First date with Мелисса

[garote]

Today I took my folding bike and my fine sweater, and rode Bart into "the city", and walked into a combination chocolate and coffee shop I'd never seen before, to meet up with Мелисса.

Since I arrived early, I used the bathroom to wash my face, then went strolling around the warehouse-like space gazing at the chocolates. A clerk wandered over from the other side of a glass counter, so I asked a few questions about the menu, and while I was getting my answers, Мелисса wandered up and said hello.

My first impression was of someone smaller and a bit thinner than her photos, but I wasn't concerned. She still had the same face. When the clerk finished his answer, she pointed out the wall behind me, full of chocolate samples. "Try some!" she said.

"Can do!" I said, grinning.

We walked over, and she grabbed a chocolate from the nearest plate, seemingly at random.

"Dive right in!" she said.

"I want to read the little info cards before I sample it," I said.

"No, see, you eat it first and then while you're chewing you read the card so you can taste the flavors they're talking about!"

"Ah, good idea!" I said, chomping a piece.

I gestured around us. "This is totally my kind of place," I said. "If this place didn't exist I would have to create it, because it's very ... me."

"You'd open a chocolate bar?"

"That's one of the great things about being an adult. You and your generation gets to decide what 'adult' means."

"Even if it's kid things!" she added in.

We put in an order and sat down along the bar.

Since the topic was at hand, I talked about my chocolate addiction. She said she was equally hooked, and that this was a cool place to meet up. I agreed. She told a story about getting a birthday cake from her Mom that read "Happy Birthday Sue" since that was what the demo cake said in the store display. "My Mom's a bit of a joker," she said.

I described an early photo of me eating chocolate cake in a high chair. That led into a story about my Dad's slide collection. She said her own Dad had a similar slide collection, which he organized meticulously, with location labels and numbering on the containers. I laughed and said I could relate, except my Dad's collection was in plastic cubes, since that was how his slide projector worked.

I talked about my epic task scanning slides and how slow the scanner was, then how I'd discovered my mother had even more slides she'd been keeping in a closet. That gradually shifted into a discussion about taking one's time, the slower pace of life in other parts of the world compared to the USA, and the Bay Are specifically. She brought up the example of a town she visited on the coast of France, on the Mediterranean Sea.

"Get up late, eat a meal all together, go down to the shore and chat as you play in the water," she said. "Then walk back and have a siesta, then another big meal. And that's the day."

I said it reminded me of my mother's Danish traditions and the way she ran the household. The importance of a sit-down meal and the conversations she scaffolded with others.

As we talked I found eye contact with her easy, and compelling. Her eyes were large and framed in half-moons - a facial feature that I associated with Nordic people - and when she laughed her eyes seemed to grow in size and sparkle, and her lower jaw pulled back slightly, making her upper teeth stick out and adding a goofy aspect to her smile that I found very endearing -- and that reminded me very strongly of Carolyn from 20 years ago. I knew I found this woman attractive, and her smile and upbeat, focused energy were feeding back into me, communicating at least an interest in the moment, that made me feel appreciated, and comfortable expressing some of my own goofiness. It wasn't a connection with depth, but it was something. At the same time, I had absolutely no idea what she thought of me, because I felt like she wasn't acting any different than she would talking to a friendly stranger or someone at work. "She's charming," I thought in the back of my head, "but she's also cute and she knows it." There was something else going on here, but I couldn't work it out in the middle of the date.

As we talked I occasionally had diverging trains of thought, and instead of slowing down and putting them in order I let them collide a bit, mixing ideas together and letting Мелисса pick up what compelled her. I was going for a kind of "befuddled professor" vibe, because some unfathomable part of me felt like this was the right tone to strike with Мелисса, or maybe it was just how I felt like being this particular night, regardless of the company. I knew her general cuteness was having an effect on me but I also still felt comfortable, and Мелисса appeared to be comfortable, so on we went.

She talked about social codes of conduct in France. You always said "hello" to a shopkeeper when you entered their store, and "goodbye" when you left. Anything less would be quite rude. We talked about cultural differences in the Bay Area, and how wide the income distribution was, and how that created strife.

"I was in a meeting recently," she said. "And when it was done, there was an avalanche of food left over from the catering. They were going to take it away and possibly dump it. So before I left I put together some sandwiches and snuck them out. On the walk home I started handing a sandwich to each hungry-looking person I saw, and I ran out after two blocks. All I felt afterward was regret, at not making more."

It was such a stark illustration of how disconnected some segments of the population were from each other. Why hadn't every single person there packed up a sandwich to give to someone else, when faced with such a mountain of leftovers? It didn't occur to them. On the other hand, did all that food really end up in the trash? Or did the catering company box it back up and donate it? Around here, it was hard to know. It would be a risk to assume.

I talked about how my aunt Kerna had done the same thing just a few weeks back, when we went to a Greek restaurant. We boxed up the food, and handed it to someone on the walk home. "I consider her the 'old guard' of the Bay Area," I said. "That sort of act is built into her worldview. But all the people who moved here to start tech jobs, did they pick that up?"

Мелисса shrugged. "I hope so. I know one thing: I'm sneaking out sandwiches from now on."

I asked, "Do you think there's any truth to the statistic that I heard that over 40% of the people that work in the Silicon Valley tech industry are from a foreign country?"

She said it was pretty shocking, but that she might believe it nevertheless.

