Boys Life

I’m sitting in M Cafe on Melrose waiting for a blind date. It’s not so much a blind date, but an E-Date. There are no real blind dates anymore. Well that’s not really true because with the technology available these days any dame can have a Facebook full of misleading photos.  So even if I’ve seen 100 pictures, how she really looks is still up in the air.

This is day six away from home and I’m still in one piece. Over five days and nights in Miami for Art Basel I drank maybe a hundred packs of Emergen-C and just as many Red Bulls and Diet Cokes. If I still smoked I’d probably be dead. I’m not. Limiting myself a tiny bit each day in Miami, all week one misstep away from a debilitating cold, somehow I make it to LA, to M Cafe, in one piece.

I duck out of my business dinner early and grab a taxi off Hollywood Blvd. Taxis outside of New York are an afterthought. They’re for Saturday nights and the overly intoxicated, or the victims of license suspension; even the tourists here have cars. Half of me is wishing I had rented a car. There is no leg room and it smells so fucking bad. At least once I get there she’ll be stuck with me. I double check my phone for the M Cafe address then for the LA TAXI entry, not wanting to be stranded if she’s the annoying social climber I think she might be. I say the odds are 50-50. Heads and she’s the most annoying girl I’ve had to suffer through coffee with; tails, we fall in love, maybe not IN LOVE, but in love enough to wind up back in my room at the Roosevelt sharing secrets and sheets. This won’t be a first. The last time this happened my coffee date and I soaked the bed right through one of those thin Roosevelt comforters. I ended up using 180,000 American Advantage miles coming back for more, and she ended up the ex-girlfriend of a blogger. Something tells me neither I nor tonight’s coffee date will drag this one out. I’m guessing she’s more concerned about her career than a potential mate, and I’ve got a flight home Wednesday morning. But for two days, I’m down to melt.

I don’t know why I get up from my seat, but I do. I’m up and moving and suddenly she is right in front of me. She is exactly as I hoped she would be. Tall, pretty, awkward, cute, under styled. Somewhere between eye contact and a hug she touches my arm. I hate to be the guy talking about energy and connection, BUT when her hand locked against my forearm I felt it in my entire body. Before we finish acknowledging each other one of her old friends is upon us. Shit, this is awkward. Not so much for me, I’m just a dude doing what dudes do. But for my date, she’s forced to explain me, a friend of a friend from New York, she’s meeting at M Cafe? I can see the holy fuck what am I doing here all over her face as I’m introduced. It’s actually perfect timing. It softens the impact of us being relative strangers and thrusts us into a situation together. Successful navigation of this situation will bring us closer, just like in the movie Speed. I smile and make conversation. Being polite, playing my role, friend from New York. I amaze myself. Two years ago this would have been impossible for me. I’ve been busting my ass to improve my social graces and it’s totally paying off. When the friend finally stops talking about nothing a dim light turns on in her head and she dismisses herself. Alone at last. I order a cookie to go with the coffee I’m already drinking. She orders a soy latte or rice milk latte, I don’t remember. I pay, pick a table, and we sit. Now we’re really on a coffee date.

I can’t remember anything really specific. I was fucking nervous. Not that she wouldn’t like me, I was nervous that I’d dislike her. After a bit of nervous banter we talk about when I sent her a picture of my cock. It was still hot in New York then; a lingering September summer. That east coast humidity can feel like some sort of paranormal fog. Invisibly rolling up empty August avenues, possessing everyone in its path, nudging the devil on our shoulders. I wonder sometimes what would happen if Summer ceased to be a verb. If New York was at capacity in August, could The Fog could reach a critical mass, push us all over the edge of morality, a Shivers sequel, the East Village gone erotically mad. I was still possessed by The Fog, dissipating in September, but still powerful, when one of my friends suggested the “dick pic” as a tactic, and another confirmed its success ratios. I mean it’s tasteless and totally off the wall, but Jesus, what hilarity. Send a few, see if you don’t get hooked. Once I found a decent angle, I got a little trigger happy with my iphone for a few weeks. I mean it’s not like I was just sending at random. You tell a girl: be careful I’ll dick pic you. See how long it takes for her to say: Fine SEND IT. She didn’t care. It was funny and fun. Maybe she cared a little but I’m not trying to beanybody’s Romeo right now, and nothing says: maybe a good time but definitely not husband material, like a dick pic.

It’s cold now, and I’ve deleted the dick pics. I like them and I’m a supporter of all who dick pic but it’s not really my style. Dickpicing is a trendy leather jacket. Yeah I’ve had a few, turn the collar up, wear em around the LES, maybe to Sway one Sunday, eventually they go back in the closet. I’m a jeans and t-shirt guy, at least in the winter. August is a different story. Pink SeizeSur Vingt shirt, button factor leaning towards indecent but not tipping the scales. Sounds awful, but add nondescript black pants and a perfectly caught 360 kickflip and I swear to you, I’ll yelp to myself I feel so fucking good. We let the dick pic drop and move on to my snacking habits. One thing about me that will never change is that I’m just a big fucking kid. Here I am at M Cafe with this girl I’ve been objectifying for months, my Internet desire culminating and what am I doing, I’m eating this chocolate chip cookie like I’m fucking eight years old. Crumbs are all over the table and I guarantee I’ve got chocolate somewhere on my lip. She points out my little mess and I shrug it off with a Popeye-ish ‘I am what I am’ declaration. I have no specific recollection of what was said. She is spastic and cute. I don’t know how much of it is an act and what is actually just her fender bender way of making conversation. Her videos on Facebook portray the same spastic but hyper-aware blabber mouth persona that I half expected to fall flat in person. It does not, it soars. Even when her words are contrived, which is slightly more than occasionally, I don’t cringe. I am fucking being charmed. The cookie, she was fucking negging me with the cookie thing. We touch again across the table. I feel it again. Electricity. I never get like this I swear.

We can’t sit in M Cafe forever, institutional lighting, surrounded by all things organic, no sensual cuts of red meat here, there is nothing arousing about seitan . There is some debate about what to do. I know what I want to do, I want to see her apartment. She decides that we ought to walk around the block. It’s freezing for LA, dipping into the 30s. We huddle together walking up Le Brea; God I live for this shit. Our arms around each other, I feel every touch differently, with my whole body. This is not going to be a conquest. I’m not playing a retard in checkers, decimating with double jump after double jump, we are level and it feels great. Around the block we go. Joking, teasing, staying close under her oversized army jacket. I recognize the jacket from Facebook but I don’t tell her. I leave the Internet behind and enjoy what’s starting to feel like a perfect date. How many people do we all suffer to find this, for someone who puts us at ease.