Disappointing Women of New York: Part 3

(This will be the last post in this series. As you can probably tell, these posts (Part 1 & Part 2) are more a reflection of my own insecurities and immaturities than any commentary on women in general or on dating the ones who live in New York City. I have disappointed my fair share of women - maybe I'll do a blog on that some day. Any flaws I’ve highlighted in these ladies and their actions are dwarfed by my own and by the galaxy of terror that men have wreaked upon the other genders on our planet. I was at fault in some way for everything that I'm going to tell you about. I’m sure "Disappointing Shravans of New York" could be a book unto itself. I wish all these women – all women in general – only success and happiness. On this dreary Saturday though, I just wanted to blog, to vent, to make myself feel better. So, without further ado, let’s finish what we’ve started.)

 

20 five-year-olds

Ever since I moved to America’s liberal Northeast in 2015, a dominant cultural narrative has been repeated to me again and again and ingrained in me: Women are queens. Men are trash. Women = good, men = bad. Men are boorish pigs who sometimes surprise you with tact and charm but overwhelmingly, they are the vicious aggressors in an age-old battle whose tide has only recently begun to turn. All my best friends in America are liberal women and these ideas provide the stars by which we navigate dating, workplace dynamics and other touch-points of gender interaction. Women by default are good and right and men are bad and wrong. This is the prism through which I’ve been taught to view the world – first at graduate school and then while working in New York. And largely, I have come to agree. It is a prism that serves me well because it can help me compensate for my many unconscious gender biases. But if you’ll humour me today, I’d just like to challenge the notion this one time. Just this once, and then I’ll go back to assuming the best in women and the worst in men, I promise. Sometimes – sometimes – women can be really, really mean. And for some reason, the ones who’ve been the worst to me have all been 25. So, I’m going to make a sweeping, silly, anecdotal generalization: Women in their mid-20s are children.

 

Ghosts in the System

We had been dating almost three months when I told her I loved her. She didn’t say it back and that was fine. We had talked about this. I think it’s fine to tell someone you love them just because you want to, rather than because you need to hear it back (for it to be real). We met shortly after I moved to New York and we went from 0-100 at a speed that surprised us both. But we stuck with it because it felt right. We would hang out often and have the most wonderful time together. We had met each other’s moms. We hadn’t made any long-term plans but we were really into it. She made life fun. For once, I stopped planning every waking moment and just lived every day. It was a joy.

When I wake up in the morning and I’m excited about the day just because I get to spend it with my partner, I know I’m in love. So I told her. And it felt great. She never said it back to me but she would send me long, drunk text messages late at night telling me how great I was. I felt fine about our dynamic; there was not an imbalance. They were three of the best months of my life.

Then one day she went to Paris on holiday for two weeks and stopped replying to me. 

I had never been ghosted like this before, especially not by someone I loved. She did not reply to me even on her return. I think it was more than a month of radio silence before she dumped me over text. “What a queen. YAS! Slay!”

Perhaps I had come on too strong. Perhaps our three-year age gap was beginning to tear at the spontaneity of the romance. Perhaps she had just realized she was bored of me. It doesn’t matter. You do not ghost someone who has told you they love you, who you’ve introduce to your family, and then dump them over a text message. You act like a grown-up. But alas, 25-year-olds are not grown-ups. 25-year-olds are children.

 

War Correspondence

It started on Hinge, of course. (I do not know how people meet outside of dating apps.) She was a consultant. She had gone to Yale too. She “checked all the boxes”. We talked for a bit and then she said she was traveling for work and would be back in a couple weeks. And of all places, she was in Bombay! It was her first trip to India and she was traveling alone.

This was a couple months after I’d been dumped by aforementioned Ghost Girl and so I think I had come across as a bit desperate to this new lady. In any case, the power dynamic was definitely in Check Box Chica’s favor. But as soon as I realized she was in my hometown and was working on a project that was close to my heart, I offered to help. I genuinely went into “help your friend visiting Bombay” mode. She gave me her email and we emailed each other every day. Aside from restaurant recommendations and site-seeing tips, I also connected her with my industry contacts and friends who would be best placed to advise her on her project. I remember writing honestly, “even if we never meet, I just hope you have a good experience in India” and she replied saying “Oh we will definitely meet when I’m back! This is amazing! Thank you so much. Etc.”

