lovesorry

(An excerpt from my new novella.)

1.

It’s Thanksgiving, a holiday in America where you get together with your family to eat turkey. I’m not American so I don’t care.

He texts from his parents and asks what I’m doing.

I’m walking home from a date with another man, a hot 26-year-old guy. Not an American either. He lied about his age in his profile. But he seemed mature and relaxed and he liked me and right upon meeting, he asked if I would come with him to an ice-plunge social at a communal sauna and I laughed thinking it was a joke. It wasn’t. Still, I said no since didn’t want him to see me screaming and I didn’t particularly want to see him screaming either.

He had long hair and he was in cryptocurrency. We had a charcuterie board in this place that was once a sock factory, its walls bouncing off the echo of utensils and laughter. Thick-single-serve napkins that pretended to be fabric. No socks.

I’m doing nothing, I reply. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

I’m having some pumpkin pie and arguing with my father, he texts back.

The 26-year-old had an ex who was a model in Hong-Kong and I wish I hadn’t snooped because that made me behave in an insecure way and before we got into anything else I told him he was too young for me. I called him a toddler.

He laughed, How about I just follow you around like a toddler?

And I said, Sure, you can, next time. We decided to go see some edgy art in the new contemporary gallery. Better than an ice-plunge, the screaming would be at least curated. The gallery was in a massive building that was also once a factory; everything was like that in my city, where every place was once another place.

But I knew none of it would go anywhere because of the Hong-Kong ex and because I was thinking of the man whose feelings I didn’t want to hurt.

I was not in love with him yet – I haven’t even fucked him – but I thought he’d be disappointed knowing I am on a date with a toddler who later kissed me aggressively in his giant, purple truck that looked like giant, purple dick.

2.

I met the man whose feelings I cared about online too. He was my only other genuine connection on Hinge. The rest of the app was a parade of men referring to women as “females,” while others proudly announced things like, “ENM and hopefully you’re not stuck-up like most girls,” which felt less like a dating preference and more like a hostage note, and then men so catastrophically dull they’d message things like, “Hi, what’s cooking for the weekend?” as though they were checking in from a medium-security retirement home.

But I was putting myself out there again after a starter marriage that had made intimacy feel both embarrassing and like a task. The divorce was not amicable but I still believed in men even though statistically speaking they were women’s number-one apex predator.

Still, I always prided myself on my optimism; it was a good personality trait to have so it was with optimism that I was meeting him in-person, in a park, in a posh neighbourhood.

I felt restored and bright after successfully napping off a terrible hangover. You know that feeling when you wake up mid-day and finally don’t have a headache and the pukes? That. Full of hope.

The night before, I went to see the new film about JTLeRoy with a friend who danced burlesque and who took me to a bar where she danced burlesque. The bar was named after a famous communist newspaper. Pravda. She didn’t dance that night but everyone bought her drinks and they bought me drinks, and I didn’t know how I got home.

I’m Dolores, I said and he looked at me coyly but hungrily and I liked that he found me attractive even though I didn’t find him attractive. But he seemed kind and safe. That didn’t disappoint me. I’ve learned that I never like the men I eventually end up liking.

We shook hands and I suggested getting gelato because I wanted something cold and fresh in my mouth.

We walked through the expensive neighbourhood with our little cups and we passed families with strollers, and weekend fathers in open polo shirts, with children from previous marriages trailing behind them. Slim women carrying expensive bags, ribbons looped through the handles. Young bros in pairs, suits and slicked-back hair, loafers crunching quietly against the pavement. It was a whole show.

Later we got into his boxy SUV, a father’s car, the kind you buy when you need to drive a child to hockey practice. Like everything else about him – his sweetness – it didn’t disappoint me, it made me feel calm.

We drove to a place and we ordered nonalcoholic drinks and a charcuterie board. It’s a thing in Toronto, those boards: thick, juicy olives, crackers, odds and ends of common cheeses. The only exciting thing about the boards is what they’re called.

We talked about work and people we might know through our adjacent industries. In the low light, I studied his face. There was too much of it on the sides, his features appeared too close together. The face improved when shadow sharpened the cheekbone, when his hair fell into his forehead.

