

“Where did you go to school, again?”

I tell him. “Good,” he approves. “Because you’re too sexy to have gone to the Ivy League.” He complains for a bit, frowning. “And anyway, I like that you’re so passionate.”

“Passionate?” I ask, doubtfully. “You don’t even know me,” I say. “How could you know that about me?”

He shrugs. “Well, you were crying at the wedding,” he suggests.

My brow furrows for just one second. “Oh. Well,” I pause and look down. “Passionate, or…dramatic,” I mumble, reaching for the wine. I change the subject.

When I return from the bathroom, he is signing the credit card receipt. “No,” I protest. “Really. You’re a teacher.” But he smiles and shakes his head, and I let him pay.

We leave the restaurant, and the night air is cold. He puts his arm into mine as we walk. At a bar nearby, I put some money in the jukebox, and we order drinks. The wine and food have helped me forget, and I let myself kiss him back, as we hide in the back of the bar.

“How old are you again?” I ask, accusingly. “When’s your birthday?”

This time, he seems slightly annoyed. “I already told you. 29. My birthday is ____.”

“I can’t be held responsible for remembering anything you told me last weekend,” I declare.

He looks at me quizzically, and I regret my words. “I’m sorry. I was really drunk.”

Two hours and two glasses of scotch later, the machine still refuses to play my songs. We are tired. I can’t remember the ride back to my apartment.

Early in the morning, I wake up sad. When I turn toward the window, he stirs and kisses me on the head, softly, before falling asleep.

This breaks my heart.

I lie there, sadly. Don’t think about it.

Later, we buy bananas and eat them in the front of the corner store. The day is gray, cold, rainy. Hideous. “This weather is perfectly awful. I love it,” I announce. He looks at me, questioningly. “It’s exactly how I feel,” I shrug. He looks at me, puzzled.

He walks me to the gym, and I kiss him goodbye.

“When are you leaving, again?”

“Monday morning,” I sigh.

“Well, can I call you tomorrow? Maybe have a drink tomorrow night?”

I hesitate. “Um, sure. Yeah. Ok, call me.” We say our goodbyes, and I trudge up the stairs to my gym.