We never met.

We had exchanged 31 emails before she ignored me. An email a day between two strangers for two weeks; each message reaching across 11 time-zones. It was kind of nice to try online dating via 3 lines on an email every night. It felt like writing letters to a soldier on some front-line. Did my soldier die or defect?

Looking back on my emails, I was definitely too eager to impress and too anxious to show my virtues. But. I don’t think you ignore someone who has gone out of their way to help you when you’re traveling alone for work to their country for the first time. I don’t think this is how “YAS Queen Slay me” queens should act. At least tell them you’re not feeling the chemistry or make something up? I wasn’t ready for this kind of behavior. Weren’t women amazing, emotionally intelligent archangels of kindness and virtue? This is what I had been told. I guess she was not. What she was, of course, is 25.

 

5pm Checkout

I knew it wasn’t really “going anywhere” with this girl. She came into my life a month after “we’ll definitely meet” Check Box Chica. This new woman was fun but we were both very different. We texted a lot but would meet only every couple weeks for a few months. She wasn’t my usual type and I was not hers. She had taught English in Southeast Asia for a while and was now working at an education non-profit, but she was still very much finding her mission in life. Alas, she was beautiful and I was lonely and so I gave it a go. On one occasion, she even took the train out to New Jersey, where I was baby-sitting for some family-friends on the weekend, and we went for a lovely hike in the nearby forest. We kissed for the first time over a waterfall. It was nice! There were no “expectations” or ever any conversations about where this was leading. It was two people showing up for each other in a frigid November when the big, scary city had started to ice shut.

Though we did not see each other over Christmas, we texted and shared photos of our vacations. She sent me a photo of her holding her baby cousin and I sent her one of me in a Christmas sweater. It was nice!

We even met once in January. And I was starting to consider whether we could maybe work after all, if we could meet a little more often and invest emotionally in each other. So, we made a plan to grab dinner on a Wednesday. The night before, I’d suggested a place in East Village and she said she was looking forward to it. 6pm tomorrow, we agreed. I had made a reservation. The Italian joint was known for its lasagna and its cheesecake.

I texted her the next day at 5pm to let her know I was leaving work soon. She texted back... saying that she had been seeing someone else all this time and that she wanted to give it a shot with him. So, she said she would not be able to meet me and that she was sorry. I was “a good guy who deserved someone good, etc.”

Have you ever been dumped by text an hour before you’re supposed to meet for cheesecake? It’s a weird feeling. You kind of step back and ask yourself, “What…. What just happened?” How long had she been sitting on this decision and why did she wait until an hour before, to not only cancel the date but to cancel the dating? I could not imagine leading someone on like that and not being honest with them. But then again, I am not 25.

 

I think people in their mid-20s are inconsiderate because they are still looking to maximize their self-interest at any cost – and at anyone else’s expense. I know I was like that. When you’re in your late 20s, I think you’ve been through enough heartbreak to be gentle to people whom you’re breaking things off with. I think you learn decorum, etiquette, etc. Maybe all these women were ghosted and/or dumped by men in similar or worse ways to the ones above and so they saw nothing wrong with it. I feel sorry for them. It makes me sad that people on dating apps are so unkind to one another. There is never a fun way to end a relationship or let someone down easy, but there is a respectful way – a mature way. I’ve found women in their late 20s are generally kinder when they end things.

I think there’s a lot of room for kindness in dating. Who is going to teach us? The apps are great at matching us up but they are absent when it comes to helping us part ways. I don’t know if apps are going to help us get better at the hard bits, the messy bits. Only life teaches you that. 