Online, his photos were professional, lots of scarves. He was once a semi-known musician. I could not find any exes in Hong-Kong or anywhere else for that matter. I searched tags for his name and there was a picture on Instagram of him with a group of friends at dinner. He was sitting next to a pretty brunette who was leaning against his arm coquettishly. In the photo his cheeks were pudgy and with the long hair slicked back he reminded me of a fat conquistador.

But right now, in the dim light, he was almost hot. We couldn’t stop talking. If I were writing a chick-lit beach read, I’d say, it was as if we’ve always known each other; there was an instant recognition although it felt less sexual than matter-of-factly, like discovering someone from your past life who might or might’ve not been your sibling.

Outside my place, I asked if I could kiss him. I kissed all of my dates. I did that out of obligation and I did it out of guilt, especially when I knew there was no romantic connection. Like a receipt for the date.

He turned his face slightly. The way he obliged made me think, good boy. I felt briefly sad – for him, for us, for the inevitability of this going nowhere. The streetlamp lit up one of his pupils. It flashed yellow, cat-like, before he closed his eyes.

The kiss was light. Gentle. A good-boy kiss.

I went inside. In the hallway there was a new sign on my neighbour-landlord’s door announcing their baby was asleep.

Later, I came back out for a cigarette.

I wrote him a long text explaining that I didn’t feel a spark. This kind of message is unnecessary after one date but I sent it regardless. He replied instantly, saying he wouldn’t make a good boyfriend anyway – he didn’t know what to do when big feelings take over – but he would make an excellent friend. Please consider that.

I was surprised by the plea. I was also flattered by this suggestion that I could evoke big feelings.

So I wrote back that I would consider what he was asking me to consider.

And tonight, we are walking in another park, the one downtown where everyone brings their dogs. The ground is littered with tied-up poop bags, little bright knots waiting to be ignored. The bags might be a metaphor for this city; everything gets done halfway and then turns to shit.

He is wearing glasses today and combined with a balding mohair sweater the colour of bog and sadness, he looks professorial. The way the buttons line up creates an illusion of a pot belly.

He dresses in this way intentionally, I think, but I wonder if the effect is the opposite of what he hopes for. Or is the effect exactly what he hopes for? I had a boyfriend once whose theory was that only attractive people dressed in repellent ways.

Does he think himself attractive? Or is this him mocking not being attractive but making you think he is attractive by being unattractive?

He says fall is his favorite season. He says it carefully, like he might be revealing too much.

Halfway down the path he leaves me on the sidewalk and runs ahead. He kicks piles of leaves, he scoops them into his arms, throws them into the air. The leaves fall around him and I stop and take a short video. His joy seems real enough that I want evidence of it.

I don’t feel joy. I feel something thinner, some sort of loosening. It makes me uneasy and I become aware of my posture, my face.

When he comes back, flushed and breathing hard, he looks at me as if to check whether the silliness was allowed.

So I tell him that it was cute. I don’t say that his happiness felt too unguarded, in a way that might make him reconsider later – or maybe I’m just feeling guilty about taking the secret video.

We walk on. The leaves crack loudly under our feet. Everything fragile has already fallen.

This is the part where something starts. I can feel it forming between us – tentative, easily crushed. Perhaps dangerous.

I close the space between us but without touching and the leaves keep breaking beneath us, marking every step with their little deaths.

When we part, he doesn’t try to kiss me. I know he wants to. We step away from each other and he smiles at me, his glasses sliding down his nose.

He is my safe friend in a sweater.

Except he is not safe at all. But I don’t know this yet and if I knew I wouldn’t have done anything differently – no, of course I would’ve done everything differently; I wouldn’t believe a thing!

Yes I would. I push things, I push for things – I want to see what’s on the other side, I jump off cliffs and I get drunk in bars named after communist newspaper with no recollection of how I got home later and I am risk-averse only in the way that every woman who tells her best friend before going out on a date – with an apex predator – that she won’t get murdered is. I still always go.