Two: The End

Apparently I’m a little old-fashioned. Apparently I’m more like my debutante southern best friend than I am like my northern independent ones.

Fact: after a date, I don’t call first. I don’t text. I don’t make an ounce of contact.

It’s the big test, more than paying the check, more than opening the door, more than not being a felon, more than not asking me what kind of porn I like.

Ok, maybe not more important than those last two. But still, it’s the moment that every person in the dating world dreads: will they make contact?

“You’re ridiculous!” my best friend told me the day after my date with Two. “Just text him! Who cares?!”

I cared. But she was kind of right. The point of this whole experiment is to shake up my dating kinks. So fine, I’ll text him. And I did. Something along the lines of “Thanks again for the drink last night. I had a great time. Hope you’re having a good day.”

For the rest of the morning, there was nothing. And in that nothing, something very insidious happened: the power shifted.

You know what I’m talking about. I don’t care if you’re a man or a woman or both or neither, you know what I’m talking about. When you go from cocksure to does he like me? And, if he doesn’t like me, what went wrong?

For some people I know, this can go on for days. For weeks. For agonizingly, blindly analytical months. Luckily, I’ve read He’s Just Not That Into You. I bought it when it first came out. I saw the movie, even though it missed the entire point of the book. I’m prepared for the worst.

But no amount of self-help literature can save the common person from the “What went wrong?” replay. I blamed the awkward ending, the fact that I was short, that I asked too many questions. And then I landed on the honker of 104’s self-esteem. Everyone has one. For some it’s their toes or their hair or their nose. For me, it’s my weight.

That must be it. He must want some stick thin girl. Yes. It could be nothing else. It’s because I’m fat and disgusting and who would want me anyway?

Girls. How silly we can be. How capable we are of loving our friends and our families and hating so vehemently on ourselves.

But back to Two and his lack of response. The fact is that he did end up responding. A few hours later. Some obligatory response. At least I took it to be obligatory. It could have been perfectly sincere, but the power had shifted. The self-esteem had been called into play. This was over before it even began.

But have no fear. I steadied myself. I texted him again later that day, in which I specifically mentioned how I was looking forward to seeing him at the concert the following night.

No response. None. For the rest of the afternoon. For the rest of the evening. For the rest of the night, into the next morning and the next afternoon and the next evening.

It was safe to assume this was over. It happens. I’ve certainly done it to enough men that I have a few coming my way. Some things just don’t work out.

Later that night I went to the local convenience store for a self-soothing stock up of junk food. I was in sweatpants and a zip up sweater I bought five years ago that has since shifted and shrunk into some cock-eyed version of what it once was. There was no makeup, just the blazing red of a pimple that I had persistently been digging at for days. That and the dark circles under my eyes. That and the pint of Ben and Jerry’s in my hand.

Suffice it to say, it was not my finest hour. Suffice it to say, it may just have been my worst.

I was standing by the pick-up counter, pint of ice cream in hand, waiting for my fried macaroni and cheese bites and garlic fries (I SAID it wasn’t pretty, ok?), when this extremely tall man walked in front of me and to the edge of the prep area. He stood there with his hands in his pockets for a few minutes, waiting for an order. But no, he didn’t order anything. He was talking to the girl behind the counter pouring Garlic Whirl (I believe that’s trademarked, folks) from a yellow plastic jug onto my steaming fries.

I wish I weren’t so nosey. I wish I weren’t a reader and a writer and an observer of the world. I wish I had simply stayed looking forward and waiting for my fried food to be delivered into my waiting and already full arms, grease hopefully leaking through the paper bag that held it. But instead I noticed, from the long range of my peripheral vision that the man was as tall as Two, had the same eyes as Two, and was even wearing the same black jacket as Two. For a second, and from my limited vantage point, I doubted it. He wasn’t wearing glasses. He seemed to have a little bit of a belly that I didn’t remember from the other night.

But then it all snapped into focus and it WAS him and I WAS holding a pint of ice cream and waiting for a huge bag of fried food and I had NO makeup on and I had a PIMPLE the size of Nebraska on my chin and my hair was disheveled and frizzing and my face and chest started turning the most giveaway shade of red and—

Wait a minute.

Wait just a damn minute!

He’s talking to the girl behind the counter! He’s telling her he’ll see her later tonight! The night of the concert that he was supposed to be seeing me at! She’s acting disinterested, and he’s pathetically pursuing her attention. And now he is walking out without a single purchase in hand!

Did he just? Was that just? Yes, it WAS! He came in to speak to the girl behind the counter. The girl working at the convenience store on the corner. The girl who has to wear a hairnet to work. The girl whose uniform covered a flawlessly pale and pert body. The girl whose hairnet held back thick hair the color of Amy Adams’s. The girl who was squirting garlic whirl on my fries and who just happened to be undeniably pretty.

There’s no judgment here. It’s a tough economy, and this particular store pays $10 an hour with benefits, which, in a town that has few employment opportunities above minimum wage without being licensed or certified for something, is a good deal.

But really? REALLY? I got stood up for a girl who works at what is essentially (for the sake of being universally recognizable) a 7-ELEVEN?!

The end.