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ultradisplacement-blog · 6 years

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Failed Dates Plunge Me Deeper Into Limerence—A World of Perpetual Fantasy That May Just Border on Psychosis

I mean it. I really do. I’d rather spend a lifetime of limerence over someone so unattainable that barely knows I exist than go on another date with a blockhead who didn’t know that mayo is made of egg yolks, has never heard of Lykke Li (or any decent indie artist, at that), mistakes gender equality for feminism, and jumps back into my Taxify after he got off ‘cause he remembers he had some groceries to do—at 1 am, mind you. The Taxify that I had ordered and paid for, by the way, because he had no mobile data on his phone to order an Uber, nor could he connect to the Koton wifi (the McDonald’s one had for some reason vanished into thin air that night) or walk three fucking blocks back to his place.

He calls himself a world traveler but would’ve rather taken the subway to the old town instead of walking with me thirty minutes by the city lights, doused in the intertwining smells of shawarma, molten asphalt, and summer heat. Funny, because my definition of ‘world traveler’ is based on my friend George—who quit his office job in the name of freedom, motorbiked his way through (and came down with malaria in) Africa, had to apply for a new passport because the old one, though not expired yet, was full of stamps, and is currently driving a 1984 Skoda that crashed and burned a million times already somewhere in the heaths of Russia, bound for Mongolia—and this fellow couldn’t be further from that level of “world traveling.” He brags about doing the same thing every day— jumping on a subway train to bypass the unbridgeable half-mile walk between point x and point y. That was the very first red flag that came into view. ‘I’d rather spend those 30 minutes in the old town than... walk,’ he said. ‘Why? Do you have a curfew or something? It’s only 8:20 pm.’ ‘Nah, I just like luxury.’ Weird statement, coming from someone who backpacks through southeastern Europe and has no Internet on his phone. Means that actually, he’s probably cheaper than a dollar store. I used to be broke AF back when I first started traveling—which didn’t stop me from traveling anyway— but at least I was foresightful enough to download some offline maps so I wouldn’t end up sleeping in a bush in case I lost my way back to the hostel at night. There was also a hint of paranoia which I didn’t fail to take into account when he seemed leery of my Google maps directions and asked some passersby how to get to the old town instead. I was floored, and knew the date was meant to be a failure to remember, but I went for it anyway (if anything, perhaps so I could amass some writing inspiration).

He wouldn’t tell me much about himself except he spent the whole day at Mcdonald's, working his ass off. ‘Are you working at...McDonald’s?’, I managed to ask, trying to hold on to my wig for dear life. ‘Not that I find that a bad thing at all. I used to scrub toilets in a hotel—which is way worse than flipping burgers, some would argue. But it just struck me that you smell quite… fresh. Not like stir-fry oil, mayo, and pickles.’ ‘Nah, I just work from there,’ he retorted. ‘On my laptop, that is. I like to work from different places, like restaurants and cafés. I taught myself Russian and I move from one country to another, doing my thing; translating articles and stuff for some guys.’ To which I asked him whether he was one of those digital nomads or freelancers or whatever, but he didn’t seem acquainted with these terms.

We kept walking side by side, but with a considerable gap between us, I trying to avoid his hand to the utmost of my strength. He said he wants to go back to the States and enroll in Law school next year. ‘Why? Why would anyone wanna do any of that? You have all that we European millennials crave, pray for, and dream of at night—a job that allows you to work even from a McDonald’s lounge in a shithole in Eastern Europe and a passport that gives you the freedom to go wherever the hell your nomadic instinct dictates. Why would you loan your way into Law school and cram the whole constitution of the United States into your head when you could have… this, what you’re having right now?’

‘For the power,’ he answered simply. ‘And because I’m into politics. I don’t like to talk about it, but I am.’ (I failed to mention that when he first called me, he asked me how much money I’ll make as a doctor—a lot less than American doctors do, that’s for sure, but that was none of his business—huge red flag again. I told him, half-jokingly, half-seriously, ‘If you’re a gold-digger, I’m the last person you’d wanna hang out with.’ But he still did want to hang out with me, which I found nice at the time; now, I’m no longer sure.)

‘Well, if you wanna pave your way into the Oval Office and the ridiculous Twitter account with unnecessary capitalization that comes with it, why don’t you just buy a hotel and screw a porn star in one of its luxurious suites? I bet it must be easier and way more satisfying than Law school on the long run.’ Clutch your pearls, I may have just dated (and mocked) the next president of the United States; I sure as hell kick ass.

I hadn’t answered his calls and texts for almost a week. I was still grieving over my missed flight to Milan and the Nick Murphy show I had been looking forward to for so long as though it were my wedding day. I had been vivisected by the pain and the absurdity of the whole situation: a ramshackle, diminutive aircraft which triggered in my mind’s eye the depiction of my being sliced in a zillion pieces following its potential crash as soon as I set foot onto it; loss of cabin pressure twenty minutes after landing—which was real; and an emergency landing back to the airport we’d just departed from—realer than Kanye West’s tweets, too—only one hour before the connecting flight. It was lost, so irretrievably lost, and so was I—semi-catatonic in the departures terminal of the airport for the better part of the day, sleep-deprived for thirty hours, looking for solutions where there were none. My hair was blue, and so were my shoulders, the tip of my ears, the tears trickling down on my cheeks, and my whole doubtful state of rejected aliveness. So blue for nothing. Pathetic and outrageous. I went back home and ran myself a bath—the longest and the most revealing one as yet; it felt more like a rite of passage than a basic body hygiene ritual It took half a bottle of shampoo to take off all that dye, and my hair was so stiff that it looked more like a worn-out broom abandoned in a country backyard than a bundle of human keratin that was supposed to be somehow alive. It took half a bottle of shampoo, but in the end, the whole tubful of blue water went down the drain. As soon as there was no more blue left in me, I got out of the tub and crashed into the bed that I had left unmade, crying myself to sleep.

