The Corporation, Date 1: Almost-Olympic skier. Marketing/Advertising. 34, hipster, fit. My height. Messy-yet-stylish short red hair. Rather sexy tattooed sleeves of pin up girls, both arms. We meet at the Belgian beer joint in Williamsburg, Sputen Dyvel; sit at its thick wooden bar.
You know how corporations suggest you have a problem you never thought you had, then profit off solving it — fulfilling your new (non)need? Value Proposition? This guy—he’s a total corporation.
He’s drinking a beer, I’m having wine; he’s telling me boastful skiing stories from the old days, things are going well. Then, in the middle of everything, he stops, says: You don’t look people in the eye enough.
Just like that he’s criticizing me. I’m self-conscious anyway, and on a date, now I’m being told I’m observably flawed. I don’t know where I’m looking after he says this; it’s all slow motion and speedy at the same time, I’m probably NOT looking-in-his-eyes. He’s been talking, I haven’t been listening.
Then I hear: Heyyyyy—it’s okay… I realize he’s consoling me. You shouldn’t be so shy—you have GREAT eyelashes. You should feel GREAT looking into people’s eyes!
Now I’m listening.
I’m particularly interested in this reasoning. Out of all the reasons I should look someone in the eye, it’s because of my eyelashes?
Next time I look at him, I see he’s assumed some air of self-satisfaction. Peacock-like. As if he’s figured it out all-by-himself: problem created, problem solved. He’s proud. I imagine his check-mark. Girl: Landed.
You should feel GREAT looking into people’s eyes. This is hanging in the space between us, when he grabs my hair, pulls me toward him and kisses me as if we just conquered my eye-contact problem together: we’re celebrating.
I should have left. Instead, a Japanese restaurant—the kind where you cook your own food, called Dokebi Bar & Grill, he orders sake after sake, keeps asking me to go home with him. Come home with me, he says. I say, No but thanks, he keeps asking Why not, saying Please? Then begins the pouting—real, actual pouting.
Me: though I’ve had some sake, surprisingly sober. Him: so tanked he doesn’t remember how to get home.
Do you know where I live?
He’d actually pointed out his place earlier in the evening, so I say: Yeah, that way. Above the deli on the corner.
I walk home.
•••
Leave. Get up and leave. Earlier. Way earlier. If there were do-overs. That’s what I’d do. Stop dating jerks. Stop staying.
I stay, and then I don’t like myself, instead of not liking him. I should not like him. But I wake up the next day and I’ve got this pit in my stomach like I’ve done something wrong. I feel guilty for not leaving.
On the up side: My first post-Thomas make-out! The Corp was hot and he had sleeves! At least that.
So, The Corporation emails me TWICE the next morning asking me out. I don’t respond right away, because, you know, he barely knows where he lives, for one. He follows with texts that afternoon to see if I had gotten his emails.
(Total Number of Dates: One)
The MDQ 