Short Story: The Date

I was sitting in the cafe by the window, working on an academic article for the Journal of Ancient History, when I saw them.

It was a man and a woman, both young, though not too young–not college-aged, or immediately post-grad. The man could have been a few years older, or that may just have been the way he was dressed; buttoned up, as they used to say, to his chin, with a coat over it. Not a “formal” suit coat, but similar. More casual. He was not wearing a tie. She, on the other hand, was dressed in something more like what a college student might wear for a first date. Tight pants, a low-cut blouse with straps, both in bright colors. Nice shoes, but not high-heeled. 

They came in together, but slightly awkwardly, as if they had only just met outside the restaurant. He did not hold the door, but he looked for a moment as if he might. After a brief hesitation, he led the way to a table by the window. It was a good table–the best in the house for a view of the park outside, as I knew well, but not one I ever took. The glare from the sun as you get towards the late afternoon makes it too hard for me to see the screen of my laptop.

Despite leading the way to the table, the man waited for the woman to sit down first. She had already pulled out her phone and was scanning the QR code on the table for the menu. After a moment, he did the same. The next few minutes were spent in silence, and I returned to a difficult passage about Late Imperial rituals of power. I’m not sure how long afterwards (I always lose track of time when writing) it was when the woman finally spoke.

“Have you been here before?” 

The man must have shook his head, but I didn’t see it. “So why did you tell me to meet you here?” the woman asked, a new note in her voice.

I looked over to see the man shrug. He was thin–too thin, I thought, and a little uncomfortable in his own body. He raised one hand in a meaningless gesture. “Well, it’s near where you said you worked. I was going to be driving out here all this way anyway, so I didn’t want you to have to go far.” His voice was oddly flat, and he didn’t meet her eyes.

Her voice now held an unmistakable undercurrent of tension; it might have been anger or some other suppressed emotion. “And you didn’t think to ask me where I’d like to go? You know I live just around the corner.” She had blonde hair and those odd little bangs. She was wearing flesh-colored lipgloss.

He looked down at his phone, scrolling through the menu again. “Well…” he ventured. “You told me to pick the place. Since you said I’d be driving farther. I thought…”

“Well,” she said, “obviously I assumed you’d pick a place you’d been to before. Or at least because the food was something you liked.” 

He didn’t respond; he was looking down at his phone still. 

She looked vaguely in my direction; I turned back to my laptop. “Picking an interesting or exotic restaurant would have shown personality. Or picking a safer restaurant you’d been to before would have shown that you cared about me having a nice time. Or you could have responded by asking me to pick a restaurant since you knew I knew the area better and wanted to show you valued my preferences. And because of the dietary restrictions I listed on my profile.” Her voice now was not angry, but unfocused, like someone reading off a Powerpoint slide. I glanced back at her face; she was looking right at me. I turned quickly back again to my laptop screen, and tried hard to focus on Ambrose of Milan’s meeting with Magnus Maximus rather than the one in front of me. It was difficult. 

The man sighed. “The Monte Cristo Sandwich looks good.” I glanced over to see him looking around vaguely for the waiter, one hand raised awkwardly again.

There was another long pause, but I did not look away this time. “I saw on your profile you enjoy hiking,” the woman said finally. She was looking at his face, while he stared fixedly out the window. “What’s your favorite place to hike?” 

“Oh,” he said, “I mostly just go to the trails near where I live. But once or twice a year I go backpacking at the National Park. I try to bring as little as possible, you know, to really test myself against nature.” There was a long pause, as if he was expecting her to ask a question. She did not. “Do you ever do any hiking?” He said finally, in a rushed voice.

“Not really,” she said. 

“I thought you said you were athletic?” He said, tension again creeping into his voice.

“I did a lot of Pilates in college,” she said, a little defensively. 

“Pilates? You consider Pilates athletic?” He now sounded annoyed. “That’s not athletics.” There was a pause while he struggled for words and she avoided his eyes. “It’s a leisure activity.”

“You just say that because Pilates are female-coded,” she said, suddenly passionate; I looked away uncomfortably. “They’re actually extremely strenuous. Navy Seals do them to train for difficult underwater runs.” There was a pause, and then she spoke again in the same slightly defensive voice from earlier. “I was in really good shape in college.”