And for some reason, exactly a week later, I was rehashing my predicament in front of this not-too-tall, not-too-fit, average-looking-and-talking American, who didn’t seem to grasp that I was into writing and I had a special way with words, and took all of my Facebook and Medium posts for mere yacking. He didn’t even ask whose concert I was pining for so badly (not that the name Nick Murphy—or even Chet Faker, his former moniker—would’ve rung any bell; he hadn’t even heard of Lykke Li, for fuck’s sake, though he pretended he was somewhat familiar with Lana Del Rey; that’d better be true). He said that something like this had never happened to him, and he’d been on at least fifty-something flights (which is not a lot, by the way; I didn’t keep track of them, but I think I’ve been on fifty-something flights, too, and I’m not the one who calls herself a world traveler). ‘But I’m glad that at least you’re alive; God must have taught you this lesson so you could be more appreciative of life,’ he reckoned, after I explained to him that loss of cabin pressure basically meant a death sentence because of the hypoxia that ensued—lack of oxygen, in layman’s terms.

‘Oh, really? Exactly on that day, on that special occasion that was so important to me? Why then? Why not on any other fucking city break flight to Brussels or Berlin? Your God is a big-ass jerk sometimes, and his workings lack logic, reason, and mercy. I cannot decipher his hidden motivations, nor do I think that’s of any use to anyone,’ I blurted out without too much consideration or piosity, almost oblivious of the fact that I had spent most of my childhood’s Sunday mornings trying to find the most spine-friendly positions in the pews of my local church (which was quite a fool’s errand, to be honest, but perhaps that was exactly the point— to engage yourself in an act of self-flagellation at least once a week, for three hours, during the Mass). He seemed quite triggered, because he didn’t believe in what I believed—namely, an unfathomable higher power, a spiritual force that had taken the wheel of the universe before it had even been created, whose whims and fancies could at times torpedo all your plans, hopes, and dreams; he believed in a specific celestial entity, in a Christian god who was always righteous and whose decisions we weren’t entitled to question or frown upon. And there I was, an obnoxious little European brat calling his supreme lodestar—the one in whom each and every American dollar bill ever put into circulation expressed its unflinching belief—“a big-ass jerk.” Yet we somehow managed to dodge an endless religious argument—spoiler alert, for then—and kept walking towards the old town—or so I thought, for at some point, he took a sharp left turn, urging me to follow him: ‘I wanna show you a place.’

The street was impenetrably dark, and my mind should’ve probably started coming up with all sorts of scenarios involving rape, murder, and identity theft—but it didn’t; there was utterly nothing there, and you can’t be afraid of nothing — or can you? ‘What the hell do you wanna show me? There’s nothing here; not even rats or stray dogs.’ ‘Wait a little and you’ll see.’ Cool. This is how you roll in life, I told myself. You keep walking and you wait, although nothing might ever come your way. So we kept walking two or three more blocks and then, bam! there we were. Apparently. In front of an old building that reeked of fried fish and garlic sauce. ‘This is where I stayed for two weeks when I first arrived here,’ he enthused, big grin on his face—and due to the neon lights that had wondrously cropped up out of the blue, I was no longer in the dark, and could clearly make out that his dental arches were covered in a yellowish stratum of grim, indicating the fact that mouthwash was probably not at the top of his shopping list (or even at the bottom). That Christian god, or that unfathomable universal force making the world go round, or Satan’s offspring, or Ellen DeGeneres, or whoever rules this fucking world must be a great prankster, I thought to myself, while my musical memory was reproducing the first two lines of the sexiest song I’ve ever heard—Chet Faker’s Melt: ‘Help me breathe, you’re breaking up my speech/While you smile at me, you got the whitest teeth.’ That very same god could’ve been able to crash a plane and kill a hundred people in the process so I’d miss Nick’s concert; so I couldn’t bask in the endorphins milked from my brain by his balmy—yet rabid—voice and the dazzling white of his teeth that would light up the whole venue every time he opened his mouth to set free into the world the most otherworldly sounds I’ve ever got to hear; but he couldn’t, it seems, make me cross paths with a guy that gave a shit about his dental hygiene (and he didn’t even smoke, like Nick does). I had every reason to be pissed off with this god and his sick sense of humor, and I still am; I’ll probably be for a long, long time.

So he’d made such a tremendous (judging by his standards) detour only to show me the building where he’d been a roomer for a fortnight—a plain, old, decaying house reeking of fried fish and garlic sauce, which would, for reasons known only to him, put that indecorous smile on his filmy teeth. Truth be told, there’s a lot of emotional baggage attached to a rental apartment one uses as a storage room for two weeks until one figures out where to go next. ‘Let’s get the fuck outta here,’ I said, ‘until a hobo doesn’t jump from a bush and screws us in the ass or steals or wallets; or both.’ I may be wrong, but I had an intimation that he meant to show me something else, something he couldn’t find—since he was no longer in the comfy subway that told him precisely when to get off and which exit to take.

‘Are you into museums?’ he asked, as we were making our way out of an underground pass, finally approaching the old town that seemed to have replaced the Sydney Opera House on the world map that evening.

‘Wow. Could you ask me something any vaguer?’ I replied, without trying to conceal my irritation. ‘I mean, I had the time of my life at the Museum of Chocolate in Bayonne, but I think the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart would bore me to death. Seriously now; but if I had a broader choice, between a bar and a museum—whatever museum—I’d probably choose the former.’