The conversation drifted. I described the redwood trees and how I was a Bay Area native, and some of the places in California I'd lived. She talked about her travel history. When pressed, she identified the Washington DC area as formative for her. "It was where I went to elementary school," she said.

She mentioned the impeachment hearings and asked whether I was following them. I said I wasn't, because I was waiting for some kind of big announcement, or for the president to just have a meltdown, so I could know whether to feel relieved. It was too much to follow otherwise.

"You'd really like the live coverage, actually," she said. "The people they're interviewing are all top-notch career diplomats, and the responses they give are all really interesting, and the procedure in general is fascinating."

"Oh really? I'll give it a try. I know my Mom is following it all intently..."

The subject turned to Ukraine and Russia. I told her about the attitudes my Russian friends showed when talking about Putin and the politics there, and mentioned I was learning some Russian to speak with them better.

"Wow; Russian is one of the hardest languages to learn," she said. "Right up there with Chinese and Japanese..."

"No way," I said. "The alphabet takes some time, but after that it's easy. Mandarin and Cantonese... Tonal languages... Those are way harder."

She said she was still impressed. "Do you speak any other languages?" she asked.

"Well, not really. I don't really even speak Russian. I'm still learning. I had four years of High School Spanish and I can read at maybe an elementary-school level, but barely speak it. But! I can talk in a whole lot of silly accents."

She laughed.

"I'm tempted to start talking in one right now, but I'm going to hold back."

I mentioned an NPR podcast that asked the question "Is Europe at war with American tech companies?"

Мелисса immediately nodded, and emphatically said, "Yes."

I laughed and asked her what she meant. She brought up the way the EU was imposing regulations concerning privacy that arguably should be adopted all over the world, and how they were aimed directly at controlling what the big tech companies do. She mentioned the example of 23AndMe, and other genetic information warehousing and analysis services. "They could be doing anything with that data," she said. "It's a frontier. There are no regulations. Same with the way they report their information to consumers. There are no standards, and there are serious risks."

That led to an enthusiastic discussion about information privacy and the potential for both innovation and the harrowing abuse of personal freedom. A couple was talking loudly next to us and the woman had a piercing voice, and it was a bit hard to concentrate on Мелисса's words, but I leaned in and got them all. I wondered vaguely what she thought of me closing the personal space gap like this, even though it hadn't been my intention. That made me wonder about personal space in the back of my mind in general. How could I know how much of it was appropriate? Even after all this time and training and experience, how could I gauge what was an acceptable or invited amount of touching or an acceptable window of time? It remained as difficult as ever. I remembered having the same dilemma as an awkward 11-year-old sitting close to the girl I had a crush on in class.

The evening had worn on, and we both had work the next day. I nudged the conversation a little bit since I could tell she was getting slightly winded and might be looking for a polite out. She said she had a good time. I said that next time - if she wanted there to be a next time - she could pick the place. She said she was perfectly comfortable with me picking the next place.

"But I don't know San Francisco very well," I protested.

"You've had great luck picking places so far. This was an excellent choice. A refreshing change from getting a drink in a bar."

"Well I agree with you there," I said. "To tell you the truth bars are not really much of my thing."

I was worried this would disappoint her, like it seemed to disappoint other women from "the city". She was poker-faced.

I asked her about bicycling to gauge her interest. She appeared to be game, though not into anything competitive. That was fine by me. That led to a detour about how a bike isn't really needed in a place like San Francisco, and besides there are hills everywhere. "Good point," I said. "But over in the East Bay it's different."

I folded my leftover cookie up in some napkins and pocketed it, and we walked out to my bike. I asked if I should walk with her, or part ways here. She said we should walk. Along the way to the corner near the Bart station, where our paths would diverge, we encountered two rough-looking people and I gave one of them the cookie.

We talked a bit more about bicycling and food and travel. She said that she was in an interesting stage of her life, where there wasn't really a whole lot holding her to the Bay Area aside from her job, and her mind was very open to the possibility of living here or living somewhere else.

I brought up the analogy of Woodstock in the movie "Snoopy Come Home," where he builds a little boat out of sticks to cross a river.

"Wait, is this some kind of Tom Sawyer thing?" she said, grinning.

"No, no... Well, maybe?"

We parted with a handshake that turned into holding both hands together, with enough lingering to be clear that it wasn't supposed to be just a handshake. But neither of us felt like the vibe was right for a hug. For my part, I was trying to push against the assumption that a hug was mandatory or expected if it didn't feel comfortable, and not entirely for the sake of my date either: I don't want to press my body against someone I'm potentially dating until I feel certain that I can express physical interest. If I have to act stiff and pretend like there's none for the sake of formality, I'd rather not do it. What's the point?

She turned and walked away up the street, and I hefted my bicycle down into the Bart station.

The encounter gave me a pleasantly awake and warm feeling, and as the night aged and I prepared for bed, I found that the feeling of warmth had actually grown, and my anticipation of another meeting with her had grown with it. I had been thinking in terms of activities - what places we might walk through, what restaurants we could try, what games we might play - but with added time my visions were shading towards something deeper, and calmer. Perhaps we would both get books we were interested in, put together a picnic and some snacks, and walk together into a park, then sit nearby in pleasant silence and read, or read to each other.

It was nice to know that we both wanted a second date. But I remembered the thought I'd had earlier in the day, the one I couldn't quite grasp. Something about her knowing how cute she was, and me reacting to that self-assuredness. Something felt strange. I still couldn't sort it out.