“Well,” he said, slowly, after a pause. “I think you’re still in really good shape.”

I glanced back. She was making an odd face and avoiding his eyes, and for the first time he was looking into her face.

“Oh come on,” she said. “Complimenting my body…”

“I wasn’t–” He looked back at his phone. “I mean, I was just–I saw you liked to read. What’s…what’s the last book you read?”

She looked if anything more upset; a blush crept into her cheeks. “I don’t want to…that’s really personal. I don’t think…”

He laughed. “Your reading is personal? What does that even mean?” He looked much more comfortable now. I sighed audibly, but they were both too wrapped up in their conversation to notice me now. 

Luckily, the waiter arrived to rescue her, and a few minutes was taken up with ordering. I turned back to my screen and resumed typing, glancing over every minute or so despite my best efforts. I noticed she stumbled over her item a little while ordering, referring to it by an abbreviated form that the waiter found confusing, and he supplied the full name from the menu. Then they were alone again, with no phones to look at.

“What’s your favorite book?” He broke out with suddenly. Both were looking out the window now, their eyes following joggers and small dogs as they moved past the cafe.

“Well, probably Jane Eyre,” she said. She still looked a little angry. There was a pause. “What’s your favorite book?”

“I don’t really read for fun,” he admitted. “I think maybe I read Jane Eyre in a Brit Lit class. That’s one of the Brontes ones, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “But it’s really a story about female sexual desire. And how society represses it because men are uncomfortable with it.”

There was a pause. He opened his mouth, then shut it again and pulled his phone abruptly out of his pocket, as if checking the time.

 “Do you have any hobbies?” she asked quickly, looking at his phone as well. “Besides hiking, I mean.” 

“Well, I play video games,” he said. With a visible effort, he closed his phone and put it on the table. “But I mean…we don’t have to talk about it.”

“Why not?” she said, suddenly angry again. Her hands on the table were clenched into fists. “Because I can’t possibly play video games? Or because you think my fucking female brain isn’t capable of understanding how profound they are?”

There was a long pause, during which I made one last, desperate attempt to finish my paragraph about the etiquette of Imperial consistories, then gave up. When I looked back, he was staring at his phone, and she was staring out the window, a slight blush on her face. Finally, he took a deep breath, as if steeling himself, and put his phone down on the table again. 

“Um…well, I’m playing Elden Ring now.” She continued to look out the window, and after a second he did so as well. “It’s…it’s a JRPG, the latest game by Hidetaka Miyazaki. It has this very complex combat and customization system that’s designed to maximize player choices and gearing while also presenting an appropriate difficulty level for players of different skills.”

“I, um,” she said slowly, pulling her own phone out of her purse and thumbing it on, then pausing. She still looked vaguely embarrassed. “Well…” she said finally, “I play a lot of Candy Crush.”

“That’s not a video game,” he said angrily. “That’s a phone game.”

“Well, I mean, at least I consume actual art,” she said equally angrily, slamming her phone onto the table and glaring him full in the face.

He glared back. His voice was very fast now, but oddly toneless. My thesis about the complex interrelationship between Ambrose, Magnus, and Valentinian II was now lost irretrievably.  

“Elden Ring is art; it has a story by George R.R. Martin. It takes place in the Lands Between, a realm blessed by entities called outer gods. Most prominent is the Greater Will, who created the Elden Ring–a collection of runes that govern physics. The Greater Will's emissary, the Two Fingers, made a woman named…” 

She snorted. “The Two Fingers?”

There was a long silence during which they both continued to stare at each other with oddly unfocused eyes. Luckily, the waiter arrived then with their sandwiches and two Coca-Colas. They continued to look each other intently in the face, and neither one reached for the food.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally, still staring into his eyes. “It’s just really hard to follow you right now. A lot of men have undiagnosed ADHD. And of course they often refuse to get therapy even when their emotional issues are really obvious and debilitating.”

“I went to therapy for a year after college,” he said, quickly and defensively. He looked down at the table. “It really helped.”

“Oh my God, you never stop going to therapy just because you’re doing better,” she said, rolling her eyes and looking away. “It’s even more important then, because you can start digging really deep into the roots of your behaviors.”

