First date with Анна, conversation with Matt

I sat down at my usual Saturn table, and Dan strolled up and we had a chat. I told him about my terrible band, and he made a note in his calendar to stop by and meet some of my friends. While we were chatting, I saw a woman who looked like Анна sit down at an unoccupied booth just a little ways away. I could tell even from a brief glance that she was quite conventionally attractive. I shooed Dan away, telling him “looks like my friend is here,” and then looked at my phone, which had a message from Анна on it, announcing her arrival. I glanced at it, then glanced up at her, and we recognized each other and grinned. Then I got up and sat down at her table, introducing myself with a handshake.

When I got a good look at her, I felt butterflies flit around in my stomach. She was wearing an airy dress shirt almost thick enough to conceal the silhouette of an elaborate lace bra, beneath a soft green cardigan, with comfortable black pants and shoes. Her hair was in a woven bundle on the back of her head, exposing the sweep of a stone-white neckline. Her face had a dusting of freckles over it, her lips were a plump red that matched her hair, and her eyes were a vivid, blazing yellow-green that outshone her cardigan. I had to fight hard against the urge to simply sit there and gape at her like a stuck fish.

Instead we started talking, and I was grateful for how easy it was. There was a lot to explore. We toured through music, art, philosophy, and life. I described the band I was in and the role I played, and the fun we had making noise, and she pegged me as “an editor”, which seemed right. I told her about my job and waved my hands a lot, and showed her the iPad and told her all about 3D graphics and the process of incremental improvement I do in the labs. She told me about her endeavors to branch out as an artist, her job at the art museum, her decision to move to San Francisco three years ago, and her fascination with the low-level mechanics of language and poetry. We also both geeked out a bit on Tori Amos, which I especially enjoyed. At that point she revealed that one of the reasons she could relate so well was that she was a Baptist minister’s daughter, and had “some of the same issues about religion and sex”.

I was curious. She went on to explain that she had shut romance and sexual attraction out of her life for a long time because it felt too complicated to deal with, and had justified the loneliness to herself by saying it would make her a better artist. I was kind of alarmed at that, and told her so. I asked some questions that could have been too probing for a first date, but she accepted them gracefully.

"Over the last three years, I've ... moved into another outlook," she said, reaching for words. "This is such a different environment than back home, and I think I've been afraid to explore it. Now I'm trying to do that. And explore this side of myself that's been left alone. That's probably why I chose this place over others."

"That makes sense," I said.

We paused, and sat there, both feeling comfortable even in the silence, and stared for a while. Some sort of invisible spark was jumping between us. I was suddenly aware that we both wanted to kiss each other, but we both also wanted to defer that pleasure for later, and just bake in the feeling of anticipation instead.

We finished dinner and went on a walk, covering ground steadily in a couple of huge loops around Berkeley south of the campus, and had a meta-conversation about our respective dating needs and desires. I told her all about my three-way relationship from the beginning of the year, and how it wrecked my brain and happiness, then the brief time I spent as a hermit before deciding it wasn't doing me any good and that I had to date. She told me about the other two people she’d dated since moving to Berkeley. They had both been short relationships that seemed to end before they began -- one because the man moved out-of-state to follow his career after about a month, and one because the guy involved had a mid-life crisis of some kind and decided he had to stop seeing her. I asked, but she couldn't give any further detail on his reasons because he'd never shared them. Анна seemed so harmless. How could she trigger a mid-life crisis for someone? I wondered in the back of my head if he'd been married, and got caught in his cheating.

"Well, I've got to be honest here," I said. "To me, two short relationships over the span of three years is not much experience."

"No, it's not," she agreed. "Not around here anyway."

She was right to bring up how relative it was. Hell, in some parts of the world, dating multiple people wasn't even a thing, and young people were shepherded together by their parents, with no element of choice at all.

"So, what are you looking for?" I asked.

"That's just it. It's a missing piece in my life, and I sense that, but ... the edges are fuzzy. I like the romance; I like the feeling of attachment. But, the logistics? The day-to-day? That's hard for me to see."

"The lack of experience explains that I guess. Yeah, maybe you don't need an answer to that question anyway. You're just dating, right?"

"I am," she said.

We rounded another random corner and started up, towards the campus again. "And what about you?" she said. "Just dating?"

I thought carefully. "Well, I know I’m definitely not ready for another long-term relationship. But I still want to spend romantic time with someone. I put in some time as a hermit, and now I’m out here in the world seeing what there is to see.”

“Interesting. Well, the common wisdom says that right now, since you just got out of a long relationship, you should be sleeping around and making yourself emotionally inaccessible.”

I laughed. “Ugh, am I emotionally inaccessible?”

“No, that’s just it!” she said. “You’re very open about all of this. I find that interesting. And you seem to have real emotional reactions and they're not negative, so it's not like you're depressed or shut down.”

"Well, sometimes I'm depressed. But yeah, not right now."