‘Right, right,’ he approved. ‘You’re totally right. I, for one, don’t really like art museums; I prefer archeology.’ Hm. So very interesting. I don’t know why, but the fact that someone is into archeology doesn’t tell me anything about them except that… they’re into archeology. If he had told me that broccoli triggers flashbacks of his childhood trauma, I think I would’ve been more impressed—at least that would’ve given me on a platter some food for thought, be it—as most likely would’ve been the case—watered-down pabulum. Maybe if he had elaborated on that a little bit, if he had explained his drive for archeology, why it was so important to him to bring it up on a first date, I would’ve cut him some slack; but no, he just randomly dropped the word ‘archeology’ into the conversation, perhaps to appear more cultured than he really was. But wait—it can always get worse.

‘Oh, but what about music? What kind of music do you listen to?’

I wish I could’ve buried my face in my hands and cried a lifetime’s worth of frustration away.

‘That’s even vaguer than the museum thing, honestly. The music I listen to is genreless and so eclectic, and there are so many factors into play that prompt me to listen to a certain song at a specific moment in time. But if you want me to reel off a few descriptive words of my bar of choice, here’s my best shot: I listen to a lot of alternative, indie artists; I’m into electronica, downtempo, trip-hop, but also into soul, blues, and jazz; when I write, I’d rather listen to some ambient stuff, some lofi hip-hop, or even dream pop on rainy days. I’m into shoegaze and garage, swing and old R&B, grunge and funk. I like film scores and some Super Bowl halftime playlists. And I worship Lana Del Rey; have you heard of her?’

‘Yes, yes, I have,’ he rushed to reassure me.

‘Good. Or else I would’ve had to kill you.’

‘Why don’t you play me something on your phone? Like, the last song you listened to?’

‘What?! Do you want me to blast it right now, in the middle of the street, without headphones?!’

‘Yeah, why not? I wanna get to know you better.’

‘You must be off your rocker,’ I said, but I did open my Spotify app anyway and played the last song in my library, amid the clanks, whirrs, and honks of the hectic nightlife. What difference did it make? He had no more awareness of my music than I had of the intimate structure of that experimental particle collider at CERN in Switzerland. It was The Cactus Channel’s Wooden Boy, an admirable rendition of a neo-soul song by a much-underrated—yet hugely talented—group from Melbourne. He confesses he’s a metal fan—not a die-hard one, but still. I asked him what was the last live concert he attended and he couldn’t remember, though he said he wanted to go to a Korn show once, but it would’ve cost him about 400 bucks, which he couldn’t afford.

‘What the hell? Who asks that much for a C category ticket? Not even the VIP ones are that much! You must have been on some scalper’s website or something.’

‘No, it was a festival and you had to pay for the whole thing.’

‘You could’ve bought a day ticket, though. One hundred bucks or less. Or you could’ve gone to one of their headlining tours; you know, touring to promote an album all by yourself (plus maybe an opener) is one thing, whereas festivals are another. All you have to do is go to Facebook and type ‘korn’ in the search box, then you’re on their profile; once you’re there, check out the events and see when you can catch them in the closest town; easy as that.’

‘Yeah, you’re right; maybe next time.’

Right; I couldn’t say the same things about us, though. I knew for sure there wouldn’t be a next time.

I digress, but I have to say about this one thing about metalheads (though he obviously wasn’t one; he just feigned a mild interest in a metal band so he could have a musical conversation with me). In my scarce and sparse dating history, he’d be the third metal element, which is way over the top; it’s like thirty percent of all guys I’ve ever dated had something to do with metal one way or another. What is it about my hipsterish, indie, unpigeonholeable ways that seems to attract metalheads like bees to a honeypot? Why, for heaven’s sake; why? For all I know, I’m no more metal than Coldplay or helium; the only metal I transpire is the aluminum in my deodorant (and probably some iron, but I’m not sure; as far as I remember, most of it is eliminated through feces and urine). All three metalheads in my life were made from the same mold, one that I never had a particular affinity for: massive, but not exceedingly tall individuals, with puffy cheeks and some sort of ugly beard, a more or less overflowing beer belly, donned in capris and extra-large T-shirts, nice but insipid, with an average/average-to-high QI. He’d be, however, the first one to believe in a Christian god (the other two were, quite predictably, atheists; but then again, he wasn’t that much of a metalhead anyway). I’d like to believe that I look nothing like a metalhead, at least physically; I look more like a perpetual thirteen-year-old, searching frantically and fruitlessly for an extra-small size and ending up with some polka dot or floral pattern tank top from kid’s section instead, with thready arms, spidery fingers, and strikingly bulky calves. My face screams that one could beat the crap out of me, so probably that’s why the metalheads may be drawn to me—to fulfill their protective instincts and to keep me safe inside their towering, hairy, fatty, tattoo-adorned arms. Unfortunately, my helpless ass suffering from severe abandonment issues seeks protection in a different type of arms: more indie and rejective, less fatty and welcoming; I don’t mind the hair and the tattoos, though. What the metalheads and I had never resembled romance—or even dalliance—in a million years; whatever that thing was, it would smother by itself by the second or the third date (I let it go that far only once), and it was for the better. None of them had the guts or the occasion to kiss me, which means that I’d been spared a good deal of embarrassment and social awkwardness; I could only hope the history would repeat itself tonight as well.

