Something I wrote about a date I went on earlier this summer:
I believe in aliens, now. I never really thought about it before, but it all started to make sense to me, sipping my third Manhattan, listening to D explain her experiences with the extraterrestrial. I started the night in better shape than this, tipsy and intellectually pliable, slouching on a thrift store couch underneath a giant painting of a pinball machine that someone thought was a good idea. Like paintings of pinball machines, talking about aliens on a first date is not a good idea.
But so I'm sitting there in Uptown and D is explaining a book she has read which references some weird trick of light in the night sky that she once saw and now is the cornerstone of her unshakable belief in aliens walking here among us. Sometimes talking to someone on a first date can be like shoveling coal in a furnace, you just want to keep the words flying into the fire fast enough so the train doesn't derail itself on some unexpected obstacle. This is what I feel like now. Drunk, staring at D, her red-streaked hair, nubby fingers, and Han Solo boots; all I want to do is keep her talking.
I'm ready to get laid tonight. I've decided. It's been almost two months and, though it’s a Tuesday and I wasn't all that excited about seeing D, it's closing in on midnight and I'm drunk enough to where going home alone is going to feel lonely. So I agree knowingly when she asks me if I believe in aliens. "Sure. The universe is so big, we have no idea what could be out there," I say. "How could there not be other life forms?"
As soon as those words come out of my mouth I realize I'm not going to get laid tonight. It's not that I have a vested interest in aliens one way or another, but I become aware that I'm shoveling shit now. It's not even an interesting enough line to be a turn-on. I'm just trying to keep the conversational flume open enough to vent out all of the astral certainties that D seems to have committed to before I reach the choking point. Before I start coughing up condescending protestations and have to come home and confront my hard-on alone.
Earlier in the evening, in a different bar, some speakeasy downtown that required a clever password for entry ("library"), D was on the offensive. I was tired from work and mildly disappointed by how old she looked under the unfriendly light at our table. I was distant and academic, constantly sliding my glasses back up my nose. She was going out of her way to make herself sound book-smart, using big words in sentences where they didn't naturally belong. Prerogative. Misunderestimated. Onus.
She looks better under the red lights of Uptown. I look worse, I'm sure, with raccoon eyes from too much work in front of a computer. Everything I was earlier is collapsing under an avalanche of nonchalant lies about my ability to care about something that I will never, ever see over the course of my life.
Half an hour later I'm walking D back to her car. We kiss goodnight. I steal one of her expensive Canadian cigarettes for the road and, once she's pulled out into traffic, I start walking the seven blocks back to my place. If aliens ever do come down from the skies to take over the world, tell them I tried to believe on a Tuesday night. It just didn't work out that way.
Previous Posts:
Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines Redux
Love Machine: Loyal as a Dog
Date Machine: Rate My Politics
High School Machine: Ten-Year Reunion Fantasies
Date Machine: Setting Up Your Friends
Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings Redux
Love Machine: Making Love to ESPN
Date Machine: 5 Things I'm Thankful For
Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings
Love Machine: What Work Is
Sex Machine: Sleeping Naked
Love Machine: Breaking Up in a Text Message
Date Night: The F U Date
Sex Machine: Shave My Bush
Love Machine: Taking A Break From Dating
Date Machine: The Celebrity You Most Resemble
Sex Machine: I Kissed A Boy
Vote Machine: No Gay People Can't
Sex Machine: Let's Have an Orgy
Sex Machine: My First STD
Sex Machine: There's a Possibility You've Been Infected With HIV
Love Machine: Let's Make Babies
Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines
Sex Machine: My Kingdom for a Boner
Crying In Public: Some Corner in Brooklyn