I knew it wasn’t the venue.
Everyone loves the venue, everyone online raves about the venue – I mean, it’s a 4.9 on Yelp with a single dollar sign. Single. Do you know how rare that is? It’s one in a million and it’s right in walking distance from the ice rink.
It even had the in-vogue picnic park outside seating, with the lights in mason jars – incandescent or I would gouge my eyes out – and a little elevated stage for some strumming matched ambiance. I concede that if they rearranged it a little bit, brought in the new trendy little new wave lamps and shelled out for a piano then it’d be a 5. I always mention this to anyone in the staff that’d listen, but they’d always give me a breathless “yeah that’d be nice” before moving on. Fine.
But 4.9 is unbelievable and it was a less crowded evening, and the food was excellent, as per usual. Everything was going according to plan. There was no flicker to my rhythm: the conversation was virtuoso impeccable. I worked through my dealbreakers and they were passing each one, not even knowing this was an interrogation and I am stone cold inside.
I should’ve been elated. It really was a once-in-a-lifetime evening, the way the light refracted off our stilted glass and the taquitos arranged themselves into a smile – we had a big laugh about it. I perfected this laugh.
And I should’ve been elated. This was applicant #261 after all, and possibly the last after a five year searching. My spreadsheets tracked each prior with highs, lows, or the newfound requisites bubbling from disgusts, which, if I entertained over a lifetime, would drive me insane. A mounting list but I’ve found some concessions I’d happily take – for example, if someone picked at my food I worked through the hatred and would decide that I’d just stop eating and pretend I’m full. It’s fine.
But as soon as the waiter delivered the macadamia cookie custard melt with the flittered sprinkles, caramel, so I fell into psychological arrest. Everything came as stop-motion, slow reverb. For a moment I thought it was food poisoning, which I would rectify the same as divine retribution through a scathing online review. But it wasn’t: stabilizing my nausea by gripping the seat bench I looked across and the smile greeting showed as unbelievable shiny plastic. The strumming background deafened until synchronized into a methodic heart thump.
At once, I saw every single applicant superimposed. Hundreds of smiling eyes and teeth in a shingled concentration and almost alien. Each arm moved to stab into the macadamia melt, and the crumbs fell the same way, and the eyes looked up with the same venomous delight to them. As if my eyes will be devoured next.
And my mouth started moving on its own, synced to the hundred times prior; I may as well have been evicted from the doll I then became. All I could see was the flesh merged together, flesh everywhere, and when my leg lifted itself to cross the other, so it felt all numb and foreign.
With a nausea rising and a pass-out soon in order, so I scrambled for any reason at all why this is happening while I coo the fourth dimensional leviathan across from me, trying to drag me out of the place and asking for the check. The only thing that was working was tightening my grip until a hand of pressed whites. The scenery and I swear I saw snake tongues and I closed my eyes for any reprieve, any stability. It all retraced, of course, to the dessert I think.
The macadamia melt was a pendent memory with my highschool sweetheart. It was the same sort of autumn day, and they had a sweater fuzz of maroon that made me, for a minute, consider that this could be my eternity. This could be my eternity. But now all I had was this melt demolished by these online skinwalkers.
Opening my eyes so the leviathan collected into the single form of what clearly seems to be another distant city resident that I’m betting my future on secretly. It seemed so ridiculous. This evening was perfect, but we both knew as soon as a less-perfect moment came that was end for both of us. I wanted to go back to that maroon evening, back before I had to mind game my way through everything.
Deep down I felt ruined. For a moment, of course, but I immediately realized that, well, I could just move onto applicant #262. After all, it’s clear that everything seemed perfect but maybe there is a flesh-suit wearing alien in front of me making me think that. This nausea never happened with the 260 priors, so there must be some incompatibility here we don’t have to work through. It’s not me, I concluded.
We parted ways with a hug and I sauntered to my car while deleting their number. A wash of relief came across – it’s all good practice for the next one. Applicant #262 has a good ring to it. This hang-up will not deter me. I flipped back on my twenty dating profiles again, shelling a $200 total every month.
My twin flame waits.