He wanted us to go smoke some hookah, proposition which I kindly—but firmly—declined. I explained that I steer clear of any source of smoke whatsoever, because back when I was a three-year-old, my mother— a voracious chainsmoker—put a lighted cigarette in my mouth so I’d stop pestering her with my asking what it was like to smoke. ‘This is what it’s like to smoke!’ she said, transplanting the cigarette from her mouth to mine, and causing me to choke so badly that I swore never to touch such a damn thing again. And it worked, because my mother is the smartest person I know. She was all too aware that interdiction would’ve only whetted my curiosity, so she shot the vice into my lungs like a vaccine instead; as a result, I gained a—it would seem—lifelong immunity to the “disease.” My sharp refusal lowered his spirits instantly, so he took an intellectual approach in his attempt to talk me into it:

‘But do you at least know what it is?’

‘Of course I do; I’m not an idiot. I clearly specified—any source of smoke whatsoever is a no-go for me. ’

‘I didn’t say you were an idiot; I was just hoping I’d deprive you of your better judgment.’

‘You wouldn’t be the first one to try; or to fail, at that.’

‘Oh, man. Then maybe a beer or two will do the trick.’

‘Bad news—lately I’ve been drinking only Coke zero; and tonight will be no exception.’

‘There’s no way out with you,’ he conceded, before asking me one more time if I was totally sure I didn’t wanna try the hookah. I was.

I wish there had been a way out of that date, though. Particularly so when he felt that I wouldn’t mind him holding my hand on the street.

‘My hand is okay without being held,’ I said, ‘with all this heat and everything. My sweat glands have always been hyperactive and it’s a bit disgusting.’

‘It’s okay, I don’t mind holding it.’

I did, which is why I liberated myself from his grip as best I could; to which he responded by grabbing me by the shoulders. That is when I knew that I hands down loathed him, and that was the long and the short of it.

We stopped for a drink at a street bar. I was quite taken aback when I saw that he ordered the exact same thing as I had—a Coke zero, that is. I looked at him in sheer perplexity.

‘I guess you were saying something about some beers?!’

‘Yeah, but I’m not drinking on my own. Drinking is an experience that needs to be shared. If you’re not having alcohol, then I’m not having alcohol either.’

‘What the hell. If I feel like having a beer in my dorm room—alone, with Lana Del Rey singing in the background Pretty When You Cry—I’ll have a fucking beer, alone in my room; or with Lana Del Rey; or in a restaurant at a table for one (is that even a thing?), or with the devil himself, or under any given circumstances I feel like having a beer. I don’t need anyone to hold it for me.’

‘Yeah, but I don’t do that; besides, I drink a lot of Coke zero anyway, so that’s why I had a Coke zero tonight instead of a beer.’

‘Weird; you didn’t mention a word about your love for Coke zero ten minutes ago, when I told you this is the only beverage I’ve been binging on lately.’

‘Why do you think I should’ve?’

‘I don’t know; maybe because I would’ve?! Maybe because it makes sense?!’

‘It makes sense only because you want it to.’

‘Right. So very pseudo-philosophical and Coelho-lite. Or -like. Or whatever.’

‘How often do you actually drink?’

‘Wait, what? Are you trying to assess whether I might use a stint of drying up in a rehab? Because I’m having a Coke zero and not a beer? Do you think I’m trying to conceal my forbidden cravings or something?’

‘No, it was just an innocent question; I totally understand if you don’t feel comfortable answering it.’

‘There’s nothing uncomfortable about my relationship with booze, except I don’t have any estimates in terms of consumption. I drink whenever I feel like it. I don’t need an occasion or company. I don’t drink every day, but I don’t drink once a year either. I don’t fucking know how much I drink. I can do with one pint of Guinness and stay highly functional and mentally aware, but I can also binge-drink, blackout, and puke in a plastic bucket, if you want to know the minutiae behind how alcohol gets in and out of my system.’

‘Wow. Cool. Okay. And how often do you read?’

‘That’s easy. I have an answer, and that is every day. But what does reading have to do with getting liquored up? Am I missing something? Or are you particularly fond of numbers and statistics?’

‘No, but I just figured that the more you read, the less you drink, and the other way around. That’s the way I see it, at least.’

‘’the hell?! So you think my brain must be so tiny that it can’t imbibe both booze and knowledge at once, right? You sure as hell haven’t heard of Bukowski, my friend.’

We had our Cokes zero anyway and he pretended to be examining my rings in order to hold my hand again. And again he feigned interest, inquiring me about their signification.

‘Well, I wear them because of the sense of unity they provide; and because I believe everything comes full circle sooner or later. And also because I need to have something to do with my fingers when I can’t sit still; otherwise, I’d have to run my fingers through my hair or do other weird stuff that would come off as inappropriate in public.’

‘I see,’ he said. Truth is, you do look like that kind of person who’s into astrology, crystals, bio-energy, spirituality, and the like,’ he said, pouring his Coke zero in a glass (I hadn’t asked for one, so I just sipped it intermittently straight from the can, in my usual, not very ladylike manner).

I almost choked on my Coke. It’s true I check my horoscope on Elle.com for fun every now and then, but that’s quite a far cry from incarnating all that plethora of esotericism and bullshit he had so casually churned out at my face.

‘And truth is, you do look like that kind of person who likes to make all the wrong assumptions about people they’ve known for a minute. You see me wearing a shirt that reads ‘Gender Equality’ and you automatically assume that I’m a feminist, which fills you with dread and disgust; you leaf through my Facebook posts and automatically assume that I’m a yacker, though you have no idea that I’ve been writing longer than I’ve been menstruating, that writing is my whole life and the only thing that I feel I can actually do—little does it matter that it’s writing, not talking; you say that the average female uses 7k words a day, whereas I do 147k; you hear me dropping some indie artists’ names and you automatically assume that I must be into celebrities and Gossip Girls, though those people are so famous that you’ve never even heard of them; you notice a bunch of rings on my fingers and you automatically assume that I’m some sort of transcendental mystic, brewing tadpoles alive in a cauldron in her bathroom and hoarding crystals for the sake of her chakras’ balance. You’re so wrong you can’t even imagine. Shall I go on, shall we call it a night, or would you rather tell me something factual about yourself, like, I don’t know, how was your life back in America?’

