I Love Going On Your Dates

A letter from the past, on my birthday

Hat by the divine Camille of N.B. Goods in Nashville, TN

Today is my birthday, and yesterday I received a very lovely early birthday present -a kind rejection note from an editor on an essay I submitted in December of 2022. This may not sound like a gift, but if you’re a writer who submits to various publications, you know how rare it is to actually hear anything back. Editors are very busy!

When we writers do hear back, it’s often a form letter. But even a slightly personalized letter from an editor is so unusual. It really brings a smile to my face. And since that publication does not permit simultaneous submissions - which is to say, you are expected to only submit to this publication and wait to submit it elsewhere until you hear a yes or no - I had held off on publishing it anywhere else.

Reading this essay was like opening a time capsule. It is so haunting, so lonely, meditative, and sad. My own life has changed so much in the past ten months. I am full of gratitude for the way things have evolved, for the kindness I’ve experienced, for the things I’ve learned, for my sobriety, for all of you.

I am grateful to that editor for responding. They apologized for the delay in reply, but they were right on time!

I am so happy to be able to share this essay with you today.

New Yorkers are the fucking best.

Much love,

Sara

P.S. A paid subscription here makes a GREAT birthday gift ;)

Venmo for tips

Patreon (for more experimental, less formal stuff)

Book me to speak about mental health and creativity

A place to buy my books: Bookshop.org

A favorite nonprofit: Miry's List

Work with me on your writing project

2022.12.03

Brooklyn, New York

I spend a lot of time on other people’s dates. I wait with one for the other. I clock the way they greet each other, who takes the lead with the waiter, who asks the most questions, and who listens with the most obvious interest. I catch the shift in tone when an innocent question triggers an unexpectedly tense answer. I listen as people fall into, or out of, love.

I often dine alone, but one is never really alone in a New York restaurant. Every subatomic particle of real estate is so precious that restaurant tables are wedged up against each other in order to pack in as many paying customers as possible. More butts in seats means more dollars in the till, and if you hadn’t heard, the rent is still too damn high. 

I dine alone not just because I am single, too scarred by past disappointments to let anybody walk all the way into my heart, but because I really like to write in restaurants. I’ve been drafting a pilot about emotional affairs, the kind where everybody wants to die and nobody has an orgasm in the same room as each other. Appetizers, and loud New York chatter, help me focus.

The clink of glasses, the clatter of dishes in bus trays, the roar of laughter occasionally punctuating the normal din of conversation – all this is somehow a panacea to distraction. It drowns out the myriad other thoughts that could take me away from my writing – thoughts about loneliness, and disappointment, and dread. I used to drink, but now I don’t, so I sit alone in busy restaurants and I write.

Anyway, I find it easier to listen to dates than to go on them. Cheaper, too.

In restaurants, I usually write longhand with a purple or black pen. Unless someone engages me, I keep my eyes on my own paper. But when my mind wanders, the conversations around me cease to be background noise and come into sharp focus.

Without even looking at them, it’s easy to pick out the New Yorkers versus the visitors. A New York couple can sit less than six inches away from me and have an unabashedly detailed conversation, replete with graphic sexual descriptions, full medical histories, the ins and outs of divorce proceedings, or highly specific real estate dealings including – and I am not exaggerating – loudly recited bank account and routing numbers, addresses, and social security numbers for co-op applications.

But a visiting couple without a lot of city experience – ah, that’s where things take a turn. They will be equal parts disturbed and intrigued by the presence of a woman sitting by herself, writing in a journal, so physically close to them. 

Usually, they forget about me as soon as they see I’m not about to bother them. But once in awhile, one half of the couple makes a bit of a to-do about the whole thing.

“Wow, this is cozy,” they’ll say, always in one of two tones. There’s the sweet version, a kind of cheerful, embarrassed “let’s make the best of this” attitude. I give a gentle nod and smile, then go right back to my script.

But then there’s the rude version, which inevitably coincides with the offended party rolling their eyes in my direction and sighing as if I had deliberately colluded with front of house staff and engineered the situation just to mess with their jazzy little evening. 

When I hear too much grumbling for my taste, I look up, make direct eye contact, and smile brightly. I do not look away. This visibly frightens them, and they either shut up or mumble, “Sorry, it’s just – these tables are so close together!”

“I understand,” I say. “They have to pack a lot of us in here to make the rent.” At this point, we either silently agree to never speak again or – and this is the rarer but more delightful outcome – we actually get to know each other a little. 