“Yeah, I mean, I agree,” he said, still defensive, “it’s just really expensive, you know?” He was now drumming his fingers on the table nervously.

“Well, if you don’t prioritize your own mental health, how can you expect anyone to trust you?” she asked, looking him in the face again.

There was a long silence during which his fingers continued to leap across the plastic surface, making an oddly insect-like buzz. After a moment, she looked away from him, out the window. I glanced back at my laptop. Maximus’ capital had been in…

“I was worried for a while that I had undiagnosed bipolar disorder, but it turns out it was just internalized misogyny,” she said slowly, as if lost in thought. She glanced back at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Yeah that sounds great,” he said, too quickly. “How do you like your job? You’re an Information Analyst, right? What’s that like?” He was staring intently at the plastic in front of him, on which his fingers were now beating a slower, march-like time.

“Oh my God,” she said, staring at him angrily again. “That’s such a common male problem. Obsessing over work to avoid having to actually access your emotions and face yourself ever.”

He did not respond or look up. After a few seconds, both reflexively reached for their phones. 

“You work in some kind of finance field, right?” She said after about a minute, glancing up at him nervously but continuing to hold her phone in her hands. 

“Yeah,” he said, also glancing up. Their eyes met, and I saw a shock go through both of them; then they both looked down at their phones again. “But I mean, I’m not some cliche,” he stammered, his fingers now playing across the surface of the phone rather than on the table. “I don’t even really like my job. I just do it to pay the bills. A stable career makes men more attractive to women.” His fingers stopped abruptly. “My passion really goes into my creative work.”

She looked for the first time genuinely excited. “Oh, what creative work do you do?” She put her phone on the table.

“I design circuit boards,” he said, also putting his phone down. “And I run RPGs for a group in town here. I don’t write the scenarios, though.”

“Oh,” she said, glancing down again in obvious disappointment. “That’s not really creative work, is it? I mean, it’s not like you’re making actual art.”

“I’ve thought about writing my own RPG scenarios and getting them published,” he said, glancing nervously in the direction of his phone. “But it’s just easier to use the pre-set ones and modify them. Circuit boards are really hard to make, though. There are all kinds of specific applications you can only do with a custom board. People will pay really well for some of them. For instance, this guy out in Reno contacted me over the Internet and told me–”

“I write fanfic,” she said abruptly, looking down at her empty hands. “It’s…well, I actually have quite a following. Over two thousand reads on my most popular one. Buffy and Harry Potter mostly, but I also do cross-universe. Ship fic mostly.”

“Ship fic?” he asked, looking at her in obvious confusion. “That’s short for…relationship? Like romance fanfiction?”

“I read a lot of romance literature,” she said, still looking down. “And I write it too. It makes a lot of men uncomfortable, but I’m not ashamed. I don’t just sit around watching porn all day and masturbating like most men.”

He looked simultaneously shocked and amused. “Romance novels? Like those ones you see at Wal-Mart? ‘The Lord That Loved Me’ and ‘My Vampire Master’? But instead you just write stories about, like, Ginny Weasley having sex with that Quidditch guy.” He laughed. “That’s why you said your reading was too personal?”

She looked up and rolled her eyes. “At least I spend my time producing art. It’s not just some stupid hobby that I do because I have nothing better to do, like playing video games or backpacking.”

“No, instead you get dressed up like a slut and go on dates with men from the Internet, then go home and write fanfic about it.” He picked up his fork, then put it down again.

“Oh come on,” she said, grabbing in response for her own fork. “I know the game you’re playing here. You deliberately make your photo on the app way less attractive than you are in person, then come here in your fucking suit and start drooling all over the tablecloth and trying to neg me into sleeping with you. Is that what your Pickup Artist mentor told you would work with women?”

“Oh come on,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You’re the one who writes pervert sex fanfic. And you put all those bikini photos on your profile…. admit it, you’re just another woman who calls herself a feminist, but what you really want is a Lord to master you like poor little Jane Eyre…”

“Oh, is that what you tell yourself about all the women you’ve sexually assaulted on dates?” Her hand was gripped tightly around the knife now, her face jutted forwards towards his. She was breathing hard. “That they were asking for it? We both know the statistics on intimate partner violence. Odds are you’re a fucking rapist too.”

