When I Stepped into His Apartment
A meditation on love and dating
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When I walked into his apartment for the first time, all I could see were plants. Plants. Plants. Plants. Everywhere. Pothos covered every wall; their long green limbs stretched from ceiling to floor. Fiddle leaf figs grew tall in corners. Succulents covered the table tops. Snake plants bracketed the couch. The only spot in the living room devoid of plants was the altar to the God Shiva. His eight bronze arms stretched wide. And in front of him, two meditation pillows sat on the floor.
Our first date had been like an interview. He’d interrogated me for over an hour, asking what I wanted from life. Asking about my values. Asking if I enjoyed meditation — meditation and spirituality were important to him in a partner. He was looking for a wife, and he knew what he wanted.
I’m still not sure why I wanted to go on a second date. Maybe it was because he had the world’s coolest job — head of the research team for a startup producing lab-grown meat. Maybe it was because I was sick of dating commitaphobic Peter Pans. Maybe it was just ’cause he was really, really hot. His blue eyes shown bright against his golden face. His hair flipped perfectly over his brow. His broad, wide Eastern European cheekbones made me melt.
But when I walked into that space, his space, the red flags unfurled into the wind.
I brought us dinner. He’d already eaten.
I asked about his job. He got defensive. He dodged the most interesting of questions.
He told me that I’d never understand him. After all, I was a Californian, and he was Ukranian. How could I understand how he’d grown up, what he’d experienced?
Finally, when the conversation started to get really heated, he held up a hand. “This is too intense for me. Can we pause?” he asked. “Slow things down?”
I took a deep breath. I looked out the window. Outside, the sun was shining. Lake Merritt glimmered in the distance. I turned myself off, and I turned calm, yoga teacher Lindy on. (Disclaimer: Not a yoga teacher.) “The weather really is beautiful today,” I said in my calmest voice.
But he didn’t take the bait. He didn’t want to talk about the weather.
He glanced over his shoulder, back at the never-ending wall of plants. His gaze landed on the meditation pillows, and finally, he smiled. “Will you meditate with me?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” I said.
I was curious. I was excited. I was looking forward to a free meditation session.
We stood from the hard wood chairs at his kitchen-side dining table and walked to the cushions. I sat on the red one. He sat on the blue. We faced each other, cross-legged, and I watched as he lit a bundle of sage.
“Do you know your seven chakras?” He asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Is it okay if I show them to you?” He looked deep into my dark blue eyes, holding the smoking sage stick in his hand.
“Yes,” I murmured.
Then, he began. He held the burning sage close to my body, at the seat of my groin. “This is your first chakra, the seat of pleasure.” One by one, he held the sage against seven points along the front of my spine, all the way up to my throat. At first, I wanted to laugh. The seat of pleasure? But then I surrendered. I closed my eyes as he repeated the seven chakras along my back.
I relaxed into the space, into my body. It no longer mattered that I was surrounded by plants. It didn’t matter that I was in an apartment so different from my own. It didn’t matter that my date and I were from different worlds, had different perspectives. We were here, in this moment, together.
Then he moved off his pillow, away from me, and he began to play his harmonium, an Indian instrument similar to the accordion. He pressed on the white and black keys as he chanted. I slipped deeper into my meditation.
The chanting stopped. The music ended. He returned to the pillow in front of me.
“May I touch your hand?” he asked.
“Yes,” I murmured.
He held my hand in his, and my eyes fluttered open.
I thought about his space. I thought about the calm, soothing energy of the moment. I marveled at how a person’s home — the way they move in it, the way they decorate it, who they are in it — tells you so much about them. I thought of the many men’s homes I’d seen over the years. I thought of my own home. I thought of my space, with its normal number of plants, with its speakers ready to blare music at the loudest volume possible, and with its wide open floors that were perfect for an impromptu dance party.
We looked into each other’s eyes as he asked, “What do you want to do next? Should we take a walk to the lake? What did the meditation bring to you?” His soul was alight. I felt like I was the center of his universe.
And soft with the sureness that only meditation can bring, I replied, “The meditation brought to me that I’d like to go home.”
