Dates

Life is funny. I went to Date Bait on Thursday and wound up hoping for a match with Wales so we could go on a date. The Date Bait people define “date” as hanging out together in a public place for at least 30 minutes. Wales apparently wasn’t interested. So what happens? We wind up spending practically all of Gay Pride Day together — talking while marching, then getting lunch together, then watching the end of the parade, then going for a long walk, then having drinks in two different bars, then riding the PATH back to Jersey City together. Estimated time elapsed: nine hours.

I’m not even saying, or even really thinking, that anything “romantic” is going to come of this. But that’s not my point.

My point is this: what the hell is a date, anyway? Is the concept of a date just totally archaic? Is it at all meaningful to purposely set up a meeting with someone so you can evaluate that person as a potential romantic interest? It just seems so… artificial. I don’t do so well on “dates” anyway. But when I’m just hanging out with someone, I do just fine.

My friend Nick, whom I first met at Twentysomething in September: the first time we decided to meet up, on a Saturday, we wound up tooling around Manhattan for about twelve hours. The following Saturday we did the same thing. I was interested in him, but he wasn’t interested in me in that way, so he never considered our get-togethers to be dates. Yet he’d go out to dinner with people he was interested in, and he’d call those get-togethers “dates.” I guess the idea of a date has to do with all that evaluation and expectation. But how can you possibly get to know someone under all that pressure, and how can you possibly feel comfortable?

That’s why I’m coming to think that the idea of a “date” is a stupid, stupid concept.