Five years ago this evening, I ended my post-work crosstown death march at St. Mark’s Bookshop chilled to the bone, and hoping my nose would unredden before meeting my latest online date. This was going to be the last for a while, I’d decided; the frustration of dating required a cleansing break a couple of times a year. And anyway, given the general length and creativity of the typical online dating gambit, this guy was lucky I deigned to respond at all to his mere two-sentence note that said, basically, hi and write back. But his ad mentioned a chaise longue, the strangeness of which piqued my interest, so I responded, and found myself here a couple of weeks later (after holiday travels and an all-night poker session on New Year’s Eve that I was still recovering from).
I looked over the selections at the design table up front and enjoyed the warmth of the store, hoping he might be a few minutes late so I could thaw a bit more. But he showed up on time (Considerate: check) and introduced himself. I put down my book and looked up, and up, and up. (Tall: check) He was cute, miracle of miracles, and had a genuine smile on his face, but that corduroy coat had to go. He asked if I was ready and mentioned he needed to drop off a book at his car. (A car: check, check! Herodotus: erm, seriously?)
And so we ambled around the EV looking for a warm place for drinks and conversation — or, rather, where he could talk and I could listen. (Chatterbox tendency: Keep an eye on it. Could just be nerves.) We found a small table at Virage, got a couple of drinks and discussed our strange timing: We’d been in New Orleans at the same time (he at Tulane, me visiting Tulane and generally enjoying New Orleans nightlife), but our paths never crossed. Stranger still was the coincidence of his mother living directly across the street from my old office in St. Louis, and his email correspondence with one of my co-workers there. (About basketball, I believe, but the details are hazy.)
After a couple of hours, we decided to move on to sample a different atmosphere and ended up at a nearly-empty Marion’s Continental for a nightcap. The evening was winding down and he seemed a bit logy, still recovering from jetlag (a New Zealand trip a few weeks before), but it had been a very enjoyable date — a pleasant surprise.
He offered to drop me off at my apartment (Clean car: check) and just happened to have They Say It’s Wonderful queued up on his iPod. That seemed awfully smooth and couldn’t have been mere coincidence, but I laughed it off. Hey, it was the background to the first dance at our wedding just two years later, so what did I know?
Happy meet-iversary, my love.