 

Xavier's by Proxy

I am writing this from a marble island counter-top, in a sunny kitchen in South Orange, New Jersey. This is a home filled with love and laughter in the face of many difficulties – a home to family-friends that has been a beacon of warmth and care for me since I began visiting New York in 2005. This home has been my happy place – my emotional release valve – since I moved from India to the US in 2015. The man of the house attended St. Xavier’s College in Bombay with my parents in the 80s and they form part of a jolly friend group that has stayed together, multiplied and evolved over the last 40 years. There are five or so other families in this family-friend cluster that I consider to be more family than friends. Recently I thought about what has held their friendship together and why I feel so at peace with myself when I’m around them. I realized that wherever in the world I’ve lived, the aspects of my Indian identity that I feel most connected to are reflected in the values that the Xavier’s gang lives by. The Xavier’s gang of 50-somethings hang out with their Xavier’s friends’ kids – just as their own kids do! Strangely, it is in the company of these middle-aged moms and dads that I can be my authentic self. They make it so easy to be yourself. What on earth did that college teach them?

For the uninitiated, Xavier’s was founded by Jesuit priests in 1869 in South Bombay. I have not spent that much time on campus but I remember the beautiful architecture and the greenery and sense of space that surrounds it – a certain lightness and airiness that I felt so rarely in the rest of the city. I think two things happened that brought this Xavier’s gang together. The first was that the boys all grew up  in relatively educated, suburban middle-class households. They did not grow up poor but they were not South Bombay elite in mindset or pocketbook either. It seems there was a drive among them to learn about and explore the world, rather than simply continue a family business and/or accumulate wealth. So there was a self-selection into Xavier’s even before the Indo-Gothic halls could whisper their magical hymns.

From what I’ve learned about Xavier’s, the ethos of the institution is about critical thinking, social activism, tolerance, diversity and inclusion rather than simply academic or sporting excellence, for example. This is the second part of the Xavier’s experience that I think turned the Xavier’s gang into the progressive, kind, liberal bunch of wise-cracking air-guitarists they are today. In many ways, it seems Xavier’s was ahead of its time since those are the same buzzwords that schools, colleges and workplaces around the world seek to tattoo on their foreheads today.

Perhaps calling Xavier’s a ‘liberal arts school’ is going too far, but from what I have gathered from smitten alumni, it was a university that attracted well-rounded candidates and sought to round and ground them further in its core values. When my parents and the Xavier’s gang recount college stories, they’re always tales of music festivals, sports tournaments, rainy treks… not so much about the classes or their career office. Somehow, while the rest of the city (the country?) was striving for academic perfection, these brave Jesuits were trying to fill young Indians with empathy. My parents talk about the university staff – ‘Father’ this and ‘Brother’ that – more as mentors and confidantes than professors or teachers and have maintained astonishingly close bonds to those kindly old men to this day. I could name on one hand the professors I remember from my undergrad in the UK. And while I’m connected to my high school and undergrad friends, it’s not like we meet every year (or our kids live in each other’s homes) the way the Xavier’s mob operates.

When my sister and I were young and our parents would introduce us to members of The Gang, all they had to say was that these were “Xavier’s friends” and no further explanation was necessary. That name and the friends who carried it hold certain inalienable values that I’ve only recently been able to put my finger on. They exhibit the form of secularism and tolerance that makes me proud to be Indian. They live the Indian values that I most closely identify with.

Look at this extract from the charter of the Xavierites of Bangalore alumni group:

“We cherish values such as pluralism, liberalism, social responsibility and freedom of thought that we have imbibed from St. Xaviers, and which in turn, we wish to propagate. We also desire to champion worthy causes which reflect the values we cherish.

We, the Alumni accept that there are a number of worthy causes which might meet the desired criteria. We accept that the first such initiatives might be modest in scope. We accept that more than the need to achieve width or scale of coverage, is the need to make a beginning.”

I was astonished when I read the charter. It felt like someone had distilled my entire world-view and raison d'être – something I’d been trying to crystallize for years – into a 1-page word document.

