Sharp Broads

I hopped onto my computer first thing the next morning, ready to write an email (Laura’s suggestion! Hi Laura!) telling her what a good time I had, and so forth. Found her instead on a messaging service; talked, made plans to meet the next day, talked some more. Talked kind of a lot, actually: After an hour and a half, even though I had no particular plans for the day I had to bow out unceremoniously. It was a sunny day! I didn’t want to spend it all typing at a computer, no matter how nice the eyes on the other end might be shaped.

So we agreed to meet the next day, but I had work in the evening, so that left us with a day thing. Which left us with… the De Young. Her idea, not mine! I’d suggested the MOMA, but only because I know some real galleries near it and could be like “if you’re bored here, we can go to…” and maybe impress her or something. But she’d been to the MOMA recently and wanted to go to the De Young now; what was I going to do? “No, girl, your idea is bad, I am the man - PENISAURUS! - and all ideas must come from me.” That is not my style! Because I’m basically a woman, and a gay male woman at that.

She tells me one o’clock; at one o’clock on Friday I’m hoofing it to through the part, a few minutes late yet again, when I get a call. She asks me where I am - “just around the corner!” I say defensively - and she tells me she’s lost, somewhere near Ocean Beach. That, for reference, is not very near the De Young at all. But she seems to feel like she knows what she’s doing sort of, and I’m horrible with driving directions, so I leave it for her to figure out.

I walk to the museum entrance. I wait. And I wait more. At 1:15, another call. At 1:30, another call. At 1:45, I begin to consider that maybe I am being stood up - that maybe these “oh I’m almost there” calls are just a mean way of rubbing it in.

But at 2:00 she arrives. I’ve rehearsed the whole time how I’m going to be forgiving about the whole thing without seeming like a total desperate pushover. “I understand, I’ve been lost in the park before,” I say. “Plus it’s such a nice day out, it wasn’t asking much to wait out here - I wish I had more excuses to just sit around enjoying the park.” And I feel okay about my delivery, but she just sort of doesn’t seem to care, and I do not know what to make of that.

We purchase our admission (she already has hers, actually, so I don’t get to offer to pay for it) and make our way into the museum. She works her way through this place at a much slower pace than my chef date did, because she really looks at everything. I mean she really looks at everything. I keep wanting to ask her what she thinks of all these things, but am afraid to; I feel like it’s really conspicuous that I’m not thinking as much as she is about all this, and I don’t want to draw any more attention to that. The only thing she glosses over early on is the only thing that has my attention - some pottery in the shape of some playing dogs. “Wow,” it makes me think, “people back then liked looking at dogs play, just like me.” It is a very plain and self-centered thing to think.

Very little conversation passes between us. I try to tell myself that this is okay, that we’ve both acknowledged already that we are quiet people by nature, but it does nothing to make me feel closer to her. It does nothing to make me feel like I am anything to her. Even when we’re in the stuff of the 20th century that I can actually talk about, we only pass a couple of sentences back and forth. The description of one painting references the “confettilike nuclear fallout” depicted, and we both agree that this is humorous. That sort of thing.

I keep noticing, as she stands in front of whatever painting, how good the shape of her looks, just standing there. And I feel horrible - here we are in this place and we should be having some sort of intellectual connection going on, but all that I’m finding interesting in her is superficial, and she isn’t finding anything interesting in me at all. I stop looking at her and start looking at the art instead. It is easier.

Once or twice the walkways grow narrow and she is forced to walk closer to me. She moves away again at the soonest opportunity.

By the time we get to the African art collection (which is a big section) I am starting to feel a sort of panic. I begin trying to throw out any comment I can find on anything, and trying to make the most of anything she happens to comment on. “They made a typo here,” she says, and even though I’d already seen it and gotten over it (it’s a typo, who cares?) I make a big show about it. “Oh, where is it? Where is it? Oh! I see it! There it is. Sharp eyes!” But I can’t find anywhere to go with that.

The silence sets in again. It reaches a point where I just start looking for any kind of response. She turns from one thing and her gaze comes past me, so I try to make eye contact and smile, hoping that she’ll smile back, even if we don’t have anything to smile at each other about, even if it’s just a reflex action. But she keeps her mirror neurons in check and just keeps turning, leaving me smiling charmingly at the back of her head. This happens again and again. I feel disappointed and embarrassed every time, but I just keep trying. At this point, I have nothing else.

Finally she says she’s hungry, and we decide to leave and get food. Or rather, she decides; I just follow tentatively, leaving enough space that hopefully she’ll feel comfortable saying “okay, I’m going to go eat now, goodbye” if she just wants to be done with it. She does not do this, but I’m still left with the feeling that it is only because she hasn’t recognized the option.

As she pays for parking, I hold out some dollars to make up half of it. She refuses; I argue that she’s had to pay for bridge tolls and gasoline and all of that, but she still refuses. Eventually I give up.

The car ride is something better, in that we at least talk. I say things like “turn left here,” and “get into that lane.” She asks me what movies I like and I say that I do not like movies. That sort of thing.

