We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Read online

  If there was an alternate universe where I could remake this show starring myself, it would be the best dating show in history. I smell a ratings juggernaut, and it smells like cat pee unsuccessfully laundered from a fitted sheet, seared pork, and adult diapers. Fetch me a camera crew.

  —

  Here are my qualifications:

  1. I’m fat and black.

  Isn’t it about time they had a bitch with a REAL 2 PERCENT LARGE COTTAGE CHEESE CURD ASS on this awkward date parade? I mean, come on. Welcome to your “after” photo, gentlemen. Prime-time television needs some real talk from a real asshole, and that asshole should be me. But they have to make sure they cast a bunch of Latinx and one white guy with dreadlocks who you can rest assured wouldn’t be a real contender.

  2. Instead of roses I would hand out condoms.

  Because I’m not living in a house with twenty hot dudes I can’t get naked with. You must be crazy. And you better believe those elimination ceremonies are taking place in the bedroom. No foreplay? NO ROSE. Keeps his socks on during? NO ROSE. Rabbit fucking? NO ROSE. Takes too long to come and starts chafing my haunches? NO ROSE. Blows air into my vagina? NO ROSE. Says dumb stuff in bed? NO ROSE. Won’t let me get a good up-close look at his butthole? NO ROSE. Won’t let me gag him and tie him up for fun, even though that does nothing for me sexually? NO BLEEPING ROSE. I should probably go get a robe, because my pajamas are just retired “exercise” clothes, and if I’m going to be kicking dudes out while their dicks are still sticky, I want to make sure I look as classy as possible. If the JCPenney catalog is to be believed, a bathrobe is a surefire way of achieving that.

  3. I would plan realistic dates.

  Do you really want to watch me giggle and squeal and pretend not to be scared out of my mind because we’re going hang gliding or rock climbing or whatever other challenges these guys typically participate in? Do you really want to watch me bowling and roller skating with a group of sexy dudes? NO, YOU DO NOT. What you really want to watch is the “Can this dude pay for our meal at Alinea?” challenge and the “Can homeboy sort and wash his own laundry?” competition. Because if this show is really about marriage, my starry eyes and pinchable cheeks don’t matter. That kind of thing only goes so far. I’m sure people get over my dimples easily within six fucking months. And then what? Those sharp edges I filed down in front of the cameras are back in full effect, and my real flaws are now comfortable enough to come out and leave halfway through the concert to go take a shit, so to get prepared we’re going to play sexy party games like “Can you take a sarcastic joke?” and “How mad will you get if the cat pukes in your shoe?” or “Be quiet and play on the computer while Sam is sleeping” and “Please don’t be salty when I put our business on the Internet.”

  4. The network would save so much money on production.

  We’re shooting it in Chicago. And I don’t need a fancy wardrobe or stylist, I’d wear my own terrible clothes. That’s what these brothers are going to see once they drop to one knee and ask for my paw in marriage anyway, so why front? I don’t wear evening gowns and booty shorts every day. I wear daytime pajamas and orthopedic shoes, and lately I have become a big fan of the “grandpa cardigan.” I shave my head, so I don’t need a fancy hair person; my barber cuts my hair for twenty bucks and then I rub some African oils on it so it smells good and glistens in the sunlight. Everyone wins.

  5. The winner would totally not be forced to propose.

  If you are ready to commit the rest of your life to me after a couple of weeks of getting drunk while a camera crew follows us around, you are not a rational person who makes good choices. It would be incredibly flattering, but ill-advised nonetheless. At the end of the season I’m always surprised when the dudes actually propose, yet not surprised at all when I read in People magazine two weeks later that the happy couple has split because he still has feelings for his college sweetheart and the bachelorette can’t leave her career as a dental hygienist in New York to move to Montana and run the family dairy farm.