Oh, my, that escalated quickly; so quickly that it caught him off-guard, which means things could get even worse from that point of no return. Nevertheless, I must admit that it surprised me to hear that his life in America is not something he likes to discuss on a date; he’d rather change the topic or start making some more wrong assumptions—that, at least, he didn’t seem to mind.

‘I don’t want you to be that girl I’m discussing my life in America with; it’s just something I don’t do. Not with girls, not on a date.’

I can’t tell for sure, but I must have choked on my Coke again. Why wouldn’t he want to talk about his life back in America “with girls, on a date?” Had I been a boy, would that have changed things in any way? What was there to hide? Was he smuggling keys on a schooner in the Caribbean or shoplifting from Walmart and TJ Max? Did he have a criminal record for driving without a license? Did he attempt to cut his wrists in a friend’s beach house in San Diego because he couldn’t stifle his pedophilic urges? Mind you, I can make a bumper crop of wrong assumptions, too; just try me.

‘Why is America a taboo subject? I thought we weren’t talking about your foot fetish or the fact that you love the smell of your navel lint. I’m a European girl, and you’re an American out on a date with me. Do you think I’m here in the hope that I might wanna wheedle a green card out of you someday?’

‘Nope, it’s not that. I mean, I could help you with the green card anyway when I become a lawyer.’

‘How considerate. Thanks, but I don’t think it will ever be the case. I mean, my needing your legal assistance, not your becoming a lawyer.’

Then he suggested we get going, even though we hadn’t finished our drinks. We can walk with them, he said, but before paying the bill, he chugged his down in a gulp. I looked at him, baffled and reduced to silence. I got mine and took a few more sips, and we resumed our walking, but then he insisted to hold the can for me, which made me realize that what he actually meant was that he wanted to drink the soda he had paid for, so I handed it straight away to its rightful owner. Quite predictably, he wasn’t late to do what I had anticipated he would, and then asked me whether I still wanted to drink that thing. Nosir, it’s all yours—do with it whatever the hell you want; I don’t want your saliva anywhere near my inexhaustible mouthpiece that spits out 147k words a day.

At some point, we found ourselves in front of a Christian-Orthodox church—a church that, goodness only knows why, was open at 10 or 11 pm, and a priest was firing off a raucous sermon on why adultery and greed will drag us to hell. The doors were wide open because it was sweltering hot, so we could see and hear the whole thing from outside. A handful of people were listening meekly to the sermon, eyelids heavy with sleep and boredom, while others were moving about to and fro, lighting candles for the living and for the dead or groping for the best angle that would do justice best to their Instastories. He wanted us to go in, which I found ridiculous.

‘An hour ago I called God a big-ass jerk, and now you want me to step inside his home as though nothing had happened?! Why would I do that? Why would I do that even if I hadn’t called God a big-ass jerk? I know by heart these chestnuts that are supposed to scare the shit out of our straying souls and guide us to the right path. I’ve made it through six years of med school; hell is the last thing that can frighten me. Besides, it’s ridiculous; I never imagined that I’d be taken to church on a first date. You must have taken Hozier literally, but that song is so 2013, though; it’s 2018 now.’

‘Why? We’ll just go in a couple minutes, take a peek, do that sign, and that’s it. The architecture is beautiful.’

‘Do that sign? You mean, the cross? You’re not even an Orthodox; that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. There are people out there, something is happening—something that is none of our business; this isn’t the right time to play tourist.’

‘Oh, come on, it’ll only take a minute!’

And, believe it or not, I consented. ‘At least I can write about it,’ I told myself after the smell of incense, burned wax, and human sweat kicked us out of God’s Home in thirty seconds, just like Adam and Eve had been banished from the Garden of Eden at the dawn of time (except we hadn’t thankfully spawned the whole of mankind in the process). Deep down into the bottomless pit of the old town nightlife, though, his appetite for hookah was suddenly revived, and he asked me once again whether I was sure I didn’t wanna sample a puff with him. For the third and last time, I was; I didn’t want to. If there’s one thing that I deserve credit for, it’s that I have a knack for holding my ground under the direst and the most overpowering of circumstances. Back in LA, perhaps the most handsome guy I’ve ever made out with poured gallons of Bourbon down my throat—and even though I was dead-drunk, I could still say no when he undid my bra and unzipped his fly. It was hard (the situation, that is), but I had to; I didn’t wanna sleep with him because I didn’t wanna sleep with him; I didn’t wanna sleep with him because I was drunk. I’d had some minor blackouts, and I wanted to avoid a huge one that could explain a potential HIV contraction or a cocaine overdose (I was also on my period, but that’s just a piddling detail; or is it?). So, yeah; I’d rather sleep with someone when I’m 100% aware that this is what is about to happen—so I can blame it solely on temptation and my poor decision-making skills when I end up emotionally attached and they sleep around like normal people do, without giving a fuck about me and my attachment issues.

