Tuesday, September 30, 2014

For weeks now, on a publishing schedule that’s vacillated between deplorable and extra deplorable, we’ve been talking about maladies of the heart, particularly in the world of online dating. You may be tired of the subject. I wonder about this sometimes, until I remember our arrangement: this site will remain, as ever, free of tracking or analytics software of any stripe. In exchange, this anonymity carries into the real world, where you must never tell me if, when, or how you consume this content. It’s a simple calculus.

Before we return to our erstwhile maladies, you may have heard a far more serious malady–Ebola–has landed in Texas, with the first diagnosed case in the U.S. happening right here in Dallas. The news just broke today, and although I’m glad the virus hasn’t gone airborne, I’ve been much more cognizant about biting my nails. I also purchased a few face masks from Target, as if they’d make a shit of a difference.

I was at the airport on Friday, too, clearinghouse for international ailments of all strains, but not for a flight. I was there for a date. It was a better date, possibly in every way, than the one on Thursday, which I had anticipated so much. No single thing went awry that evening. It lasted a good four hours, between dinner and a stroll around town. But the chemistry just wasn’t there, and we said our good nights, then parted civilly.

The airport meeting was a wholly different matter. For one thing, it was never supposed to be at the airport. I was going to pick up the wine smuggler during her layover, and then go get some Mexican. Her flight ran into delays, though, and we had to scrap the plan. Instead, we sat in the terminal, a little more than an hour before her connecting flight, and we talked. There wasn’t a restaurant in sight, but we found a bank of vending machines. “Anything you want in this spread before you,” I said with a magnanimous sweep of my hand. “I bet I’m the cheapest date you’ve had,” she remarked.

We toasted with our overpriced bottles of Sobe, talked some more, and then parted ways. We’re still talking, in fact, and I’m not even going to try to predict where this is going. I’ve been feeling slightly uncalibrated, ever since that morning at the coffee shop, but this was exonerating, because it proved my radar still works. It’s a curious commodity, in-person chemistry. It’s tough to find. But rare as it is, you know within the first seven, eight seconds if it’s there.