CHAPTER 16

The First Date

John and she had been hanging out after every class since two weeks after “the Laura incident,” as they had started to refer to it. He would walk her to her next class, and they’d talk and flirt right up until she had to go in. She liked the way he never rushed her. The patient way he seemed as happy as she was just to be there. Until then she had firmly believed that most guys would spend only as little time as was needed to get a girl to stay around. “You always want to be there more than they do,” Anne would say. And it was true. Leda’s ex-boyfriend was a myriad of attention deficit–like behavior. Sometimes she’d see him, sometimes she wouldn’t. Sometimes he’d call, sometimes he wouldn’t. She would, though; she would always want to be there or want to talk. Before meeting John, she assumed that it was just the difference between men and women, that women were somehow kinder and more patient. With John she became reassured in the possibility that humanity wasn’t singularly female.

By the end of the semester a tension had emerged between them. Leda would stand in the hall with John, talking about cats and the potential of homemade mayonnaise, and all the while she’d be thinking: Ask me out. Ask me out. Ask me out. The waiting grew tiresome, and she started to worry that maybe she was misjudging the whole thing. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. I really hate my arms. I wish I had thinner arms. Anne would ask every day about the progress of the flirtation, and at a certain point Leda began responding with things like, “Yeah, I don’t know. I’m kind of over the whole thing.” Then one day she walked past the school’s café window and John tapped the glass to get her attention. He motioned for her to come in, and right then she knew that she was wrong about all of it, and that he hadn’t noticed her arms.

She came in and sat beside him at the counter. They chatted about school and their upcoming finals. She could smell his coffee when he’d lift his cup, an aroma that with all its bitterness suddenly smelled sweet to her.

“Are you free this Saturday?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

They talked awhile longer and exchanged phone numbers. Leda waved at him through the window as she left. She felt truly happy and light; the prospect of a date with John calmed the frantic energy of being single. In a few days she’d be on a date with someone. Life seemed in control. Life seemed brilliant. On the train ride home she watched a girl in a bad skirt silently sing along to music. She tried to guess what she was singing. She texted Anne in the places where she had service.

“We’re going out!” she texted.

“Ahh!! So exciting!! It sure took him long enough ”

She didn’t respond to Anne’s text for a while. Whatever, Anne. Just be happy for me. The light from outside filled the train momentarily. Leda got a text from her mom.

“Look at this picture I found. Three years old,” it said over a picture of herself in a hot pink bathing suit with a Ninja Turtle hat. There was a Band-Aid on each knee. You skin your knees like that so much when you’re little and you can never imagine a life with unskinned knees, but then suddenly you stop skinning your knees and everything is different.

“I love it ♥,” she responded.

She laid her head back against the window. She was tired, still elated though, still light, still in a glow. I’ll wear my red shirt that makes my boobs look huge, she thought. The window felt cool on her temple. She knew she’d wear her good underwear even though they wouldn’t have sex. Something to look forward to, she thought. And is there really anything better than something to look forward to? Am I doing anything but trying to feel good?

The night before the date she could hardly sleep. She kept living hypothetical conversations over and over in her head as she lay there.

I’ll say: You look handsome.

And he’ll say: You look gorgeous.

And I’ll say: Thanks.

And then maybe I’ll wink or shrug my shoulders, kind of.

And then at dinner he’ll say: What do you like to write?

And I’ll say: I like writing about women. I write for women.

And he’ll say: You only write for women?

And I’ll say: Yes, I’m fine with that. Aren’t you?

And he’ll say: Yes.

And he’ll smile in the way he does. He’ll get what I mean. He’ll see me as I am.

And then when he leaves he’ll try to kiss me, and I will kiss him back, but I won’t open my mouth really. I mean, I will but only like this and only a little bit, like this. And she kissed her arm. I should really try and go to sleep.

As she got ready for her date she let herself fully indulge in all of it. She played OutKast’s “So Fresh, So Clean” as she danced naked and got dressed. She looked at herself in the mirror. I am kind of linear, she thought, even though I ate a lot of chocolate through finals. I look like sex. She wore her darkest lipstick and her best push-up bra. When she left her apartment, she looked at her reflection in the mirror and winked at herself. It was the only winking she’d do on the date. She’d explain it all to John two summers later.

“It’s like the date is with myself. Seeing you is always nice, but getting prettied up and feeling beautiful, that’s all it’s really about.”

“So relationships are about you feeling pretty?” he asked.

“Not totally, but basically,” she said. “But when you think about it, isn’t everything in life about feeling pretty?”

They had planned to meet up in front of a coffee shop in Harvard Square. She looked for him outside, scouring over the little courtyard, anticipating his tallness. She checked her phone. No text. He was late. After a while, standing around outside made her feel self-conscious so she decided to wait for him inside. She sat in a chair by the window, a seat away from a gangly-looking boy with a laptop. The boy was young and attractive in a sort of brooding way. Leda noticed he was staring at her, and so she smiled at him. Maybe this brooding boy likes me. She tapped her phone against the bar and sighed. The boy continued to look up at her here and there, smiling, catching her gaze, and acting as if he were about to speak. He may have thought many things about what to say or what to do to attract her. He may have had her if he’d thought of something to say. She would think of it in her early forties, one afternoon as she cleaned out the attic. The dust settled around her as she pulled out a box of unused frames. She’d lift a flap of the box, the smell of cardboard, the light filtered in thin lines of the attic window; she would think: If that boy had talked to me who might I have become?