It seems I trace a large part of my Indian identity to… my parents’ college? This is weird, right? I’m not saying everyone at Xavier’s is like this, but I do think The Gang is the way they are because of Xavier’s. They have even picked up friends over the years who never went to Xavier’s but in our minds they are all part of the Xavier’s Gang because they share the same values.

Some in the squad are more religious than others and those who practice, do so privately and in a way that even this staunch atheist can accept and cherish. When I heard them talk about social issues as a kid, they were always quick to criticize religious bigotry or gender-based discrimination. (Jokes about their wives do not count.) They hate politicians for being corrupt, not because of what party they were from. They love India enough to call out its flaws; those who live abroad pepper their homes with the country’s essence (plurality, debate, etc… as well as a rogue Ganesh figurine here and there). They love Indian music as well as Western music – they loved music because it was good, not because of who sang it. While all of them have done well for themselves and their families, they never ever ever ever talked about money obnoxiously or flaunted their wealth; conversations around material possessions are always tempered by Bandra-convent-school humility. It is so different to the energy in other well-to-do Indian living rooms where people become experts at talking about themselves, their newly acquired toys or the job their kid got with Goldman Stanley and Googazon or Bainkinsey.

When I look at my closest friends today – people in the late 20s or early 30s just starting to get married and have kids – I wonder if we will make the effort to travel and see each other, to stay as connected, to use our friendship as a foundation to build meaningful lives on. I hope so. Some of my closest friends are moving away from New York because of Covid. I am sad that I won’t get to be in the same city as them when their kids are born. I guess we have to trust that the bedrock of our connection is solid enough that it will endure the stresses of life on this curious planet. What work and sacrifice must have gone into keeping the Xavier’s ties strong? Or was it effortless? I wonder how the internet will impact my generation’s ability to cultivate family-friend groups. My sense is that we’ll remain connected to a lot more people, but not as closely as the Xavier’s mafia has stayed connected to itself.

What a gift their friendship has been to my life. How grateful I am that my parents went to a liberal, open-minded institution and built friendships with humble humans who work across such different professions. How thankful I am that my folks did not go to IIT/IIM – not that there is anything wrong with those great institutions or the sacred friend circles they must have bellowed out over the years. I’m just glad we’re Xavier’s kids who are as happy listening to Lucky Ali with an uncle and aunty in Washington DC as we are listening to Dire Straits with an aunty and uncle in Bangalore. Somewhere along the way the air-guitarists all learned to play off the same hymn sheet.

Writing round-up: Summer 2020

Folks - it's been a while. I know. I've been posting my blogs publicly on other platforms and I've also been writing long, personal pieces which I've been circulating with close friends. All that is a long way of saying that I've neglected Shravanblog. I didn't even get around to writing the long-simmering Part 3 of Disappointing Women of New York.

For those who'd like to catch up on my recent writing, here are a few pieces for you:

- In Founding Fuel yesterday, I looked at the experience of achieving financial independence and how to navigate the relationship with your parents after you've accomplished it.

- Meanwhile, in The Hindu, I suggested that we should treat journalism as a public good (like we treat fire fighters, for example) and fund it as such. Tell me what you think! 

You can track all my writing for The Hindu here.

I'm quite proud of a piece I wrote for them earlier this year, exploring why so many Indians find it so easy to cheer for Pakistani cricketers. I daresay it's one of my better ones.

I'm working on a longer writing project - a special blog series - that I hope to launch by the end of this year. It's very meaningful to me and you'll soon see why I've been a bit careful about discussing it. 

In a few weeks I'll share a blog about how I connect to my Indian identity through... my parents' college friend group?? Yes. Really. I'll explain. 

Anyway, sorry again for not posting enough here. Life in New York rumbles on.

As you were. 

Mission Statement: Desis Against Climate Change

My name is Shravan Bhat and I’m an Indian journalist based in New York. I want to start a youth-led conversation around climate change in South Asia by meeting once a month in cities around the world to eat biryani. Yes, you read that right. Read it again if you like.

