There is nobody left to not date

First night out in nyc

Édouard Manet, Un bar aux Folies Bergère, 1882

“Don’t look now, but on your left” is all my brother says. I don’t.

I know this game and we’ve spent enough time together where non-verbal usually suffices; verbal communication contains layer upon layer of shared meaning. I know it’s a girl.

The music, blaring and bad, had me wanting to leave an otherwise cool bar. But now I had reason to stay. And when I do finally turn my head, I find, yes, exactly what I had expected: a girl, mid-twenties by the look, sheeny blonde hair & a New York complexion. Cute.

I turn back to my brother. It’s just us two, out for a drink after work, some weirdly-named cocktail-concoction (concocktailtion?) for me, martini for my brother.

He informs me, hushed tone, that the girl next to me had migrated from her table of friends to take the seat next to me at the bar. Right on cue I feel a sudden brushing against my left leg. I turn, knowingly, meeting her eyes and an “oh sorry, my bad,” as she finishes situating her coat on the hook under the bar. My intuition tells me she is neither sorry nor is it her bad.

I don’t quite remember what she opens with, or what I open with, but we begin talking. Conversation is good, though I feel mildly bad as my brother sits there probably listening in but hopefully not.

Not even five minutes into the conversation, mostly around my recent move to New York, she asks me “who’d you vote for?”

Here we go.

On principle, I refuse to talk about politics with friends let alone complete strangers. And she approached me! Bold.

“I abstained,” I tell her.

I know exactly what she wants to hear. I’ve read enough nyc girly substacks. They’re great writers, ok! Why do I need to explain myself..

I didn’t expect my response to get me off the hook, but a man can hope. Please, please don’t do this. Silent pleas don’t tend to work. I take a stultifying sip.

She takes the floor, and a whole lot more. She lectures me on civic duty and how I should vote and whatever else the script calls for. Telling me why it was bad that I didn’t and how I’m part of the problem, all in a tone of self-righteousness, undeniably awesome in its zeal. I can’t shake the sense of feeling like a punching bag for something that is unlikely to be solved via punching. All I want to do is drink my concocktailtion in peace.

Oh and she saved the best for last. Her final question, the cherry on top, her ne plus ultra: “do you like women’s bodies?”

FATALITY

I treat this with the candor warranted a real question. Why? Because maybe, just maybe, I can resort to Hanlon’s Razor here, or plead the fifth if only I had the empty bottle to prove it. “Of course I like women’s bodies.”

The conversation wraps up quickly after that; her work here is done. She doesn’t get what she came for, and I didn’t come in the first place. But that’s how these things tend to go when one person wants emotion and the other just wants to sip his cocktail in peace. I think she asked for my number?

This encounter left my mind as quickly as it entered, and I hadn’t given it much thought until I read the intro to this essay. She’s right: there is nobody left to date. What’s worse, there might even be no one left to not date! Is it too much to ask to drink a concocktail with my brother and marinate in shitty hip-hop mashes after a long workweek?