Moments later John appeared in the courtyard. He stood with his hands in his pockets and looked clumsy and nervous. It was endearing. She got up, paying a light glance to the brooding boy who was watching her leave.

She ran up to him. “John,” she said. And he turned around. “You’re so late,” she said.

“I’m sorry. Did you think I wasn’t coming?” he said.

“I wasn’t really worried.”

“I was going to text you, but my phone died on the way here.”

“Likely story.” She smiled. Does he know that I am flirting? Because I am trying to flirt. Maybe I don’t know what flirting is. Maybe I never have flirted and I should be at home eating leftover spaghetti.

“Should we go eat?” she asked.

“Let’s do it.”

The sun was low in the sky and over the river the light had dissolved from blue to copper as it touched down on the current. The air smelled like springtime, the brisk freshness of it something she would later associate with the early days of dating. A tall, thin girl in a romper walked her bike past, looking first at Leda and then at John and then back to her. Leda felt a rewarding sense of superiority. She shot a glance at the girl and smiled. I’m the prettiest, she thought, but it wasn’t even a thought at all. It was more a rising up in her, a boiling that would rise and fall her whole life through, a barometer of self-worth.

They chose the Mediterranean place on the corner. She had only ever been there once before, on a particularly terrible blind date with a pudgy British guy who wore a bowler hat and informed her that “rape accusations ruin the reputation of many fine men.”

“If they don’t want to be accused of rape, maybe they shouldn’t rape,” she’d said.

She thought about telling John about the date, but considering he’d suggested the restaurant, she worried he’d take it the wrong way.

They ordered a hummus and falafel vegetable platter. Leda had been conscious not to order meat, as about a month before John mentioned he was a vegetarian. When he asked what she wanted to order, she hardly let him finish the question, saying in a quick over-panicked voice, “Vegetable platter.”

“I don’t mind if you order meat, you know,” he said.

She took a deep breath and calmed herself, figuring there was only room for one nervous, vegetable-related outburst. “No, I really do want the vegetable platter.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, definitely.”

As she ate dinner she worried over having something on her face or in her teeth. She unconsciously covered her mouth with her hand as she chewed. She didn’t want to eat the last falafel even though she was still hungry. I’ll eat the leftover spaghetti at home, she thought. He paid for dinner, which was something she wasn’t used to but always hoped for. Her mom had told her, “The man should always pay for dinner.” She’d considered this piece of advice an outdated relic of a bygone dating era.

“Mom, things are different now,” she had said.

“Things will never be different. Women will always give more of themselves to men; at the very least let them pay for dinner.”

With her ex-boyfriend she’d split the bill or paid for both of them pretty much every time. He treated her about four times in the six-month relationship, and when they broke up because he wanted to move to North Carolina to join an energy-efficient farm, she came to realize how foolish it had all been. She’d tell friends, “I looked back and thought: All that money I spent and for what?”

After dinner she and John got tea and sat on a bench in the courtyard in front of the coffee shop where they had met up at the beginning of the date. It was cool out now that the sun had gone down completely. She shivered slightly at first, but drinking the tea kept her warm. John talked in the quiet way she had begun to adore. He asked her about living in Cambridge and what she liked to write about and if she’d ever been published.

“I like to write about women,” she said. “But I haven’t really been published. Well, actually, I was published in this school journal, but I don’t think it really counts.”

“That most certainly counts. What was the story about?” he asked.

“It was about a girl whose friend wants to be in Playboy, and she’s all against it, and then she ends up with the opportunity to be in it, and so she considers it even though she’s this feminist and she thinks it’s horrible and all that. For a minute she’s flattered.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, well, I feel like we all like to believe we’re above wanting to feel pretty.”

“Are you?”

“I don’t think so.”

Soon after, it was time to go home. It was getting late and her tea had grown completely cold. They walked together to the subway and had to part ways, as their trains ran in opposite directions. Will he kiss me? she thought, but at the same time didn’t want it to happen. She wasn’t sure why; it was anticipation and fear and tiredness from the night. She decided to hug him quick and to not give him the chance. “Goodbye, John. Text me,” she said.

Their first kiss would take place on their second date, and it would be at the train station in a moment similar to this one. John would hold her shoulders and the kiss would be simple and short.

She sat on the train and watched John walking off from their first date. Her heart felt fluttered, as if someone had run their hands over it. An older woman who sat beside her started chatting with her about a play she had just seen. Leda nodded and asked all kinds of questions about how it was and where it was and who was in it. She was very interested in the play, as if she and this woman shared some experience that night that was exactly the same, a blazing exuberance between them that was intimate and destined to be brief. As the subway came to the woman’s stop, they nodded to each other in a silent agreement about which neither of them knew.

When Leda got off the train she checked her phone, and then checked it again right after she got in the door of her apartment. He hadn’t texted. It’s not reasonable for me to expect him to text tonight, but god I hope he does, she thought. She ate cold leftover spaghetti standing at her counter. And as she put on her pajamas, she heard her phone buzz. It was one of the best sounds she would ever hear in her entire life. She wouldn’t consider why or how it was possible to feel so different from the day before, to feel so much because a man sat beside her on a bench and listened to her talk and bought her a tea. She wouldn’t ever believe how it could send her afloat and light her up and be everything to her.

“I like you,” the text said.