If This Isn’t Your Dream Date, Then Tell Me What Is

“Crowned Chase” by Rebecca Joe

Well for starters, Bethany, we’d meet in an accidental, unglamorous sort of way, like at a dying mall or at our primary care physician’s office. It’s not because I have anything against the swipey-app life, obviously, but I grew up watching Tom Hanks fall in love with Meg Ryan on at least three separate occasions while harboring closeted crushes on Kate Winslet and Tracy Chapman. What can I say, I’m a romantic! Although, I think people started declaring a few years ago that the unrealistic conditions of rom-coms—especially those of our elder millennial adolescence—were an unhealthy expectation and standard of love. Probably true, but that’s beside the point because your icebreaker is giving 1960s Dating Game realness and invites an exercise in excessive fantasy, so here goes: this date and I would plan to go somewhere cheap and local, like a free art festival or—before some elected asshole tries to ban it—a drag show. At the festival, we discover Stella, a sixty-eight-year-old art student who crafts the most beautiful handmade Christmas ornaments made from recycled glass and discarded, creamy shards of vintage plastic blow molds. We each buy one for the other because let’s face it, Stella is a fucking vibe and gives us the audacity to believe we will still want to know each other in seven months.

We would then find some culinarily adventurous food truck and take a chance on a deep-fried pun, something like Japanese “scroll rolls” that send nuclear green wasabi aioli grooving in glorious dollops down our chins two bites into them. And what the hell, let’s say things are going so well that we decide to take ourselves to that drag show. Ten dollars to enter and four drink tickets between us, Southern Comfort embraces us with a certain charisma, and by the time the fourth performer is on stage, we are engulfed in hot clouds of our own sweat, skin bedazzled with someone else’s glitter, our mouths resisting the urge to meet one another during the Celine Dion ballad. She hooks her index finger into my pants pocket, and I smile, remembering the crumpled twenty I saved for my favorite drag king. When his song comes on—you know, the Prince one—he smooths out the audience in my direction, and I hold out the bill and she holds onto me, and when Brad Romance pockets the offering in his rhinestone tuxedo jacket, he kisses my trembling hand. After Brad—I  mean, I assume he wouldn’t mind I call him Brad after our…moment—takes a bow and exists stage left, she and I take to the bar for last call. The bartender is good to us, shoots what tastes like root beer into my date’s mouth directly from the fountain hose, and I know this because eventually we do kiss after the place closes down, outside where the air is sharp and awake with a 2 AM breeze. We walk around the park downtown, unafraid of the darkness like we should be at this hour, strolling through this rare slice of peace with stories, one after the other, of the greatest hits of our lives, lapping the little duck pond with the red footbridge so many times I lose count. Our laughter occasionally skips across the water like the stones of our childhood, sturdy and unbothered by the weight they actually carry.

When the sun begins to peek out behind the hockey arena, I whisper a prayer to myself begging God, the universe, whoever will listen to let this date last forever. That’s the kind of love I want, Bethany, a first date that just never ends. My date and I are still in the park. Out of the corner of my eye, I see an old woman at the far end of the duck pond, gentle looking, but also a bit frightening if I am honest. Not Stella, no. Not even of this world, perhaps. She’s come to tell me it’s okay to take up space in the realm where people get to be happy for a while, to be the star of my own rom-com, if I dare. My heart isn’t obsolete, just hasn’t been used in a while, she says without words. Not to worry, though. The woman’s come prepared with a VHS tape she shoves into my chest, tells me to press play. When I say shove, I mean she really shoves it in there. How easily it slides past skin and blood and sternum, into the muscle that keeps this whole thing going. I feel the tape catch, a dormant atrium I didn’t know I had slurps it up. The woman vanishes. I turn to my date, and I swear to God, Bethany, she’s sprouted wings from her back that look like they are made from magic and rainstorms, flashing iridescent shades of indigo and amethyst in my direction. And I’m not even scared. My first thought is I bet she never gets stuck in traffic. She spins me around gently, guides me into little spoon position. A second pair of arms, reptilian and strong, emerge from her ribs, wrap around me like a seat belt. As we take flight, she makes conversation casually, like we aren’t literally flying over the city. She asks me if there’s anything that would make this day-turned-night-turned-day any more spectacular, and I say—without hesitation—that there should have been a dog in this story, and she says—without hesitation—that there is, a two-month-old mutt her sister recently rescued, both of whom would love to meet me. And it’s that moment right there, Bethany, the promise of dogs and family and someone who wants to fly me around with magical wings we still haven’t even talked about yet and the overall sensation of being grateful to be alive and in love that tells me this will be a first date to remember.

I say that last part just to see if Bethany is still listening. She’s not. Bethany looks up from her phone, giggles out an almost apology for her distraction. We make eye contact for only the third time since we sat down in the overpriced restaurant I can’t afford. Well, what about you? I ask Bethany. I try to smile while taking a gulp from my water glass, condensation running down my chin and dripping visibly on my shirt. She says something about pickleball because of course she does. Bethany Bethany Bethany. I’m questioning how we managed to match online, how our attraction to one another seemed so mutual and palpable yesterday. It’s still partially there because I’m still thinking about whether or not my place is tidy enough for company, whether Bethany will giggle like that when I put my mouth on the freckle beneath her left ear. What if this is our unglamorous meeting? What if this shitty start to our first date is just the funny story we will tell later, a month, a year, a lifetime down the road? First impressions can be deceiving, and Bethany might surprise me. She flashes a look my way that can only say perhaps we still have a chance here to turn this thing around. I could learn to like pickleball. I could. What’s the harm in trying? The waiter arrives, places a fourteen dollar bowl of brussels sprouts on our table. Yes. I can see it. Maybe this is how the best thing that will ever happen to both of us begins.

about the author

Katie Todd (they/she) is a writer living in Madison, Alabama. They are an MFA graduate from the Sewanee School of Letters and a 2018 Rocket City Playwrights’ Series winner. Find them on Twitter/X @The_KatieTodd and on Instagram @thekatietodd.

about the artist

Rebecca Joe is an artist who works instinctually and without a physical reference. She works in media (with a modest 15k subscribers on YouTube - Resident Undead - and a brand - Madison Seminary - with millions of impressions on social media) as a researcher and psychic, as well as a medium for spirit portraiture, where art is rendered without a conscious decision about the output. The result is often a Jungian unconscious expression, often with self-determined symbols with roots and resemblances in many other languages (as confirmed through research with linguists around the world). Sometimes, the art is seemingly more mystical and mysterious. Each piece is a rendering of the human experience and the depths of the human mind and soul, with an admiration for the impossibilities and miracles of mysticism.