  The season finale will go something like this: We’re sharing a postcoital can of beer and watching Jimmy Fallon. I get up (WEARING MY ROBE) to find my bra and to pee for the thirty-seventh time while he tries to wake up his erection for round two. I come back to bed with more beers, a bag of pretzels, and cold leftover pizza. I send a few text messages to other dudes; he eats all my food without offering me any while getting cheese and grease all over my remote and crumbs in my nice sheets. I pee again—I really cannot be out here risking UTIs like they don’t hurt like the devil—and he takes a call that I suspect might be from another woman, because the parameters of our relationship thus far have been unclear. I can’t really say anything, so I just sulk and pretend that nothing is wrong, but I’m totally ignoring him and pulling the duvet to my side as I turn on Sex and the City reruns (I’m a Miranda), and just to make sure he knows I’m really ignoring him I put on my headphones and crank up my iPod really loud and sigh a lot until he hangs up the phone and says, “What’s wrong?” Then I respond, “Nothing,” with a little too much aggression in my voice as I flip through the channels like a woman possessed until it dawns on him what my problem is and he exasperatedly sighs and says, “That was my mom,” but it’s too late because now he knows I’m a jealous baby and he doesn’t want to be my boyfriend anymore, but maybe he’d still like to sleep with me because of that thing I do with my pinky fingers. Then we’ll fall into a fitful, uncomfortable sleep, after which he’ll decide that he needs to go “home” or to “the gym” or to “ESPN Zone” or wherever you penises like to hang out in your free time. I’ll tell him my last name (finally), and he’ll promise to get my phone number from Chris Harrison and text me when he gets home. Just like Cinderella. Or on TV.

  A Blues for Fred

  Fred and I ended our relationship on a sticky August afternoon in the summer of 2012. In the years before our introduction in the comments section on a piece I’d written about how I couldn’t have sex with a man who didn’t think that not having his own checking account by his thirtieth birthday was a big deal, Fred had flown to New York by himself just to see the Basquiat exhibit. For that I was grateful, as his passionate description of Basquiat’s early graffiti work kept me from having to make polite conversation while huffing up the stairs at the Art Institute in the waning days of summer. I’m pretty sure there was no Instagram way back then, so I was left to my own devices and forced to look closely at Lichtenstein’s brushstrokes and read descriptions as the gentle voice from the audio tour guided me from painting to painting, Fred trailing behind me taking notes in a battered Moleskine.

  If you are a certain type of sap, this is one of Those Moments. You know, the ones in which you relax long enough to think that this might actually be real and cool and maybe start thinking about accidentally leaving some allergy meds and an old toothbrush in a dude’s bathroom. I had already “forgotten” a lip balm and my emergency glasses on the bedside table and hidden a case of fancy bottled water in a kitchen cabinet, but visions of five inches of available space in his underwear drawer had begun dancing through my head and I could not get them to shut up. This is the shit that is exciting to you eight months into a casual-sex thing, a thing that might hopefully blossom into something less casual if maybe you play your cards right and have managed not to be too interested or available-seeming, that maybe this person who went on vacation with another woman a few months ago might give up some closet real estate so you don’t have to either (1) wear pajamas on your dates, or (2) go to sleep after the dates in your clothes.

  I didn’t see the end coming. Which is not to say that I was surprised, because I wasn’t—I just thought that I had more time. I knew that when we had Serious Grown-up Talks about our goals, and mine didn’t include much more than “king-size bed and lightning-fast wireless Internet,” that I was eventually in store for a heartfelt yet awkward conversation about my lack of motivation toward property ownership. And that’s okay. Dating is totally weird
at this age, what with all the pushy relatives and ticking clocks that people have to contend with. At twenty-four, who cares if you drink a couple of beers across from an irresponsible hipster’s ironic haircut and then take him home for less-than-memorable sex; but if you wake up on your thirty-second birthday childless and untethered to a human with health benefits who has read more than one book in the previous twelve months, you have to get your ass out of bed and start Dating with Intention. And maybe people don’t really say it that way, but let me clarify that that is precisely what “Oh, you’re still dating that guy who’s an iPod DJ?” really means.