I am the daughter of a librarian, and I cherish a simple research task. I stand ready to assist when they admit they’re grumpy because the museum tour is sold out (I have alternate suggestions) or one of them broke a heel on a subway grate (I know a guy who knows a cobbler who works very fast) or they’re afraid that if they’re ten minutes late to Into the Woods they won’t be allowed in at all (untrue, they’ll be held for a musical number and can watch on a monitor or use the bathroom while there’s no line.)

I tell them I understand their initial discomfort. We New Yorkers are an odd lot. There are many other densely populated cities where people move fast and keep their eyes on the prize, but we seem to have a particular aptitude for what appears to be cold indifference.

When one lives surrounded by so many other souls, it is an act of generosity and of self-protection to studiously keep to oneself, to avoid staring or engaging. If there is an emergency, I always see New Yorkers step up to help. 

The visitors and I talk about that. I ask them about their hometowns, and their favorite and least favorite things about where they are from. They loosen up. They have their wine, and I have my ginger ale or iced coffee.

We part as friends. Sometimes we follow each other on Instagram. A couple of times I have even been invited back to hotel rooms. I have always politely said no. 

Once in awhile, I find myself seated beside people in the throes of an affair, like the characters in my pilot. I do not take notes. I do not have to. I’ve been there myself. It’s just a friend lunch. It’s just a work dinner. It’s just that your hearts are exploding the entire time, or mine was, and it’s taken years to put the charred pieces back together. Use whatever metaphor you like – you can see the burn marks, the scars, the line to which the poisoned floodwaters rose, slick with mud and longing.

These are not my favorite dates to listen in on. 

The ones I prefer, my favorites in fact, are the charming first dates between nervously excited people, too enraptured to notice anyone else in the room, or perhaps in the world. I can remember what it is like to fall in love out in the open, fair and square, with no pretense or subterfuge, and it’s much better than the other way of doing it. 

A happy New York City first date is something magical to behold. Sure, it’s possible that one of them is a charming sociopath who already has three secret families in two other boroughs plus Bergen County, but still – this could be true love!

Once, I was seated in a solo spot at the bar at a restaurant in Fort Greene, squished between a gossiping pair of longtime friends and a couple who were meeting for the first time in real life.

They talked about how much they hate dating apps (most couples who meet on dating apps talk about this on a first date). They realized they knew a couple of people in common. His sweater was perfect. Her eyeliner looked really good. It’s hard to get a subtle cat eye just right, but by God, she’d done it. 

I wanted to lean over to one of them when the other went to the restroom to say, “It’s going great, right? Right?” but I am not yet old enough for such behavior to be considered charmingly dotty. Plus, I have better manners than the characters in my script, and better boundaries than the character I used to be.

More wine was ordered. The gossips to my left got the check and left for the party thrown by the people they’d been discussing. If you’re wondering about their friends: Trevor had an attitude, Tiffani needed to dump his ass, and it was weird having Carl as their roommate, considering what everybody knew about his history with Tiffani – or was it just history?

With the seats to my left now empty, I wanted to move over and give the first date more space. But would that come off as rude? Would they think I was annoyed by them, like one of the eyerolling, sighing types who always got on my nerves? 

I am short, and nearly fell off my barstool attempting to plant both feet flat on the floor. The bartender was briefly concerned. Of course the couple didn’t notice. I could’ve pulled off my jeans, plunked my bare ass on the bar next to them and set their kebabs on fire, and it wouldn’t have mattered. They were already building they own little world, and nothing else mattered.

I kept my pants on, which has proven to generally be a winning strategy in recent years. I returned to my draft, to my pilot about the people in messy relationships. I hoped this real-life couple never had to deal with anything difficult, ever.

I hoped that if they ever went on a trip to a new city, they would be satisfied with the breadth of space between tables in restaurants.

I hoped their friends wouldn’t prattle on about them at bars. I hoped the high cost of living in our city never gave them need to search for a roommate like the alluring Carl, who could end up being their undoing. 

I hoped neither of them ever ended up in a restaurant, trying not to cry, pretending to enjoy a perfectly normal dinner across from a “friend.” Just a friend. I have been on those dates – and they are dates, no matter what we claim, no matter how painful they are beneath the respectable surface.

I paid my check and left the restaurant. It was raining. I looked back for a moment and there they sat, a little blurry through the water-streaked window, faces illuminated by hope and candlelight. As I walked home alone, I made a wish, or a prayer, that they would be joyous, happy, and free, gloriously in love, good and kind and true, better than the characters on my page, and much, much, much better than me.

***

Note: this essay was revised and updated in August 2024.