blind. date.

I want to talk about the blind date.

I want to talk about why, why I let myself get set up by someone I barely knew with someone I didn't know at all, and how I agreed to test fate and Mother Nature's armed forces and the plain dumb luck of chemical engineering on the basis of these words: "I think you guys would really hit it off."

I want to talk about how maybe for a moment I should have thought about this, should have thought about the currency of a relative stranger telling me this, not someone I'd had a long history of matchmaking exchanges with, no. Not a cousin, say, I'd grown up with, not someone who knew the particularities of my dating predilections, and anyway, what was she thinking, this new, uninitiated co-worker of mine, what did she know about me and how could she have known what she seemed to think she knew, and what was I thinking, nearly single 24-year-old on the outs with my first real boyfriend, someone I actually called "my boyfriend" when referring to him in conversation.

Yes, at our oozy, romantic beginnings, it would come out of my mouth like an uncoiling Slinky, and it was like watching that Slinky flip, flip down the stairs, I'd say "my boyfriend" in that same breathy, gleeful uncoiling, and oh, the novelty of it, the novelty of saying he was mine. I liked saying "my boyfriend" for that certain span of time between our post-courtship wooze and whatever it was that this was now, this flailing unease. But look how perked up my ears were at the invitation to consider someone else for a change, ten months in, look how that dim bulb of buried sexual response suddenly became that much brighter, and how, despite the strangeness of a stranger telling me how I'd hit it off with yet another stranger even more far removed from me than she was, I was rarin' to go, lapping up the pseudo-compliment of the set-up, poised on the lip of adventure, eating up words that dared to promise me something new and good.

Because I also want to talk about how something inside of me was on the verge of collapse. I want to talk about how I'd startle myself in the bathroom mirror at night with the belly aching "he's not quite right," how I'd do doubletakes while applying the morning makeup to my tired, worried eyes – is this me, is this really me, I'd ask blankly to my reflection, and what is this and who are you, who are you, wrinkle, surreptitious, devilishly sly, forming on my forehead, and I want to talk about how I knew it wasn't a wrinkle like laugh lines, knew it wasn't like the crease at the eyelid from too much laughter, knew it was something hard and Alanis Morisette-like.

I'd even croon to her radio hits and feel something, I mean really feel something, as if that were possible, as if it were possible to feel connected to the minor-chord whinings and throaty declarations of Alanis Morisette. But that's how I became privy to those first fuzzy thoughts of what if he's not, of what if there's someone else, and what if, and what if. That's how I became privy to a stranger woman's words, which seemed couched in a sort of supernatural omniscience, the way a homeless man could come at you out of the garbagy ether of 6th and Mission and give you, without warning, a slice of outrageous wisdom like "You are meant to heal people" or "Why is it so hard for you to trust love?" Something shattering and revelatory, and that co-worker came at me just like that, within hours of her first day on the job, on the way out to lunch, pausing at the door, holding her left palm flat against the glass, coming at me with that same unexpected, attention-grabbing optimism.

Let me remind you I had been feeling estranged from the boyfriend. He was devolving, rapidly, into an empty status symbol, into a noun with a definitive – not possessive – antecedent article. The boyfriend, he was becoming just the boyfriend now, a kind of traffic snarl on a Friday afternoon, an overturned vehicle on the highway, some brief passing fancy of a roadside attraction that you inevitably get beyond, after the catatonia of the rubberneckers, after the clumsy honking, after the looming possibility of thrill and disaster, after the slow crawl swimming in spent gas, the drive by, the eventual drive by you must make in the momentum of that viscous river of other cars. And hey, you discover, there's nothing here, there's nothing here, and so this stranger woman's words, and how she said them, how sure she seemed, and how I was tired of the traffic snarl, and so yeah, I said, yes, I'll do it, I'll meet what's his name Stephen, sounds great, we'll have coffee or whatever, you think that'll work, that's about all I can commit to right now, you know, the boyfriend.

And I rolled my eyes like it was going to be messy, can't commit to dinner at this time, calendar uncertain, you understand, but alright, coffee, and yes, you can give him my number and yes, I'll be home tonight if he wants to call and do you spell his name with a "v" or a "ph" and how do you know him by the way. And she's building him up, a kind of best friend apparently, someone she's known for years, a close friend of hers, really smart, really funny, really sweet, really really really, I think you guys would really hit it off, she says. And it feels, for a moment, like an extravagance, a secret, a naughty bedtime story, a man named Stephen who will have my phone number by tonight. And in the curve of the late afternoon, propelled by this anonymous Stephen, this smart, funny, really really really Stephen, by the end of the day, the boyfriend turns into flaccid fantasy, into aging deception. The boyfriend, spent of all electric potential, falls, unceremoniously, by the wayside.

