Taking one for the team

I'm sitting across from a first date. Or, maybe a second date. It's a coffee date at Stumptown. This is good. Good to observe the beginning of two people. Good to not be in the first date, oy vey. It looks like a train wreck.

Long conversations. Sitting side by side, having to turn your head. Over talking, for talking sake. Over sharing tidbits of your life or filling the time with random thoughts that come into your head. A song comes on, a story of traveling experience with a turn on a dance floor and a cry, turns into a conversation about dancing. Dancing turns into school dances to school. School to her children, her children to the kids he works with. A forced flirtatious laughter; something else to fill the obvious disconnect between them. I would like to consider this the push. The push is forcing your energy closer to theirs, a jump across the void to bring oneself closer. It is a force against something unnatural. It's a lack of physical attraction. Otherwise it wouldn't matter what was coming out of their mouth.

However, I have to say, people do push themselves outside of their "attractive" expectation box, because you learn as you get older, we are all mostly just looking for kindness and love and a friend; a connection somewhere, between someone (hence the push). I'm not saying they won't be perfect for each other in the long run, but now, they are not "naturally" comfortable with each other.

She is a slender 30 year old woman with pink pocka dots on her socks. Short brown hair, coffee in hand. He is a tall mid 30's gentleman. A few piercings up his earlobe, his slightly portly jowl is covered by his bushy goatee. He sports some thick black rim glasses and his black tee over a white tee is speckled by his morning's beard trimmings. He doesn't notice. Nice.

She started to talk about how her daughter wants to be a writer. Awkwardly - and as all rambling slightly disconnected conversations go - he tries to relate and share intimacy by expressing his love for writing.

Swing and a miss.

She wanted to share more about her daughter. She's not interested in his passion for writing. She stops actively listening. He senses her distance and talks more about what he writes and how long he has written in an attempt to say the right thing. He finishes enigmatically with...."but I don't enjoy playing scramble, huh".

She tries to save him, "huh. Interesting."

Ah.

My coffee is good. I'm sitting at stumptown alone and feeling amazing. I'm soooooo glad I'm watching this "date" as opposed to being in one. I am almost grateful that these people are taking one for the singles team today. I'm going to continue researching the ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair) and eyeballing the "single" man journaling adjacent from me. And happily doing it, alone.