He wanted us to sit on a bench in front of the church—one that was circled by bums resting their bodies on newspapers and asking for alms—which I found a rather uninspired idea, so we just kept walking until we found a bench that was slightly less parasitized by unwelcome human presence and the odors thereof—which the crisp night air would only enhance. Out of the blue, he started talking about evolution; he told me that some scientists keep some secret genes in the lab, and that someday, maybe in thirty years from now, dinosaurs may be brought back to life. Birds are the closest thing there is to them, he said scholastically, and they might find a way to suppress some of their genes so that their eggs would hatch baby dinosaurs instead of chickens. Right, I said. And that wasn’t all: some people are born with tails (which some of them can move) due to pretty much the same reason—those atavistic genes undergo some mutations and aren’t silenced properly. I’d never heard of people being born with tails, but that sounded more like spina bifida to me; but from that to being born as a dinosaur instead of a chicken (or a human?), there’s a long way to go. That was nothing new under the sun to me; ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, that’s one of the few things I remember from my embryology lectures. In utero, at the outset, the embryo looks more like a worm or a reptile before gaining human features. It takes time for that amorphous cellular slime to morph into a functional human body. Anyway, why the fuck was I having a conversation about evolution close to midnight, in front of a church, with an American guy that believed in a Christian god? What was he trying to prove to me? That deep down, he knew there was more to it than what the Genesis pretends there is? The Bible is a metaphor anyway, but I should’ve expected him to take it literally, as he did Hozier’s song.

‘I can see that you’re a skeptic, but you have to admit that believing in a Christian god helps you be of better use to your fellow human beings. That priest in the church in front of us didn’t preach theft or murder; he preached kindness and decency instead.’

‘Why would I need a priest to teach me kindness and decency? Why can’t I be kind and decent on my own? Look, for example, a lot of people I look up to, who’ve made tremendous contributions to the world—they’re doctors, writers, psychologists, musicians— don’t buy into that shit. They’re atheists or Jews. They didn’t need a Christian god or a Christian priest to be of use to their fellow humans in need.’

At that point, though the lights were dim, I could see him turn green in the face.

‘Are YOU a Jew?’ he asked, with panic in his voice.

‘There we go again, Mr. I-can-make-a-wrong-assumption-about-you-in-the-wink-of-an-eye. I am not a Jew; and even if I were, that was not the point. Do you want me to remind you what’s going on right now in the Catholic church in terms of pedophilia and sex abuse? You must be familiar with Pennsylvania. Do you want me to remind you that the Pope recommends psychiatric intervention for children with homosexual tendencies instead of love and acceptance? What’s next on their to-do list for the sinful, a lobotomy? Would you want to have your appendix removed by a surgeon who has homicidal propensities? I bet not, so let’s change the subject or get the hell out of here.’

‘Yeah, sure; getting jammed in a religious argument is not how I wanna spend my time with you,’ he agreed complacently. ‘Why don’t we go play some arcade games instead? Oh, man, I love arcade so much!’

‘I don’t. And it’s almost midnight. Where do you think we could play arcade games right now?’

‘Oh, come on, let’s look it up on Google maps. On your phone, I mean, ‘cuz mine, you know.’

Yeah. I knew. I also knew I’d be mad as a hatter if I played arcade games with him when all I wanted was a reason to put an end to that stupid date as soon as possible. But I was so sure that I’d come away empty-handed that I agreed to look up “arcade” on Google maps, only to find this place called Arcade Café, 1.6 miles away—which turned out to be just a regular café with a misleading name; no arcade or any other type of video games whatsoever. I shoved the phone in his face triumphantly, and then we got going—again.

‘Would you like us to go someplace else?’ he asked.

Yeah, at our place, I thought. I mean, me—at mine, you—at yours. I regret I didn’t verbalize that thought, and instead I heard myself saying, ‘No. I don’t care where we’re going. This is also how I roll in life by and large.’ (The second part of that statement is, however, true.)

When we were in front of an ancient building (it was the old town, so we basically were in front of an ancient building at all times), he asked me whether I’m interested in history. ‘I used to be,’ I replied, ‘back when I was in secondary school, because I had this huge crush on my history teacher. I’ve had it for years,’ to which he interrupted me, grabbing himself by the ears jestingly, bringing to my attention that I had pronounced the word “years” as if I’d failed to notice that it started with a “y.”

‘Great. Thanks for the correction. This is my flawed Eastern-European pronunciation. You see, when I was born, I wasn’t swaddled in an American flag. Also, I read and write more than I listen and speak, which is detrimental to face-to-face dates with native English speakers. We should’ve done this whole thing on Facebook instead.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude, it was just a gentle correction. But carry on with your story, I wanna hear it.’

‘Yeah. A gentle correction and a huge turn-off. You know, like farting during sex. You can keep going, but it’s not gonna be the same.’

So we walked some more; until he said he needed to pee and wanted to go to McDonald’s to use the restroom. Must be a special bond between McDonald’s and him, I thought. Maybe he’s actually living in a McDonald’s, after all; maybe he doesn’t live in a rental apartment in the old town, as he had claimed. But now it was way past midnight—was it still open? Of course, only Google Maps and my phone had the answer, and like most answers that night, this one was negative, too. There was a park on our way to McDonald’s, so I just suggested he relieve himself behind a bush. ‘Not too classy,’ he said, ‘but if you have nothing against it...fine.’

‘Why would I have anything against it?! I’m not the one with a full bladder. Just go for it, release your problems, and be a happy man again.’ (And don’t dare touch me, my real self whispered in my mind’s ear; without a “y” this time around.)

‘Oh, look, problem solved!’ he jubilated, pointing towards a row of composting toilets—probably the most disgusting thing ever created by man, which filled the nightly atmosphere with their unmistakable whiff of ammonia and vagrancy until the memory of what must have been the scent of last morning’s freshly-cut grass was completely annihilated.

