First date with Квиг

I had a first date with Квиг just as my rollercoaster relationship with Аннет crashed back into the loading area. As soon as I marked myself "looking for dates" on the site, she sent me a message. It wasn't our first exchange; we'd already talked months ago and I knew she was good conversation. This time she made me laugh out loud with a few well-placed puns, which was a great sign. In a little less than a week we were both standing outside a pho restaurant in downtown Oakland.

Квиг was a short, compact woman with a vaguely Eastern-European face, tanned skin, fine brown hair to her shoulders, and a quiet, geeky demeanor. She was wearing jeans and a puffy jacket, which she took off in the restaurant to reveal a long-sleeved buttoned shirt. The clothing was comfortable - nothing revealing or conspicuously expensive - and she wore comfortable shoes. She didn't need to work hard to show off, anyway: The way the jeans curved over her legs made It was obvious she was in fine shape, thanks to a long-standing membership on a local rowing team.

It only took us a few minutes to agree that we both wanted small bowls of the same kind of soup. Just after handing over the menus she looked at the cartoon on my shirt, and recognized the Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist character. Turns out she used to work for a publisher that distributed an anthology of the comic! I was delighted. In these first few minutes she came across as younger than her age, and shy. Both strange things, because she was older than me by about six years, which meant she should be the more sophisticated one, and me the shy suitor.

We picked opening subjects at random, and talked about cats - she had two - and her slow abandonment of the Mac platform. She described her contract work, and I described my previous job, and then at her behest I gave a long-winded description of the science at my new job, which she found fascinating. We chomped the heck out of our soup, between monologues. There was a fun exchange about technical writing, then impostor syndrome, then career burnout and recovery, and then the ADD symptoms we both had in common. We both felt they were a combination of superpower and curse.

"A lot of times in my work," she said, "I get dropped into oceans of new information. For a while I just flail around in it, absorbing things randomly, and that's when the worst of the impostor syndrome hits me."

I nodded.

"But then I start to see patterns, and more patterns, and instead of just flailing I start diving down into specific things, and eventually I can put the whole thing together. Or at least, together enough to build training materials that work, so other people learn what they need quickly. At that point I feel like a hero, you know? Like, 'I'm great at this!'"

"That sounds prefect!" I said.

"Oh it's so much better than what I used to do," she said. "And I don't have to stomp around in heels all day, in my little 'I'maperfeshonal!!' outfit, and smile at clients like my feet aren't killing me."

I laughed.

We switched over to telling travel stories. She had many excited questions about bicycle touring, and what it had been like crossing the midwest. I told her about the insane weather and the spooky abandoned houses. The questions she asked made it clear she was thinking deeply, and she even scaffolded ahead of me when I was having trouble describing something, which was impressive. She was able to build on or challenge my own thoughts with ease, but also willing to be vulnerable -- a rare combination.

Late in the dinner I decided to take a risk and go meta, asking "what drew you to my profile on the dating site?"

She grinned impishly, looked down, and said "actually I'd been stalking you for a while, reading your journal. When you marked yourself single I jumped at the chance to go on a date with you, because I figured you wouldn't be single for long." She rummaged in the noodles with her chopsticks, flustered at revealing something that might shift the balance of power between us.

"Well that's flattering," I said. "I'll swear I won't go on some kind of ego trip about it. Much." I smiled. "But really, I don't want to go diving into some new thing right now. I want to be single for a while just to catch my breath. So there's no rush."

I knew she was curious, but also wouldn't want to appear as if she was prying, so I volunteered a brief description of my dating history, and a conversation I'd had with my older sister about how much time we'd each spent outside of relationships. Up until a few years ago, I'd only spent a few months of my adult life as a single person.

Квиг confessed that she had overbooked herself with dates recently and was feeling a bit exasperated.

"I have an interesting relationship with ... relationships," she said, and laughed. "Being in something committed doesn't feel right, but I've been wanting something more consistent than casual dating. So what I've been doing is like, long-term dating. Or polyamory, I guess, but that word has a lot of baggage. There are a couple of guys I've been seeing, but the amount of time we spend together varies a lot."

"Oh?" I said.

She explained that she'd been seeing a guy for over a year, but his military job made him disappear for months at a time, and even when he was back in town he was hard to contact. To keep herself occupied she'd been dating a few other guys with his permission, and it was somewhere between a nice distraction and a hassle, depending on the way everyone's life was going from day to day. I got a bit preachy in response, saying the guy wasn't respecting her enough with his communication, and she should confront him about it because she deserved better. Instead of getting annoyed - which she had every right to be - she took it in stride, saying she was thinking of doing that but still considering her options.

Even without some immediate rush of physical attraction, I was intrigued by Квиг. She had a depth to her. Her personality was well-established as an adult but there was a grasping, reaching quality to it, as though she just could not stop trying to understand everything, even if the world was far too large to fit in one head.

She paid for the meal, which I found refreshing, and we gathered our warm clothing and left the restaurant so they could lock the doors. We went in the general direction of her bus stop, zig-zagging a few times to find the right street corner, talking the whole time. Through subtle signals between us - mine more overt than hers - I eventually had my arm around her, with her face buried in my sweater, and one of my hands stroking her hair. She made a series of deep sighs between bits of conversation, and eventually said "You have a nice touch." In my mind I wondered for the hundredth time how much of my habits when touching women were established from petting the household cat when I was growing up.

Eventually her bus came, and just before she boarded, she thanked me for waiting with her and dove in and pecked me a kiss on the lips. I enjoyed the playful gesture, and felt a mild elation as I climbed over my folding bike and rode back to the house.

There were no huge fireworks, but there was a comfortable, warm attraction. I wasn't hit with the urge to derail the rest of my dating life, but I knew I would be happy to schedule a second date and see where things went. It was almost a month before we both made time again.