  Fred had a house, man. Which was like, LOLWUT. My previous life had been filled with so many gentlemen trying to get their dicks sucked in their childhood bedrooms (complete with superhero twin bedsheets, in one unforgettable case) that the first night I walked into Fred’s actual crib and met his actually spayed Rottweiler who came bounding down his actual stairs after we’d parked in his actual garage, I almost burst out laughing. I was peeking into cupboards and putting my ear against closed doors trying to determine whether anyone else lived there. That kind of shit was mind-blowing for a person who once dated a dude with six actual roommates. I was like, “How much is your seventh of the rent, thirty-seven dollars?!”

  —

  Anyway, Fred had a kitchen, and in that kitchen was a juicer and a fruit bowl that held seven perfectly ripened mangoes. I remember being struck by a half-empty bottle of Dawn propping up a sponge on the sink and thinking to myself how amazing it was that this was a dude who used dishes and then washed them. Listen, I don’t want you to think I was messing around with men who couldn’t tie their own shoes or whatever, but a lot of dudes in their thirties don’t have proper washcloths or fresh produce, so when I crossed the threshold of this actual house and didn’t immediately trip over seventeen barbells and a rat king of video game controller cords, I kind of lost my shit a little bit.

  We went on a lot of Really Good Dates and he never gave me a hard time for trying to rap along with Outkast in the car or acted weird when I got all giggly and gross watching Michael Fassbender’s huge dick waggle around during the movie Shame. Which we watched on a tall leather couch with no cracks in it, not a futon or a beanbag or his dad’s recliner while he was out of town. Let’s talk about the first night we had sex—no, wait, what we really need to get into is the morning after: I woke up in this massive California king with beams of blinding sunlight slicing through the curtains (MY MAN HAD ACTUAL CURTAINS) to warm its crispy white sheets. Dude was gone, and in his stead he’d left a couple of neatly folded fluffy towels and a brand-new bar of soap. In the shower I thought to myself, “This motherfucker has got to have a wife,” as I blinked shampoo out of my eyes and squeezed expensive conditioner into my palm. But from the look of things he didn’t, unless she used beard-sculpting pomade and wore size-thirteen work boots.

  —

  He was downstairs blasting Killer Mike and grating potatoes for homemade hash browns, and this might have been the exact moment that my brain exploded, because that kind of thing had happened to me never. Cash for a Starbucks to drink on the train going to work? Sure. Three and a half minutes to sniff at all the dried-up takeout containers in the fridge in search of something even vaguely edible before the cab pulls up? Absolutely. But from-scratch blueberry pancakes with turkey bacon, hash browns, and lukewarm mango puree courtesy of the fancy juicer on the counter? NOT EVER. And that kind of gloriousness continued throughout the course of our relationship: home-cooked meals that consisted of more than just massive blackened hunks of charred meats (seriously, it’s either they cook absolutely nothing at all or pork chops the size of your head on a grill with neither sides nor condiments); thoughtful, engaging discussions about culture and news; fresh bars of soap and neatly folded towels every morning for the shower. Despite myself, I got excited. I like to be excited about stuff, and hanging with a dude I could buy a book for who would actually take the time to read it was terribly fucking exciting.

  I thought Fred was my Love Jones, the black renaissance relationship I’d been waiting for, ever since I watched Larenz Tate chase Nia Long’s NYC-bound Amtrak as it departed Chicago’s Union Station, my bougie black romance set to a neo-soul soundtrack. I would be the moody, complicated writer and he the temperamental artist; ours would be a life filled with poetry readings I couldn’t understand, artist lectures I would barely stay awake through, and gallery openings during which I would gracefully field questions about whether I was the inspiration for his finest works. I would write jokes about his dick, of course, but that would be offset by the afternoons spent digging through crates of old jazz records and evenings banging drums and talking about shit like the diaspora with our similarly head-wrapped, natural-haired friends. We had all the ingredients: paintbrushes, record players, notebooks, proximity to the Wild Hare. I spent an inordinate amount of time concocting our fantasy future.