I sat down on a bench and waited for him to get out of that temple of piss and loafing, although deep down I wished a supermassive black hole would yawn out of that toilet bowl and swallow him out of my life. I could’ve walked out on him, but I knew he wouldn’t find his way back home if I did that. He depended on my phone to order an Uber and make it back to his place safe and sound. I was the man in this, not him; gender equality my ass. Or maybe that’s exactly what gender equality is about—a girl may just as well order a taxi for the guy who asked her out on a date and see to it that no one rapes him on his way home. Or not? He said he had a problem with feminists and was glad that I wasn’t one, but what I did for him that night was the epitome of feminism—but more on that, later.

At long last, there he was again, in front of me, with an empty bladder and a right—or left?—hand brimming with bacteria from his groin, and probably from the groins of all the wastrels that had ever taken a whizz in that composting toilet. ‘What if we go to this other park,’ he suggested, and indicated the name of a park that was like a million miles away. We sure as hell couldn’t walk there, and I’d had enough of parks—at least when it comes to dating. I don’t wanna date in parks ever again. All the guys I’ve ever dated were so cheap that would rather take me to a park than a café or a restaurant, because it was open to the public for free; they didn’t risk having to pay a bill that would’ve probably caused an aneurysm to burst in their brains. I’d always offer to go Dutch, but better safe than sorry—in parks, you don’t have to go Dutch at all. In parks, you don’t risk spending your entire weekly allowance that mom and pop slipped into your pocket because you were a good boy who did well in school and didn’t come home with the clap. So we went to parks; a lot of ‘em, goddamit. Ugh! Those memories of making out on the benches and being made fun of by kids playing badminton or riding their bikes make me sick to my stomach. I had my first date ever in a park in my hometown, in late November. It was freezing cold and my poor, sickly beau subsequently came down with a cold that took weeks to heal. Nothing of the sort befell me, like, ever. I also had my first kiss ever on a bench, in the same park, though with a different date. We broke up two months later because I loved dogs more than human beings, and he got married to the next girl he started dating after me, on the same day that the high tide wiped the hiking trail that would take me to the shore on an Irish island in the middle of the Atlantic. And once, I went to a park, determined to break up with this guy, but I ended up staying in that toxic relationship almost another year because of his cajoling and other dirty schemes. In a nutshell, I have no fond memories of parks; and the fact that someone takes me there in the middle of the night to pee (hoping to take a shot at romance after that) is not gonna make me change my mind; if anything, it’s only gonna make my nausea more difficult to internalize—which is a bad thing in itself, to begin with.

‘Do you like long walks?’ he asked me, when we were doing the exact same thing—walking for hours on end, heading to the middle of nowhere, because I didn’t care where I was going as long as it wasn’t home, and he was still hoping to get laid that night to let me slip through his fingers so easily.

‘I’m afraid I’ll have to thwart again your attempt to pigeonhole me in any possible way. What are you gonna ask me next, if I like my fries with ketchup or mayo, what’s my favorite color, the subject I struggled the most with in school, or the name of my first pet? You sound like Gmail asking security questions when you forget your password.’

‘Yeah, I know it sounds stupid sometimes, but… I’m just trying to get to know you. I know people who’d easily do that—the long walks, that is—whereas others are simply couch potatoes. Only Netflix and chill for them. I was just wondering where you belong.’

‘Nowhere. I belong nowhere. I walked thirty kilometers in two days in Nice and Monaco, plunged sixteen kilometers into the depths of a forest in the French countryside in full hunting season, but I also had a two-month spell when I didn’t get up from bed, lying there all day long, writing my book (he totally ignored the fact that I had brought up the words “my book” into the conversation; must have misheard it or blamed it on my Balkan pronunciation). Nothing I do makes sense or is interconnected with another thing I do; it doesn’t even have to. It’s just who I am.’

‘I see. That’s why I wanna spend time with you. Given that there’s nothing much to do in town, I’d normally say we go to my place and watch a TV show or something, but…’

‘But you know that “at my place” are not the three words you wanna say on a first date; not with me, at least.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know; I didn’t suggest anything, I just thought it’d be nice.’

‘I didn’t say you suggested anything; it’s just something I don’t do on a first date. You have a self-imposed America-related omerta; I don’t drink alcohol and sleep around.’

‘Fair enough. Well, then, I’d like to hang around some more, but I have stuff to do, so maybe we should order a taxi and go back to our places.’

How very odd. A minute ago, he was inviting me at his place because he wanted to “spend time” with me, and now, after he realized he’s not gonna get what he wants, he says he’s gotta go back home because he has stuff to do. How the hell did that stuff materialize into his living room in his absence, in the span of one or two minutes? Hm. Maybe he’s the mystic in this story, not I. If anything, I am the man. The man who orders a taxi, drops him at his place, at which point he gets back into the car, claiming he had forgotten he had to go buy something from a convenience store on the main avenue. His paranoia kicked in again when he wasn’t sure that the driver had started the GPS—does this guy even know where we’re going? And do I have to pay him or you? It’s a Taxify, you idiot; all the fares are deducted from my bank account. He handed me a bill, which I obviously turned down, hugged me twice (because he didn’t like the pat on the back—I patted him anyway the second time, too), and off he went. Finally. Thank God. The Christian god, the Jewish, the Muslim, or the Buddhist one, or whatever god had effected the long-awaited demise of my worst date ever.