“You should talk,” he all but shouted, leaning forward also. Their faces were only inches away from each other now. “You obviously have an undiagnosed Anxiety Disorder. It’s been pretty clear from your whole body language on this date. I’ve read lots of articles about it on Reddit. Anxiety usually results from some deeper untreated mental illness, and people with anxiety often try to project their own fears and problems onto others. It’s a defensive mechanism to avoid letting anyone ever get close enough to you to–”

“I don’t…it’s not undiagnosed,” she said, leaning away from him and looking suddenly abashed. “I used to take medication…”

“And now you’ve gone off the meds,” he said, suddenly remembering his glass of Coca-Cola and abruptly draining it in one gulp. There was a pause while he swallowed. “Well, sounds like you should go back on them. You obviously have a lot of issues that result in all this aggressive behavior.” 

“I’m not being aggressive,” she said, slamming her fist on the table. Her fork fell to the ground with a loud clatter. “I’m just verbalizing the aggressions you’re constantly making against me.” She was tearing up now. “Just more of the same fucking inevitable bullshit. Men create problems with their passive-aggressive codependent behavior, and then when women call them on it, they get called crazy. Haven’t you ever read–”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he cut her off defensively. He had seemed to remember where he was, and was glancing around the restaurant nervously. I avoided his eyes, looking back at my laptop. What year had Magnus invaded Italy? “But I mean…I really think you should consider going back on some kind of medication. Talk therapy obviously isn’t doing enough for you.” There was an awkward pause while he picked up his cup and realized it was empty. “Really, it would be for your benefit.”

“So what you’re saying,” she said, leaning forward and grasping unconsciously for her table knife again, “is that I’m just another psycho woman who needs to be medicated all the time and to have some fucking white knight tell her what’s wrong with her and what to do because her fucking empty little head can’t handle rational thought. Well, you’re just another stupid muscle-bound moron man-child with your fucking video games who can’t even read and spends all day watching your misogynist fucking–”

“Well, if you weren’t such a fucking crazy little slut,” he broke in with, his face unpleasantly red and his own fist gripping his empty Coca-Cola glass, “maybe someone would want to date you and you wouldn’t get to spend all your time whoring on Instagram for likes with thirst traps and going crazy on every man who tries to be nice to you. Western women like you who have been ruined by feminism don’t understand why decent hard-working men prefer to marry–”

Abruptly, her phone began playing a song; it was Charli XCX’s Spring Breakers. It was extremely loud, and nearly everyone in the cafe turned around to look at the two of them.

Both, meanwhile, had reached for their phones almost simultaneously. There was an awkward pause while she fumbled with hers and finally succeeded in turning the music off.

“Sorry,” she said, not looking up. “That’s the alarm I usually set for my lunch hour. But I took an extra hour today. You know, for the date.”

“No problem,” he said immediately, also staring at his phone. “I always forget to turn off my alarms during vacations; one time, I was staying with my parents, and my alarm went off in the middle of this Church Christmas program, blasting Young Thug to all these little kids dressed as angels.”

She was still staring down at her phone, but looked for a moment as if she was going to laugh; then the grudging smile deepened into a frown.

“It was fucking hilarious,” he muttered in a low voice, without looking up.

The two were silent for nearly five minutes, both glued to their phones, typing away madly while their sandwiches sat in front of them untouched. Somewhere, I hazarded, someone was getting a full account of the date so far. 

Reluctantly, I returned to my own work. Miraculously, the problem of Late Antique episcopal-Imperial relations as expressed in and through court rituals now seemed perfectly clear to me. The words flowed from my fingertips, incisive and just a little witty. My pulse quickened, and I glanced down at my watch; if I kept going, I had just enough time to get through this section…

There was a sudden, uncomfortable prickling at the back of my neck. I glanced up to see the young woman staring directly at me. I flinched.

“Well,” she said, “what do you think?”

To my chagrin, I found myself answering immediately, without thinking, with the same facility I had just been expending on the Late Imperial consistorium. 

“I think you two have a lot in common.”