"But, see? Open about it!"

I laughed. We paused again, our feet rolling to a stop so we could face each other, and once again we just stared silently at each other's faces. That pins-and-needles anticipation roared up and back like a wave, drowning out my thoughts. The shape and color of her eyes, the sleek bridge of her nose, the complex, ribboned curve of her lips when she smiled, as she was smiling now. Her strong limbs, the way her laughter lit up her already expressive face even further and made her whole body bend forward and then straighten up again like a reed on a riverbank...

Grinning, we turned and started to walk again. We talked about sports and bicycling. I told her about my three bikes, and she talked about her love of exploring the city on foot. We reached the corner of the next block.

We were trying to decide whether to cross the street, but since we'd turned to face each other, we'd been caught up in another quiet round of staring. I told her, “I totally want to pet your arm just now.” She stood there bashfully for a moment, her mouth moving but not opening to speak. It seemed like she approved but just couldn't say so. As I was raising my arm, she finally blurted out, "That would be okay! Sorry. Had to find words."

Her arm was soft and substantial under the fabric of her jacket.

She said she found my formality very refreshing.

“Oh? What, it’s not usually like this?”

She stared at me, then then laughed. “I see you’ve never dated men before!”

“Huh. They usually just grab you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, for full disclosure, I’d say that if I was totally following my own path here I would probably indeed grab you right now. But I’m finding that your signals are difficult to read, so I’m playing it cautious.”

“That makes sense. And it’s true, I am not giving very clear signals.”

We finally walked around and over to the Berkeley Bart station, and down the steps to the turnstiles. She wished me a good evening and said she definitely wanted to hang out again, and I said the same.

“Time for a hug?” I said.

“Of course!”, she agreed, and reached out to embrace me. I held her to me and patted her on the back. I didn’t want to go any further than a friendly hug with her tonight -- it felt too volatile.

It wasn't a short hug. When we drew back, we held hands briefly. “Is that good enough?” she asked.

“Oh yes, definitely!” I said. As I looked at her, I observed that she had a kind of half-stunned expression, and was shaking slightly. Was she that starved for physical contact? Did it feel that dangerous?

"Bye!" she said, and walked to the turnstiles. Feeling puzzled, I went back up the steps.

Dinner had been over an hour ago, and I was too wired to sleep. Back at the house I asked Matt if he was up for thai food. It had been a while since we caught up. I told him about the date, and how intense the parting hug had been for her.

"Huh," he said. "You know, it sounds like she needs you more than you need her."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, your criteria for getting physical with someone are probably ... much easier to meet. She needs someone who will stick around and be patient while she deals with her head. Most guys, they're probably gonna get bored if they can't at least undress her on the second date. You said she was pretty, right?"

"Very."

As he rooted around in his curry with a fork, Matt held up fingers on the other hand. "So her options with guys are to hide, to be really mean with them so they go away, or to try and be less attractive. Being mean sucks. Some people like being mean, but if you don't, it sucks. Being less attractive is really annoying. Why wants to try and look like shit? Hiding is okay for a while but then it just feels sad. She's nice but she's tired of hiding. You didn't try and rip her clothes off on the first date, and she likes you." He pointed a piece of broccoli at me with his fork. "That makes you the catch."

"I guess. But I'm pretty replaceable. If I didn't want to see her, she could find another guy in seconds."

Matt laughed. "There's always another guy. There's always another girl. How many people are you dating right now?"

I looked down at my plate sheepishly. "Uh, if you count Анна, I guess three."

"Yeah so shut up. You're the catch."

"I think that makes me more the slut than the catch."

Matt rolled his eyes. "You don't believe that do you? You're not ready to get serious. You know, this is probably going to be hard for you to internalize, but you need to learn this: Dating isn't just about weeding through people as fast as you can until you find someone to commit to. It's not like doing a bunch of job interviews so you can find a job and stop interviewing. I think you've already noticed that the more you treat it that way, the less fun it is, and the outcomes actually get worse."

"Yeah, but to me, dating has this unstable element to it. I'm looking for stability. And I don't actually need to, or want to, be with more than one person long term."

"Dude. you can't do stability right now. You're not stable. Which is fine! Like, welcome to my world. I can't even think about dating; I'm too busy trying to keep my job from exploding. Is there some problem with you having a good time while you get your shit together? Анна doesn't actually sound like she wants commitment. You said she wants to explore. Commitment probably freaks her out. Hell, she probably assumes you're dating other people and is happy for that because it takes the pressure off her."

"I don't know about that..."

"Well has she asked?"

"No, but we've only had one date."

Matt put down his fork. "I bet she won't even ask. I bet she doesn't want to know. Not yet anyway. And that's smart."

This was a lot for me to think about. It's true, I still considered dating to be a means to an end, even though I felt too unstable to embrace that end. But what was I doing instead? Did I really need to date three people at once? What was I trying to do?