We find a decent Thai place, get seated near the door. I decide quickly on the yellow curry (I can only order pad thai if I’m alone and preferably in disguise, because it has such an embarrassing reputation as a white-people dish, and I really don’t want anyone to find out that I am white). We are seated across from each other, so I get to have a taste of her looking at me and smiling, and that is nice, but I can’t shake how apparent it is that this is only circumstantial. She is smiling to be polite, and her face just happens to be pointed at me because that’s the way her seat is angled. It is certainly not because we are having a great conversation.

A sample of our conversation:

“Should I get the cashew tofu or the spicy tofu basil?” she wonders.

A long pause.

“Cashew.”

We eat, and I finish quickly, because I’m too sick with disappointment to eat much. We get most of our food boxed, and I talk her into taking it.

“You sure you don’t want to save some for lunch at work?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “That wouldn’t make sense.” This is a total non-answer but fortunately she accepts it. The real reason is simple: I have a long evening shift to get through, and stopping halfway through for a reminder of my afternoon disappointment will not make that any easier.

The waitress drops off the bill, and I expect to have another argument like at the parking machine. I drop my card on the little plastic tray, and look up at her, ready to repeat the same arguments about bridge tolls, the high cost of gasoline, all that extra drive time…

“Do you mind getting that?” she asks.

“Of course not,” I say. Wow.

I walk her back to her car. Make polite conversation about what she’ll do with her day; try to get in touch with some friends in the city, she says. I feel reassured a little: A free lunch and an excuse to see some cross-bay friends is okay compensation for having to spend an afternoon with me, I guess.

We get to her car. She half-offers me a ride to work, but it’s clear she wants me to turn her down (”do you need a ride?” versus “can I give you a ride?”) and so I do. There is a bus line nearby, and in any case, I will need some down time between her and my job to get my head in order.

“Okay,” she says, stepping into her car. “See ya.”

“See you,” I say, smiling politely as I turn around. “Probably not, actually,” I mutter to myself once my back is to her, but I realize straight away that I’d muttered it louder than I meant to. Like at a conversational volume. And as the real likelihood of her having heard that sinks in, the certainty that she would have taken it as a judgment upon her comes just as quickly. If there was any judgment it was directed at myself, and the situation, but that’s not how she’d have taken it: We tend to perceive things in reference to ourselves by nature, as a side effect of being ourselves, all of our time. And so, if there had been any chance of seeing her again, I think that I must have just killed it, and in a hurtful way at that.

I walk toward the end of the block at a quickened pace, hurry to round the corner, and of course, good god, of course, I do not look back.

After two failed dates and a really dry-looking crop of w4m’s on Craigslist (which is to say, no one dumb enough to omit the phrase “attractive, fit & successful only, please” from their posting) I decided to lay down my own post. I don’t remember what it actually was, so I’m going to say it was this:

Hello! I am an amazing man, probably the best one, and I’m looking for the same, only like with innie-talia instead of outtie-talia. I am six-foot three with an hourglass figure by which I mean that my naked body will remind you of your own mortality. The only piece of furniture I own is a golden cast of David Bowie’s head.

I only got one response after the first day or so. It looked like spam, because it was overly-complimentary and didn’t reference any detail from my actual post (just said that I “seemed cool”) but she had a real-looking Myspace profile, and gave me a real-seeming Instant Messenger screen name. To be on the safe side I registered a dummy screen name and got in touch with her.

We talked for a while, and she seemed alright. She said she’d never responded to a Craigslist ad before, and I didn’t care if this was true or not. I would pretty much date a dude at this point I’m so lonely. But only if I thought he might really be the one. Our conversation went okay - she’s an art student, I used to be an art student, so it seemed like we had something in common. I had to explain the meaning of “semiotics” to her, and that was kind of a downer, but the fact that the subject even came up should be to her credit. I can’t imagine bringing that up to leggy blond (MARIA! TURN THAT INTO A LINK PLEASE!) in any conversation. She would have probably said “yes, I know what that word means” and gone back to looking at the table, imagining what her evening would be like if she were with a better man than me.

(For the record, I pretty much don’t know a thing about semiotics! I had some smart friends in college and I repeat enough of what they said to fake it myself, but I really have all the intelligence and taste of your average white trash, which is all that I am.)

So! I talked her into a Wednesday night date at the Mint (my favorite, and therefore the best, karaoke bar.)

Before she leaves she calls me. She talks in kind of a funny way that I still haven’t been able to place; it’s cute, though. She wants to know how she’ll recognize me; I remind her that she’s already seen like five of my pictures, and tell her that I’ll almost certainly be the only one in a black tie. “I just don’t want to just go up to the wrong guy though,” she says. “That would be awkward.” I laugh a little bit inside - it will be more awkward when it’s the right guy - but politely remind her that she always has my phone number, if she is in doubt.

I arrive at the Mint early, put a song in. Let’s Dance, David Bowie. The last time I had a Mint date I arrived early and put Let’s Dance in, and I never saw her again. It didn’t have anything to do with the song, though. It was because of me.

