How Not to Date
Do not attempt this at home. Or at all.
Elements of this tale are based loosely and recklessly on events that may or may not have taken place. This is how I ended up basing my dating criteria on romantic comedy ideals, and even revamped my own methodology for dating to fit these techniques. To do this, it all began with a total stranger on the street.
It was a crisp, Autumn day, and one of my few friends and I were grabbing a coffee. We’ll call her Becca. Conversation was becoming drier and drier by the second, so she brought up men — a discussion topic that has been known to scare me off. To be clear, I’m fine with talking about men, in general, but dating and relationships, my anxieties of life; these subjects are enough to make me run for the hills.
Becca knows and accepts this, yet on this particular day, she pressed on, “Y’know, just because you don’t like dating, doesn’t mean you can like, hide out forever. You’ve gotta do something. Figure it out.”
Instinctively, I volleyed, “Oh, I have this situation figured out. And I am not hiding, at all. Completely not.” Becca stared me down.
“Y’remember that movie called 10 Things I hate About You?”
“Yeah, they named it after how much I adore you,” I smiled at her, taking a sip of my latte.
“Oh, gee, I’m really laughing it up over here. No, genius, what if we did that thing from the movie. Like, you got a guy, who was like totally the opposite of what you’re looking for, and you date him. Then I bet by the time you really actually date him, you two will have feelings for each other.”
Now I stared at Becca. Waited for her to laugh, or give a hint that she was joking. She had a wide-eyed, curious look on her face, and asked, “Well, what do you think?”
“That has got to be the craziest thing I’ve heard in my life.”
About twenty minutes later, my friend and I had begun a brisk walk downtown, scouting out guys. I would point them out to her, and she would say no to each one.
“You keep choosing guys that you would obviously date,” she complained, taking a huge sip of her latte.
“So, you pick one.”
She looked around. As her eyes gleaned over passing strangers, my stomach began to turn. Was I really so ready to date someone that my friend picked out for me on a whim?
“That’s the guy!” Becca hissed in my ear, pulling my jacket.
Becca had pointed out someone who was glaringly handsome, practically screamed tech, and so clean-cut it practically hurt to look his way. The definite antithesis of my culture.
This is probably an appropriate time to give a semblance of a description of myself.
On-and-off smoker, 5'4, Native American, and an artist.
It was after my thorough once over of this stranger, that I replied solemnly with, “Not at chance. Pick someone else.”
My friend gasped. “What! Why not? He’s perfectly gorgeous and just sitting there, waiting for you to go and talk to him. God knows you’d never do it, unless I made you.”
A strategy suddenly leapt through my synapses. Mumbling, I looked at her, “Well, that’s where your wrong, see… He and I, actually, did date… It just fizzled out, romantically, so to speak…”
As she eyeballed me, Becca vocalized a hint of compassion. “Oh, I had no idea. You never even mentioned him before.”
“Yeah, it was pretty rough. His name is Brian,” I mechanically answered, thinking on my toes.
She stood there, seemingly lost in thought, almost tangentially someplace else, and suddenly, Becca began trotting towards this stranger. However, I was frozen in place. She smiled at him, “Hello, I’m sorry, is your name Brian?”
He took out an earphone. “Is my name Ryan? No, I’m Adam.”
Becca turned back to me, a devious grin spreading across her face, and her eyes wild with wicked intent.
I always supposed that I never had a ‘type’.
Growing up, I’d read some magazines here and there that bolstered the idea of people having a generic favorite when dating, but ultimately, I shied away from the whole narrative.
If asked, my friends said that I dated losers.
This is just something I accepted, but for a long while, I found as almost a commonplace joke within our friend-group. Until it became almost a topic of concern.
“But I don’t date,” I stated, one day. “I mean, almost never.”
One of my friends laughed. “True, but when you do, it’s always a loser. You go for guys you can take care of. They can’t even take out the garbage.”
Personally though, I assumed that my type was comprised around an individual who could hold my attention during a conversation on a first date. Beyond that, not much came to mind.
That fateful Autumn morning when Becca picked Adam out of the crowd, I felt if I had a type, Adam most definitely went against everything I stood for. Or wanted. He was too much in all the wrong places. Before I knew it, Becca was waving me over, calling my name loudly and clearly. My feet moved autonomously below me, carrying me towards the pair.
Adam pushed up his gold-rim glasses curiously. “You wanted to speak with me?” His voice was plush, benign, an agent of thoughtfulness. Becca fled the scene, taking wait on a bench nearby.
Thoughts lulled around in my over-crowded head. I pulled some words together to form a consecutive sentence, “Erh, yes, it’s nice to meet you. I was wondering if you’d like to go on a date sometime.”
Adam’s gaze strengthened, as though he were trying to see through a scam. After a momentary pause, he responded, “Apologies, but I don’t date.”
A smile crept across my lips. I felt more human.
“That’s great, actually, y’know. I don’t either.”
This response jilted Adam, who was still looking openly into my eyes. He looked almost completely thrown off-guard by my pivot, and wasn’t sure where to move the conversation. Muted interest sparked in his green eyes.
“Hmm. One date. I’m free next Friday. Can I give you my phone number?”
“That works!”
“Okay…”
Becca beamed and shone with happiness the entire ride back to our apartment. You would’ve thought she was the one going on the date, not the other way around.
She turned to look at me, chirping ecstatically, “I just cannot believe I got you that date! It’s destiny! Fate! Now all you have to do is get married. Ride off into the sunset!” She sighed a deep sigh, like she was drunk on love itself. The way she was speaking made me laugh. “I’m not so sure about the marriage and fate stuff, but I do think my next step is getting ready for Friday.” The next few days loomed ahead of me like a sudden death sentence.
Becca gasped like she awoke from a trance. “Oh god, you’re so right! We have to get you ready — no, perfect! You have to have a rom-com relationship!”
Adam and I texted about where and when we would meet for our date, and decided on a small café downtown. He supposedly went there frequently, and I had never heard of it.
It was in those very few short days that I went through a grueling dating bootcamp of sorts. Very montage-esque.
A major downside of rom-coms is men are typically pursuing women, not the other way around. When Becca and I ‘studied’ our movie inspirations, I felt that Adam might find me a bit off-putting if I approach him in the ways a man might often approach a woman. I pointed this out to her.
“People need to be more open-minded! And plus, we need more aggressive, dominant women in relationships,” Becca reassured me. As I stared at her questioningly, she looked confident and sighed, “It’s one of the basics of feminism. You oughta read more. Dummy.”
In the blink of an eye, it was Friday, the big day.
This was the mere beginning of an out-of-control and amazing escapade that somewhat resembled a relationship — every now and again. For those who ached through the words until the ending of this article, I thank you, firstly, and secondly, please, let me know if you would like to know what happened on our first date.