There was a long pause during which all three of us carefully avoided each other’s eyes. My laptop screen had shut off, but I stayed perfectly still, hoping they were not looking at me. Finally, after what felt like at least ten minutes of silence, I glanced back over at them; they were staring at each other. I opened my mouth to add something…

Abruptly, and for the first time, the man seemed to notice the sandwich in front of him; he put it in his mouth and took a bite. 

“This is really good,” he said, his mouth full.

The woman picked up her sandwich and took a bite also. “It is,” she said after a few moments. There was a pause as she took another bite. “This is a really good place. I always walk by it, but I’ve never actually eaten here.”

“The reviews were good on Yelp,” he said, taking another bite. He glanced at her. “I thought a lighter lunch might be nice, since I know you have to go back to work after this.”

There was a ruminative silence as the two consumed their sandwiches. It seemed to me to take an inordinate amount of time. I desperately wanted to leave now, as my ability to think about Late Antiquity had entirely disappeared; but I was afraid that if I got up, they would notice me. I stayed frozen in my seat, glancing nervously between the young couple and my darkened laptop screen.

When the food was nearly gone, the woman asked abruptly, “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?” There was no reply.

“Can I get the check?” the man asked, catching the waiter’s eye. 

“Well,” the woman said while they waited for the waiter to return. “Who are you planning to vote for this year?”

“I’m voting third party, for the Libertarian guy,” he said unemotionally. “Both of the mainstream candidates are fucking jokes; anyone who votes for them is a delusional moron without a single fucking brain cell.” 

“That’s really irresponsible,” she said, smiling suddenly, an oddly dazzling picture. “The fate of our democracy is at stake.”

“I’m not really a libertarian,” he said, also smiling; it was a surprisingly diffident smile for so tall a figure, and very endearing. “I consider myself a Semi-Falangist Burkean Classical Liberal. Though with some techno-futurist tendencies. I used to have a blog, but I haven’t posted on it since undergrad.” He chuckled, the first genuine laugh I had heard from either of them.

“I think that this is the most important election of our lifetime,” she added, herself now all but beaming. “An existential threat to our shared values. Misogyny, racism, fascism, election denialism, theocracy…” She emitted a small, surprisingly high-pitched giggle.

The waiter had returned with his card; he signed the check, then after a second hesitated and put his hand on hers, awkwardly but gently. “The system is rigged,” he added, as if in explanation. “It’s all PMC diversity-equity-and-inclusion elites circle-jerking each other to keep men down.” She did not pull her hand away.

“I suppose you’re a fucking misogynist who wants a trad-wife who can’t read,” she said, looking shyly down at their joined hands. “Jordan Peterson. Joe Rogan. Andrew Tate. That Eastern European guy…” She looked him full in the face and smiled again, but this time more warmly.

“Women who sleep around lose all their value on the sexual marketplace. But then they expect to sleep with high-value men while ignoring those in their own attractiveness class.” He was still smiling back, but now more confidently. “Western women don’t value marriage and family and then blame men for the results of their own choices.” There was a reflective pause while the two beamed at each other. “Women in most societies got married really young,” he added.

“Society lets men get away with anything, then hands them power while ignoring women with better qualifications. Playing video games all day, barely grooming, no ambition at all…and then they blame women for the fact that no one wants to sleep with them…as if they’re fucking entitled to women’s bodies. Rape culture.” The two were now looking intensely into each other’s eyes, their heads together, both breathing a little hard. “The gender pay gap,” she added, as if in conclusion.

“Feminism,” he said. “The patriarchy,” she countered. 

“Sluts,” he responded. “Fuckboys,” she answered.

There was another long silence. 

“Well,” she said slowly, “I should probably get back.”

She got up from the table, and after a moment he followed her.

“Want to do this again?” he asked, a little nervously.

“Yes,” she said, beaming. “I had a really nice time.”

I got the wedding invite this past week: I’m not sure how they got my address, but it was nicely embossed and made out with my official title. In the photos on the invitation, she is wearing a short green dress, with her hair curled; he is wearing a black suit, with his hair cut even shorter than I had seen it, and his nails filed. Their hands are joined and they are standing across from each other under a white gazebo in what appears to be a wheat field, smiling and gazing into each other’s eyes.

I went to their TheKnot.com website, and checked the “politely decline” option on the RSVP page. My article was politely declined by The Journal of Ancient History. There’s nothing like a summer wedding.