So I want to talk about the cartoon balloon of hope I had, a week later, after the phone call, after the agreement of coffee, after the agreement of a date, blind though it would be, I want to talk about the cartoon balloon of hope I had, sitting at an outside table at Peet's on Polk Street, a cooling latte in my hands, several glances at my wrist where a watch told me Stephen with a "ph" was fifteen minutes late and counting and how I didn't know if that was good or bad, like was he going to be extra-specially hot or extra-specially funny or what.

I want to talk about the body I'd imagined on the other end of the phone wires, a man I conjured up out of a voice and a voice only, did not bother with the pleasantries of physical description other than swapping height – height, I'm telling you – and how I heard 6'4" and my mind swooned instantly, picturing the phantom stride his legs would make when we walked arm and arm and how it would match, how we would match, right, I mean 6'4", perfect, that's perfect, I wanted someone tall, I wanted to be the small one for a change.

So I imagined him a 6'4" Stephen specimen, and even though the Stephen specimen was late it gave me time to think about his hands, the maybe span of them, the precision of his fingertips. I had time even to wander southward, time to imagine the half-globes of his calves, didn't he say he biked a lot, I don't remember, but okay, let's say he does bike a lot, I want to think about calves. I want to think about his calves, I want to think about his lithe ankles peddling their way across town. I want to think about a sweaty piece of his hair falling into his eyes, into his dark eyes, a piece of dark, richly wavy hair falling into his dark eyes.

And this is what I'm thinking with my fingers interlaced on the cup holding my coffee drink, this is where I'm going with this and the boyfriend just keeps getting smaller and smaller until he's a speck on the map, an underwhelming landmark, an unattended back road, and Stephen with a "ph" fifteen minutes late and counting rises up like that turn on Highway 5 that brings you to the lip of Magic Mountain, he rises up like Oz, like the distant bell of the ice cream truck rounding the corner and heading straight for your front stoop. Stephen rises up just like that, in those fifteen minutes and counting, he rises up just like that.

And if only that could have been enough he would have stayed there, a rising, ballooning hope. If only I'd have decided that fifteen minutes and counting was too much, and this Stephen with a "ph" person was late, and that was unacceptable for a first, blind date. If only I'd have shaken myself from the cumulous clouds of my daydreaming and gone home at just that instant, it might have kept everything intact, might have held me back from the shudder of disappointments that would follow. But I didn't, I stayed right on through until he hit the 25-minute mark, and that's when Stephen chose to announce himself. That's when I heard, somewhere to the right of my latte, somewhere on the outskirts of my filmy histrionics, I heard his voice. "You must be Maya," he said and I looked up. And that's when my cozy little balloon of hope hit the pinpoint prick of a devastating needle.

And I wish I could spare you the details of how my heart plunged when 6'4" Stephen with a "ph" stood before me, even though I want to talk about what it is to lay eyes on someone for the first time, that split second of molecule suspension, all the world stopping itself while you gather your senses and your body snaps forward with its penultimate decision-making. And how it lasts for just that second, that's all you get, biology kicking in, some Darwinist impulse directing your basest instincts, and you wish you could stop yourself, you wish looks didn't matter so much, or you wish the way you felt about looks didn't matter.

But boy does it ever, and boy do you ever, you can't help it, it matters. And I couldn't help it, it mattered. Because Stephen with a "ph" was not – and I won't mince words here – Stephen with a "ph" was not for me, and there would be no "hitting it off" the way I'd been promised. In that single, pivotal glance at him, I knew everything. The pitch backward of my stomach (wrong direction), the skin of my arms prickling in instant regret of my agreement to the date, this blind blind date, and the sun choosing, at that precise quadrant of the clock, to disappear, and how then it was just us at that table at Peet's, and an afternoon to wrestle with now, a whole, too-big afternoon with my insides in revolt and a big, fat obvious "no" squealing out of my pupils. I knew this, knew this wasn't like those mythic, needle-in-the-haystack collisions of strangers in movies, knew there'd be no magical cue from the soundtrack orchestra, knew I was doomed to finish my business with the boyfriend alone, unaccompanied by Stephen and his disciples, wherever and whomever they were. I knew there was no way out of the mess but through it. There was no way out but through.