So, yeah, I pulled her profile off the dating site and it was, like, wowza! The photo, I mean. It was really something. Now I know (and from personal experience) that the way a girl looks in a 320 by 240 pixel photo posted on a dating site and the way she looks in a coffee shop on Queen Street on a Thursday evening can be two completely different … uh … ways.
Whatever.
What really made the difference in this case was something in the overall profile, a total impression, you know, like, a sense I got in everything from the words she chose to the way she smiled in the photo that she was the sort of person who would never try to deceive another person by manipulating a photo or talking herself up. She gave off an aura of overall sincerity. Is that the right word? Maybe authenticity. You get exactly what you pay for, if you know what I mean.
Anyways.
We chatted online for a couple weeks, and when that went well, and when we both felt ready, we set up a meeting, a safe neutral locale. Whenever I do the online dating thing, I try my best to keep it all as non-threatening as possible. I want the girl to know that I care about, you know, the kind of concerns feminists have: keep everything on an equal footing, be conscious of power in our hook-ups, don’t objectify, acknowledge the girl’s agency in everything from chit-chats to (if it goes that far) sex.
So.
We agreed to meet at a coffee shop on Queen Street West, The Coffee Haus. Maybe you know the place? Kind of trendy, but a good setting, vibe-wise, for a first date. I was coming from a photo shoot on Parliament Street, riding the eastbound streetcar along Queen, early evening with the sun low in the sky, sitting toward the back by an open window on the left side, enjoying the cool air rushing over my face after a day stuck in a studio with hot lights. I’m enjoying a vaguely dreamy feel to the ride. Know what I’m saying? How the wheels rumble on the track and the whole car sways a bit as you’re rolling along? I’ve got 4G on my tablet and I’m looking at the photo of this girl and I’m thinking holy shit she’s got a look to her and I’m looking forward to our date, not in a super excited way, but just in a pleasant dreamy early evening way. I mean, it’s not like I’m thinking oh I’m gonna get laid (though that would be nice), but more that I’m thinking it would be fun to chit-chat with a good-looking girl and flirt and laugh and then see where things go from there.
Or what?
The only problem with travelling by streetcar in the early evening is that you’re catching the tail end of rush hour and, with all the construction downtown right now, that tail end stretches out for an extra hour or two before you get the more relaxed evening traffic. That means there’s less rumbling along and more stopping and starting, waiting at lights for drivers to make illegal left turns while the streetcar driver clangs his bell and leans out the window and calls the driver ahead of him a selfish dick, etc. Somewhere west of University Avenue, where the trendy stuff starts, the streetcar stutters to a stop while we wait for just such a selfish dick to make his illegal left turn. Meanwhile, an eastbound streetcar has stuttered to a stop beside us for exactly the same reason, only in the other direction. So there you have two streetcars, side by side, head to tail, like two Cliffords, the giant red dogs, sniffing each others’ butts, or public transit lovers sixty-nining each other. Whatever image turns you on. Take your pick. I’m sitting, minding my own business, enjoying the open window, and not two feet away is some guy in the other streetcar doing the same. Once our eyes meet, we feel obliged to acknowledge one another. We nod. Then he says: Whuzzup?
Now?
Let me finish first. Christ, where was I? Oh yeah. He says: Whuzzup? I say: Not much. He says: Just broke up with my girl. Can you imagine? Just like that to a stranger riding an opposite-bound streetcar. We have the phrase TMI for a reason, you know. Is that what TMI is? A phrase?
Anyhow.
He asks me how it’s going for me with the ladies. I tell him I’m on my way to a hook-up at the Coffee Haus, a girl I connected with online. He says: lucky you. I say: I hope so. He says: bring protection. I say: it’s not gonna be that kind of a hook-up. He winks and says: whatever you say, boss. In both directions, the left-turning cars are still waiting for a gap in the traffic and behind them drivers are honking their horns and shouting for them to get their self-centred asses off the road. I look to my lap where I’ve laid my tablet with the girl’s image saved to my photo album app. I hear hey and look to the guy in the other streetcar. He says: I know what you could do. I say: what’s that? He says: you could give her a message.
No shit.
They say it’s all in the delivery, and if that’s true, then this guy’s delivery is, like, impeccable. I stare across the two-foot gap between the streetcars, mouth open in anticipation, expecting him to give me some words of wisdom or at least a decent joke. Instead, the guy hawks up a solid loogie and shoots it like a bullet through the barrel of his O-shaped lips. It’s trajectory reminds me of a basketball when LeBron James shoots from the foul line: straight into the net without ever touching the rim. In the case of the loogie, it goes straight to the back of my throat without touching anything else on the way, no lips, no teeth, no tongue. It flies splat to the back of my throat. He says: give her that! And he laughs. Both streetcars lurch forward and the guy disappears. Reflexively, I swallow and feel the solid ball of mucus slide down my throat.
Don’t remind me.
Another two blocks west along Queen Street and a putrid aftertaste rises to the back of my tongue, the sort of aftertaste you might get from swallowing rotten meat on a moldy hamburger bun slathered in motor oil. I ding the bell for the streetcar to stop, then stumble onto the street, staggering between cars until I double over and retch into a catch basin. Flecks of vomitus spackle my tie enveloping me in an odour that’s a combination of loogie aftertaste (see above) and gastric acid vapour, but pulling off the tie and dumping it in a garbage can and walking two blocks to the west does nothing to get rid of the odour. It’s as if the putrid loogie/gastric acid/vomitus smell is somehow keyed to my DNA and so can’t help but follow me wherever I go.
Exactly.
There’s the Coffee Haus across the road and, although I’m ten minutes late for our hook-up, I figure I’d better go to the nearest drugstore and buy a bottle of mouthwash. There’s nowhere to discreetly rinse and spit, so I slink down the alley beside the drugstore and, between two waste bins, I unscrew the cap and swill mouthwash straight from the bottle. After a good swish and spit on the pavement, I screw the cap back on and stuff the bottle into my rear pants pocket. I do my best to tuck in my shirt and I pause in front of a shop window to paste my hair down with a daub of spit on my palms. As soon as I go into the Coffee Haus, I recognize the girl from the photo, now staring out the window and glancing at her watch. I step to the empty chair and, maybe a little too loud, maybe a little too confident, I tell her I’m the guy from the online dating site. Pulling out the chair, I sit. The bottle of mouthwash explodes. The chair is a puddle of mouthwash and my ass stews in it.
Typical.
In the photo, she has a beautiful smile, but I never once get to see that smile in the flesh. What I see, instead, is an upturned disdain. She smells the alcohol-tinged mouthwash—hell, everyone in the Coffee Haus can smell the alcohol-tinged mouthwash—and she smells the trace flecks of vomitus I hadn’t noticed on my shirt and (in spite of all the mouthwash I’ve swallowed) she smells something else besides which she can’t name but which I know full well is the persistent aftertaste of loogie mixed with gastric juices and me exhaling the noxious mix into the room until the Coffee Haus manager comes out from behind the counter and asks me to kindly leave the premises or she will be forced to call the police. The girl stands and, in a voice of generic politeness, says this is a no-go. Before she can step out from behind the table, I say I’m sorry but there’s a perfectly good explanation for the loogie/vomitus/mouthwash smell combo and I beg for her to stay just a couple minutes and hear me out. But the girl is firm and she elbows past me. She says it hasn’t got anything to do with the way I smell. She says it has to do with the fact that I don’t look one bit like the photo I posted on the web site. She says she’s looking for authenticity and I obviously don’t have what she’s looking for.
Bitch.