The Dating Arts
I’m okay with eavesdropping. In fact, I think if you have anything so terribly private to discuss that it absolutely cannot be overheard no matter what, you should take your meeting in a bomb shelter or bank vault or abandoned mine shaft. Even before mobile tech and social media shredded whatever remnants were left of the fabric of privacy, we were already all over each other’s business in restaurants, airport lounges, waiting rooms, on subways and buses, and behind office cubicles. We were just less obvious about it, pretending that we believed what we were told by parents—that it was impolite or tacky. But I think it’s just our natural curiosity in play. We’re listening and processing to ourselves: “What is it like to lose your sense of smell for three months? Would I tell John about the affair, too? How do you come back from mooning the CEO at the holiday party?” And what we’re really asking is: “Are you more or less weird than me?”
I was in the bookstore’s café. A long, plushy booth-style of seating ran the length of one wall with small cocktail tables and chairs. I chose one of those to give up the bigger tables to larger parties. I wasn’t there too long when the young woman slid into the seat next to me. She looked to be in her late-20s with short, dark hair and a pair of very cool, retro type cat eyeglasses with little white rhinestones in the upper corners of the frame. She shrugged out of her wool coat, unwound a purple fuzzy scarf from her around her neck that looked as if she were being strangled by a Muppet. The woman wore a skirt with tights patterned with slender silver spider webs. On her feet a pair of chunky Doc Martin boots—cranberry. She ordered a latte and fished out an Isabelle Allende novel from a dark brown satchel.
“Sorry I’m late! It took me longer to walk here than I thought,” the voice belonged to a tall, slender man also in his late-20s. He had blonde hair that stuck out from his head in certain parts while matted down in others, which hinted at the choreography of multiple hair products. He had a neatly trimmed beard. His backpack landed next to the chair with a dull thud.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I pretty much just got here myself.”
“This is a pretty cool space,” he said glancing behind him at the bookstore. “I’ve lived here since college and can’t believe I’ve never been. Then again, I’m not much of a reader.”
I winced. From the corner of my eye I saw the woman smile, but it was one of those thin, polite ones, like when you’ve just taken a sip of something you know you can’t swallow but you can’t spit out either.
They each ordered food and settled into the safe terrain of conversation that comes with a casual date. He grew up in San Diego and had gravitated to the area for college; she was a pastor’s daughter and had lived in a handful of different Midwest states before also landing in the city for college. He was a coder for one of the larger tech companies in town; she taught first grade at a school in a neighboring burrow. Her: two roommates and one cat. Him: one roommate who was getting serious with a girlfriend and so he might start looking to buy a condo “if the market ever gets its head out of its ass.”
I got bored and started legitimately reading my own book. I didn’t envy them. Social interactions are tricky enough without the mental layer of “maybe I’ll see this person naked at some point” adding a whole other dimension to the ordeal. How much of yourself to reveal? That’s always the delicate part of the operation. It’s like having an explosive device on the table in front of you. Each person cutting one wire at a time. Snip. Pause. Snip. Pause.
I remembered a date I went on decades ago when there were only two primary online dating sites: Match.com and EHarmony. The only thing getting swiped in those days was your credit card. I met up with this nice guy for brunch. He was perfectly fine—smart, conversational, and friendly. We stuck to the generic topics. What do you do? Where are you from? He told me he was adopted.
“Have you ever tried to find your birth parents?” I asked.
“No,” he shrugged.
“But as you’ve gotten older, haven’t you been curious about them?”
“I don’t know. I mean, not really. My adoptive family are great, and I just never really thought about it to be honest.”
“Hm,” I said. “That’s interesting.” He finished chewing.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s like, wouldn’t you want to know about things in your background?”
“Like what?”
“Well, like health stuff, right? What if you’re pre-disposed to something or have some genetic issues or something and you don’t know it and you decided to start a family. Wouldn’t you want that history going into all of it?”
There was a very long pause. There was a lot of chewing.
Later I realized what he probably heard was: WHAT IF WE GET MARRIED AND HAVE BABIES AND THEY HAVE TAILS AND I COULD HAVE USED THIS INFORMATION BEFOREHAND?! But the joke was on him because I never wanted kids with our without tails from him or anyone. I was simply following my brain’s line of storytelling, heavily influenced from decades watching General Hospital. I never saw that nice young adopted guy again, but I hope he’s living happily ever after with his awesome family that does not include his birth parents.
My attention drifted back to the couple.
“It’s all so subjective, you know?” I heard him say. “Like, my brother and I went to that museum in Chicago, the big one—”
“The Art Institute,” she said.
“Yeah, right. We’re walking around and, look, I know there’s stuff I might not get or whatever, that’s fine. It is what it is. But we go into this one room and there’s just like a huge canvas with a black square on it and a little white border but it’s mostly just the square. And I was like, no, no I’m sorry. This is not art! I mean, it’s a square! Someone just painted black, black, black. Square. Done. Seriously? No. Like, why is this here? I could go home and get a canvas and paint a black square. Put me in a museum!” he laughed, shaking his head.
I winced again. Before she could respond, he brought up the movie Oppenheimer. It was good, he admitted, but emotionally overwrought.
“We get it,” he says between forkfuls of scrambled eggs. “The weight of everything, history, and, you know, the consequences and all of that, but I don’t know…. and it was so long! It would have been better with an intermission.”
“Rothko,” she says.
“What?”
“Mark Rothko. The black square painting. That sounds like one of his. He did these, they call them, color blocks.”
“Oh? Sure, okay, yeah.”
“He actually painted other stuff before that, like scenes that were more kind of impressionistic, but he also suffered from really deep depression. Art critics and historians think he became more of an abstract painter to try and deal with all of that.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“So, it’s not just a black square. It’s…there’s more to it.”
“Sure, I get it, I just don’t see, like, the skill or whatever. But I see what you’re saying. Me, personally, I just don’t see the point.”
At that moment I was guessing neither did she.
Snip.
Lens Zen!
In the spirit of “not art” and “what’s the point” and “I don’t get it,” I’m sharing some photos of Boston Winteractive. This is a super cool initiative brought to the city by way of a partnership with EXMURO Arts Publics of Quebec City and the Downtown Business Improvement District (BID). Winteractive brings 16 distinct (and maybe terrifying?) large-scale, interactive public art displays installed around the city. The installations will remain in place until April 14. You can learn more about the art, artists, and locations HERE. The pieces are amazing, startling, and simply fun to encounter. Yet another reason why BOSTON RULES AND ALL OTHER CITIES ARE WICKED LAME! I’m trying to get this changed to the official city motto.
He doesn't know Mark Rothko AND thinks Oppenheimer was whatevs?! Run girl, run! I was sort of rooting for him at first since he was sounding like my husband with the nerdy coding and understandable lack of art appreciation. But once he dissed Oppy - I just cannot abide!
Seriously, so funny Sheila and your captions are wicked as per usual. The whale art is a stunner!
Me: Not into Rothko? That's a red flag.
Also me: Man, I am so glad I don't have to navigate dating anymore.