  I got dumped pretty much because I cannot have a baby. I could feel every bit of exposed upper arm fat catch a chill in that fancy restaurant he’d suggested, and I instinctively bent my arms and tucked my elbows into my sides for protection as Fred tried to find a nice way to tell me that his imaginary future children were more important than what I thought was a really special thing we had going. An hour before that we’d been strolling arm in arm through the Lichtenstein, and my heart was still full of all those people and colors and the fact that I was finally having sex with a person who had a membership to the goddamned Art Institute, and now I was being broken up with over a thirty-dollar pasta in A GROSSLY UNFLATTERING CAP-SLEEVED SHIRT.

  I set my fork down. Halfway through, when the sad eyes and gentle tone made my mouth slick with humiliation, I attempted to defend myself. I thought it was ridiculous to talk about my gynecological history and the possibilities of adoption with a dude I met on fucking Facebook, but there I was, trying to fit the ocean into a plastic cup as it tossed and turned me in its waves. I tuned back in as he was saying, so fucking gently, “…can you really chase a baby around the backyard?” He didn’t mean it in the mean way, I didn’t think. Sometimes even when it feels mean it isn’t, I reminded myself. I glanced down at my left hand, curled in a stiff black brace, my feet in their orthopedic sandals. No, I would not be chasing any of Fred’s babies.

  —

  We broke up—amicably, of course, because I am not one to make a public scene—but then kept having sex for a few weeks because I am a total idiot. I remember paying the check and collecting his truck from the valet and driving back to his house as if nothing had changed, as if I wasn’t feeling raw and exposed and not good enough, and then dancing in his dining room with him as Prince’s “Erotic City” played on the turntable. What kind of asshole wouldn’t choose this? What monster would be satisfied with some boring old broodmare when he could just stay with awesome me and get a couple of foster kids or something?! And I’m dumb, but not dumb enough to try to talk a dude out of a major life decision. I don’t want to be fifty years old, married to a dude who resents me and hates our seventeen adopted children and our cats. Then I’d have to cheat on him to get some romance back in my dried-up life, and I’d inevitably be caught by a member of our child army because I’m careless and irresponsible. He’d fall into a deep depression, comforted only by the warm embrace of Crown Royal and thug passion. The care of the children would undoubtedly lapse, causing them to take to the streets, robbing old ladies and eating out of dumpsters or whatever. I can’t go out like that. So instead we stopped dancing and watched twenty minutes of porn before having sweaty sex in his giant bed and wasting a tablespoon of his perfectly good semen in my useless birth canal. And then I went home and deleted his number out of my phone.

  I blocked him on Facebook and unfollowed his Twitter, because the one thing I’m good at is never deluding myself that I can handle the out-of-context social media posts of someone I used to have sex with. I am not calloused in the way you need to be to gracefully handle the o
nslaught of confusing and hurtful images posted online by an ex. And I’m not even talking about, “Wow look at my new girlfriend our luv is 4eva!” I mean HOW COULD YOU CHECK IN AT OLIVE GARDEN WITHOUT ME, YOU SAVAGE? So he had to go. I don’t know how to use apps to hide people’s relationship status updates or whatever the fuck, so I wiped my Internet slate clean of him and avoided people who would ask me when I was going to get back on fucking Match.com.

  In the post-Fred era of my life, here’s what I would tell myself on your average Tuesday night while absentmindedly massaging some random corporeal swelling with sick-smelling medicated gel: YOU CAN JUST WAIT, YOU DUMMY. STOP TRYING TO BE HAPPY NOW, YOU CAN JUST WAIT. That I could and/or would just wait for everyone else to get old, too, that I would just smile and nod supportively while my young, healthy peers ran through exhaustive lists of their carefree romantic encounters, pretending to listen with intention, patiently waiting for the joints in their knees to erode and the discs in their backs to slip out of place so that they’d stop asking me why I didn’t “put myself out there more” and maybe start to understand firsthand what it feels like to pursue someone romantically when you are thirtysomething and have a physical disability and your target is also thirtysomething and does not. HOW CAN I SWIPE LEFT ON TINDER WHEN MY GNARLED AND CRIPPLED FINGERS CAN’T EVEN WORK THAT WAY WITHOUT A COUPLE CELEBREX?