“I feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and you’re Richard Gere,” she explained. “Except I’m not a hooker.”
“Also, I don’t stuff gerbils up my ass,” I added, helpfully.
“Wonderful,” she said.
A few days before I met her–she who had said Popeyes would’ve sufficed for a first date–we discussed why I chose Roy’s.
“Why so fancy?” she asked.
“Because you gotta treat a woman right, you know?”
And what a woman. More than a month later, I still remember moments from that first date with complete clarity. I remember how she saw right through my subpar simulation of the Asian arts.
“Um, I don’t think your chopsticks are supposed to cross like that? Not that I’m judging,” she remarked.
“Thanks, Mr. Miyagi.”
I remember ordering way too many appetizers, now a ritual to which I stubbornly cling, much to her bemusement, and I remember holding forth on why the rice at Roy’s was so desiccated: “It’s because they hand-dry each and every grain with a hairdryer.”
Overpriced, shitty food didn’t matter that night, though. We were there–in that booth, with that dress, that hair, that voice–and that was enough. Stayed until the place closed. And I wouldn’t have traded the evening for anything.
If I were to travel back to May and impart some dating wisdom to my younger self, I would share the following: from Cheshire, to follow your heart; from the Professor, to remember how it all began; and from Love Yoda, to leave my expectations at the door. These three pieces of advice have served me well, time and again.
We’re going out tomorrow night. To where or what, I don’t know yet. She’s far more spontaneous than I am, so I’ve found that playing it by ear is usually the better course. It’s a departure from my typical bag of overthinking and copious short-term planning. Tabula rasa, I suppose–and a slate gladly filled.
Secondhand Rants will return on Thursday, September 04.
When I moved to Texas, back in that faraway month of January, I did so with the narrowest, most conservative interpretation of the word “move.” Relocating my body was the primary directive because team dynamics are better with corporeal presence, supposedly? Or something? And as far as my worldly possessions went, I traveled light, with just a living room set, bed, and a few other sundries. My coffers were flush, fresh from moving ample amounts of product on eBay, and I was primed for another beginning.
My apartment remained in this basal, spartan state until only recently. Its prior purpose had been to aid in my health regimen–cupboard stocked solely with garbage soup and popcorn, counter adorned with a single week-long cache of bananas, tennis paraphernalia splayed unceremoniously under the breakfast bar. An abode, in a word, suited wholly to me, but absolutely not for entertaining. I had to fix this, here and now, for obvious reasons. And I had help. Lots and lots of it. The Professor called this process the “domestication” of my apartment, whereas the Chief employed slightly less charitable terms: parts of my place, he said, had to be made “less Dexter.”
Fair points both, too, because they got the tour firsthand. I set to work, procuring bar stools, housewares, plants, art, a wine rack, food, alcohol, furniture, a prodigious television to ensure the living room focused on something other than a wall, and heaven knows what else. This beauty, for instance–still in transit. I pillaged Ikea, Macy’s, Kirkland’s, and Pier One. And now, a few thousand bucks later, I’ve made it to the other side.
One evening, Bakespeare and the Professor arrived on the scene, brood in tow and a whole mess of tools in hand. Their goal was simple–to teach me how to hang my newly acquired art–but their methods were not. I learned about decorative vignettes, which, judging from the provenance of the word, came from the same fuckers who invented those infernal French cuffs. I watched in awe as a laser leveler was deployed to level my canvases. This was some special forces shit, and now I know. It’s like I’ve been inducted to a shadowy guild of art fasteners–and, I guess, the secret society of normal people.