She shows up, heads straight for the bathroom, like I always do on dates. I recognize her by her coat, which she’d mentioned on the phone, but also doubt it. She is pretty, is the thing, like earnestly pretty. No place on Craigslist kind of pretty. Even leggy blond had a big nose, and she still had to be really boring to end up on the List.

But she comes out of the bathroom after a while, long enough that I can guess she might have been fussing over her looks and trying hopelessly to grab on to some sort of composure. At least, that’s what my start-of-the-date bathroom lingerings are about; also pissing and heavy farting, but that happens quickly in comparison. But anyway, she comes out of the bathroom and she finds me, and she smiles. You mostly see the gums above her teeth when she smiles, which is also the same with me, but with her it’s in a good way, because her teeth are straight so she seems sincere. When you see my gums and the jagged edge that defines them, it is like finding a nest of spiders in your mother’s womb. What were you doing in your mother’s womb in the first place? What were you doing looking at a guy like me?

Our Minty time is unexceptional. We move from the front, but still end up right under a speaker, and because we are both soft-spoken and nervous it is hard to talk. I sing my song, and I kill, like really take it to another level. One of the regulars (Tiffany, but not KJ Tiffany, the ones who belongs on American Idol Tiffany) makes her way across the bar to lay down her adoration for the performance, and that’s a long way at a horseshoe bar. I’ve always had a secret crush on her, but I can’t do anything with that, at least not on this night; even if the quiet pretty one has already written me off it would still be a dirty and hurtful move. So I tell Tiffany “thanks” and nothing more, and she walks away unceremoniously. It is a thing that happened.

Kaye (we will call her) has a song in, but even though the Mint isn’t crowded it is all singers. Frank announces she will be third, so I use the moment to reach the restroom. Grab some composure, cycle forward some fluids. Halfway through I hear a new voice singing, and it’s shy and nervous and female, but with that heavy sweetness of someone who knows how to sing but does not know how to karaoke. Oh shit.

When I come out (I don’t remember why it took so long, I was probably writing emails) she is basically done. I have time to applaud but that is all. I apologize, laden with a genuine and real guilt, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She says she’s relieved that she didn’t embarrass herself in front of me, and that seems genuine. She seems to care what I think of her, and that seems genuine. It is a peculiar moment.

We leave the Mint for another karaoke bar (the KJ there has added some songs to his list just for me, so I don’t want to miss his night.) It’s not a long walk, but it’s long enough that we can talk a little. I’m surprised, but once we were out of the loud room with all excuses to divert our attention (songbooks to read, singers on stage, things to excuse an absence of conversation) we actually have a decent rapport. We talk about things: Family, mortality, the regular stuff. We don’t have everything in common, but I think she’s interesting, and she doesn’t seem bored with me.

The next bar hurts the cause some. It’s the same place I went with the leggy blond, and the same thing starts to happen: A lot of trips to the stage, a lot of silence between us, a growing sense of panic and discontent. I talk her into a duet of Love Shack (my real ad mentioned looking for “the Kate Pierson to my Fred Schneider” so I felt justified, and she didn’t resist much) which goes poorly. I’m amazing, and she can sing so she was good when she could remember how it went, but those moments were rare. Her “tin roof rusted” was weak enough to sterilize a cat. It was a very poor rendition. But I gave her credit for her willingness - for someone so shy to do a kind of awkward song that she really doesn’t know, that willingness seemed significant.

After a few songs we leave; I hate to turn my back on this KJ, but the atmosphere was killing a date which on some weird level seemed to have potential, so I had to do something else. We walk for a while, stopping briefly at Lucky 13 (a gothabilly bar) for some kind of girly beer, then more walking. We pass her car a couple of times, and I let the conversation lull each time to give her a chance to make an exit, in case that is what she wants. “Well, we’re back at my car, bye,” is all she’d have to say, and it wouldn’t be awkward at all. But we just kept talking, and walking up and down Market Street and through the Castro.

We talk about all the normal first date things. Personal history, tastes, hobbies, projects, interests. It’s all very bland but feels alive on a certain level, and we get more than a few sentences deep into any given topic. When she looks at me it’s like she sees right through me, which is true of a lot of people because all of me is so near the surface, but when she looks at me like that there is no judgment, and that is unique. I don’t know how she does it. It is probably the shape of her eyes.

Eventually when it is too late, and we have been walking for too long, she offers me a ride home. We talk enough in the car that I keep forgetting to tell her about turns, and she never seems to mind. When I’m finally home she bids me goodnight, and says the normal “we should do something again” thing, but her tone of voice is full and nervous, not deliberate. She means it. We smile at each other, I say the same; somewhere in the back of my head I feel like I should kiss her, and she probably would have kissed me back, but I am terrified by her pretty smile and so I just get out of the car instead. Wave goodbye, smile once more, then run up the stairs to my apartment.

There was another date after this. I will write about it soon.