Last night my friend and I were at a restaurant sitting at a bar, eating a white pizza and tasting various whiskeys so that I could begrudgingly fall deeper into the hole of realizing I like ryes over bourbons. A couple of men at the bar had a plate of bacon delivered to them as an appetizer. You read that right. A fucking plate full of bacon.
“Is that lettuce garnish on there so you can say it’s a salad?” my friend quipped at them.
Over the course of the night one of the men flirted with me, and kept making up reasons why I should see him again. He asked me to be his golf partner in some sort of co-ed league. I assured him he really should find a partner who didn’t poop out after 9 holes of minigolf, but he was insistent.
“Not even, 9 holes. I get bored after 7,” I said. “And I only last that long because at hole 5 I start loudly making comments that are so laced with dirtiness and double entendres that the groups around us start blushing. The trick is to make it where they’re not sure you know what you’re implying.”
“No problem,” he said. “I’ll teach you.” It turns out he was a golf pro.
“Will you stand behind me and show me how to swing?” I poked. I meant it as a joke. Like, dude, are you really inviting me to be in your romantic comedy?
“Yes,” he said, trying to stop his eyes from lighting up. “Absolutely.”
It felt so nice to be flirting with a real live human who I met, by accident, the good old fashioned way: at a bar. Seriously, people. A bar. Remember when it used to be embarrassing to say that? Now it’s like finding a pearl in an oyster.
The truth is, I way prefer this weird bar flirting to meeting people online where there’s just a photo and some words you wrote to market yourself. I don’t know his favorites books, or the six things he can’t live without, but also, he’s there in the flesh and I can ask. (Also, I didn’t because who the fuck cares? Unless your six things include weapons or puppies, then I’m out.)
I am a person who thrives on chemistry and you can only suss out chemistry when you’re face to face with someone. This is what I blame for my oh-so-many meh first dates filled with completely nice, great people. People I would never begrudge my bestie from dating. But not for me.
I’m so desperate to meet real people in real life that I was flirting with a man eating an entire plate of bacon for dinner.
As the night wound down he bought me and my friend a drink and then said to his friend he knew he wasn’t getting my number. It was strangely charming. The way he had never come closer to try and touch me. The way he didn’t make a sales pitch about himself. That gentle boundary-respecting was a turn on.
When he excused himself to go to the bathroom. I turned to my friend and said, “I’m really thinking about giving this guy my number, am I crazy? I don’t know him at all.”
And then I thought, “Holy shit! The world has gone topsy turvey.”
I was honestly a little afraid of giving this man my number, despite the fact that for the last couple months I had been willing to sign into a dating site, chat with a picture and a profile that could be completely fake, and then agree to meet these “people”. I had given all those people my number without hesitation.
It’s as if part of my brain has been rewired to accept that meeting someone online who’s real name and face I might not know, is safe as long as date number one is at a public coffee shop or bar. Yet the part of me that grew up in the 80s cannot shake the “stranger danger” idea that you don’t give personal info to a kind but strange man who seems to just honestly need help finding his puppy.
I realized that if I wanted to actually date people I met in the real world, I would have to make a small leap of trust.
When he returned to the bar to collect his friend and his coat I said, “It’s too bad these napkins are black or I’d write my number on one for you.”
He scanned the bar in desperation for a piece of paper, and then realized we were living in 2018 and he handed me his phone with a blank contact open.
“Is this your real number?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said.
Then he while he was paying the bill he texted me, “Talk to you soon.”
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