Two days later, he texted me, saying that he wants to hang out again soon, but unfortunately, he still has a lot of work to do. Nevermind, darling! I’m far from being a time-sucking vampire. I like garlic and solitude too much, that’s why. ‘Sorry, but I’m not exactly vibing it, and I don’t wanna waste your time (or mine). We belong in different worlds (literally and non-literally), so we’d better leave it at that. Best of luck.’ And I pressed “send.” The reply came back instantly, and it was monosyllabic—‘Weird.’ And I’ve never heard from him again.

Man. That text felt so liberating I could almost cry for joy. It felt ecstatic to be able to fantasize again with Nick Murphy, to plunge into the same old endless spiral of limerence in the peace and quiet of my room, smelling of coffee, dark chocolate, old books, and isolation. No more piss in the park and platitudes on Christianity and evolution; no more answering security questions and avoiding hands caked in groin bacteria and molecules of urine; no more getting back home late enough to shower with cold water and watch the cockroaches crawl all over the dishes in my kitchen. Dating is a pain in the ass unless you do it with someone you’re smitten with—and the modern society doesn’t quite give you permission to be smitten with someone you could actually date. Here’s the thing—I’d been late twenty minutes that evening because I’d gotten lost in a Youtube loop, crying and grieving over my missed flight and Nick’s show in Milan, and telling myself that I can’t do this. I don’t wanna do this. I can’t do this. I won’t do this. I’ll cancel last minute, although I’ll come across as a bitch. I don’t want the universe’s leftovers on my table; I’d rather starve myself to death. I know that never in a million years could I have my limerent object, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be happy with the dollar store version of it. Matter of fact, I won’t. I may be trying to punch above my weight, but then again—who isn’t? I don’t have perfect teeth; I’m far from having a Baywatch body; hell, my jokes aren’t even that good sometimes, and I can’t even pronounce “years” correctly in English—why wasn’t this guy good enough for me then? Because nothing and no one ever is; because we only want what we can’t have. Because that evening, I was hoping for a refreshing conversation on the duality of the self, on the body-mind conflict, on how art in general (and music in particular) is a lifeline for lost souls like me; but instead I got caught in the trammel of a religious argument, with baby dinosaurs lurking around the corner, threatening to hatch from the potentially fertilizable eggs in my pelvis under the auspices of the right genetic mutation. Because only average guys can be stubbornly interested in me, so much so that they keep texting me although I hadn’t answered their calls or their texts for a week; average guys who probably hadn’t gotten laid in a while; average guys to whom I seemed reachable, who didn’t have to punch above their weight to go on a date with me. I’ll never be interesting, multihyphenate, mysterious, or good enough for the likes of Nick Murphy or any other unattainable person that could be limerence material for me, no matter how hard I try; I’d probably have a shot if I stopped trying altogether (but I can’t, because I’m me).

And it’s sad, but I know the drill all too well, ‘cause I’ve been there so many times—basically my whole life: “Limerence is a state of mind which results from a romantic attraction to another person and typically includes obsessive thoughts and fantasies and a desire to form or maintain a relationship with the object of love and have one's feelings reciprocated, ” says the Holy Wikipedia. We owe this concept to psychologist Dorothy Tennov, who coined it in her 1979 book, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love. Look it up on Wikipedia; it expatiates on all its aspects amazingly well, and it might just let you know that you have a new disease. In my case, reciprocity never came into question, and in spite of starvation and adversity, I’ve always managed to stay limerent until I found another person to transfer my limerence to. The more impossible it is, the more drugged up it makes me feel; the more rejected I am, the needier I get. And I believe it’s essential that it stay that way; a healthy relationship pattern just wouldn’t do for me. I have yet to discover whether therapy would be of any help, though, but I’m not that willing to try, to be honest. I feed on my limerence, and my limerence feeds on me. We need limerence, at least in art; studies say that limerence is experienced by about 5% of the population; I bet that the bulk of it are artists (or at least artists at heart). I wonder how many of the great songs put out into the world would have been written had it not been for limerence; same goes for books, paintings, sculptures, and whatever involves a muse. Not all limerent objects are muses, but all muses are limerent objects, in a way or another. I know it, and you know it; everybody knows it, and in case you didn’t, now you do. While therapy —or even medication— may help limerence to some extent, the one thing that does not help are failed dates, with people you’re just not vibing that much (if at all). And of course, you can’t vibe somebody else when your whole being vibes that unattainable, volatile, celestial presence that will never be within reach like Tash Sultana’s mad guitar riffs.

And it’s okay; just don’t rush it. Don’t go for the leftovers. Don’t go for the dollar store hoops when you’ve been coveting the Gucci ones forever; otherwise, you’ll end up with a fallacy and a lifetime of bitterness and second-guessing your own worth. Are you truly dollar store material, too? Are you willing to work till you’re dog-tired, day in and day out, to afford something that might be stolen from your purse on your bus ride back home? But what if it’s something money can’t buy? What if it’s something not even wits or looks can buy, because it’s not yours to keep in the first place?

Well, that sucks; but I won’t go for the dollar store version ever again. I wanna bathe in the glory of a life with no one else, as the song goes. I’d rather die surrounded by dogs and books without having procreated, have no one come to my funeral, and give away my whole fortune—whatever’s left of it after decades of concerts, festivals and trips to Melbourne, New York, and LA—to charity. But until I die, I’ll keep on falling back upon the same pattern of limerence, hoping for the best; after all, hope is an important part of the definition of this whole concept. And I’ll make art out of it to stay alive—and because it’s fun, even when it makes me weep. If I were to believe Lana, at least I’m pretty when I cry.

#dating #love #relationships #limerence #feminism #religion #music #literature #art #crushes #nick murphy #chet faker #lykke li #lana del rey #tash sultana #monotony

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