Lonely Hearts Club Chemistry

Blind Date

Back sometime during my thirties I had a blind date with a young woman who picked me out of a "Friend Finder" newspaper section that I’d just written to. She had nothing to go on but my own self-description. I don’t remember if she wrote to me first, but we did talk on the phone and had a quite pleasant long conversation one night. I remember I thought she seemed quite calm and willing to laugh. That weekend we got together for what must have been the world’s most boring date. She didn’t laugh or smile much; maybe I didn’t, either. Oddly, she didn’t seem to know it was boring, for she didn’t express it and seemed surprised to hear from me at the end of the date that we hadn’t had a very good time. I didn’t understand if she was actually that obtuse or if the pretence somehow saved injury to her pride. Surely she didn’t think we had agreed on very much or expressed the same sympathies toward any personal or world issue?

How things went so wrong between the phone conversation and the real conversation seemed very odd to me, maybe more odd to her. Her appearance was a little plain vanilla, I admit, and maybe that cooled things for me. But, more importantly, her facial expressions were so bored during even the highlights of our dinner conversation that she just seemed Not There to me. She didn’t have the sense of humor she’d had on the phone. Maybe I didn’t, either. She didn’t seem to be like me and showed no sign that she knew anyone remotely like me. Everyone of whom she reminded me were not pleasant memories. Everything was awkward, but what the fuck had gone so wrong?

It did at least convince me (by evidence of its absence!) that there is such a thing in the world as in-person chemistry between people and that she and I didn’t have a bit of it, couldn’t get it with a prescription, and couldn’t have described it properly to a police officer who was willing to go out in a dangerous neighborhood and look for it. It was a total loss. The mere mention of blind dates have cooled my ardor ever since, though I have friends who have benefited by them. I guess you have to keep on keeping on.

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