Why? Two main reasons. First: climate changes poses the single greatest threat to our region since Ricky Ponting’s 1999 Australia team. But seriously: it will make all our problems (poverty, gender-based violence, religious persecution, etc.) much worse. I believe climate change will hit the subcontinent harder than most other parts of the world because our societies are comprised mainly of low-income farmers who are therefore hugely vulnerable to bad monsoons, volatile temperatures, unseasonable drought and so on. Second, it poses perhaps the last remaining opportunity for real intra-regional cooperation, since it is the only issue that basically everyone agrees on. Global warming does not care if you’re Hindu or Muslim or if you speak Bengali or Urdu; it will strike across man-made borders indiscriminately. Let’s not sit in silos and bicker, let’s use this common challenge to build peace and reach solutions through compromise. To summarize in cricket terms: climate change is Australia and I’m proposing we put together a combined subcontinent team.

Don’t take my word for it, just look at this recent article from The World Bank. Thankfully unlike the Americans, we don’t have to argue the science behind the threats climate change poses to our part of the world. There’s plenty of reading material out there if you’re curious. How can we help people living in low-lying coastal areas in Bangladesh and the Maldives prepare for rising sea-levels? What can we learn from the work that’s already been done? The melting Himalayan glaciers have worsened floods in Pakistan — what are we going to do about it? My country is either ghosted or ravaged by monsoons ever year — do we have a plan? The environmental damage will impact us across national, provincial and linguistic borders. We are in this together. Are we just going to accept that our governments like to make enemies out of one another? Are we OK with the status-quo? I am not. 

I want to (try to) start a movement where instead of constantly fighting each other, South Asian countries work together to solve the challenges posed by the man-made climate emergencies we are already experiencing. If you’re from (or connected to) Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka and you’d like to be a part of this movement, please Like our page on Facebook.

Since our politicians care mainly about making money for themselves, we’ll have to do this from the grass-roots level. So how are we going to do this? That’s where biryani comes in. I am going to reach out to young people here in New York to meet once a month to just sit around a table, eat nice food together and talk about the impact climate change is having on our home countries and communities. I will share video clips or news reports about recent climate catastrophes on this page, which we can use as a discussion point to get the conversation going. I’d like you to try the same thing in your cities. Maybe we’ll fail and maybe we won’t be able to do a damn thing about the rising temperatures and their cataclysmic effects on our region — but then at least we’ll have made some new friends. Maybe I’ll fail and no one will show up to the meeting — but then at least I’ll get to eat biryani.

Why am I doing this? Is it because I don’t have any friends? (Kind of.) Do I need to get a girlfriend? (My god, yes.) Or is this just a desperate effort from a not-yet-cynical writer who wants to be able to look his kids in the eye when they ask him what he did about the preeminent existential threat to our species? You can decide for yourself.

I welcome your ideas for how we can start and sustain meaningful conversations around this issue. My hope is that everyone who comes to eat biryani, leaves thinking about how they can help those vulnerable populations who will be impacted by climate change. If you’re a lawyer, maybe you’ll think about getting into environmental litigation? If you’re a financier, maybe you’ll consider lending to sustainable infrastructure projects? If you work in the corporate world, maybe you’ll advise your company to view climate change as the single greatest wealth creation opportunity of the 21st century? If you work in the media, maybe you’ll convince your publication to dedicate regular coverage to how climate change effects ordinary people every day? If you work in I.T., can you help us design systems to monitor air pollution? If you are an accountant, please can you help me do my taxes? I am bad at maths.

Let’s give this a shot? Let’s give this our best shot. There is really nothing more important in the long term than climate change and nothing more rewarding in the short term than biryani. 

Sincerely,

Shravan

Disappointing Women of New York: Part 2

     

Rain Check?

I always loved the idea of dating a lawyer.

She would have all the skills I don’t and teach me how to think more logically about the world. She would be able to read and focus and focus on reading. In my imagined life together, we would debate policy and pause the Bill Maher show to shout at him, his guests and/or each other. I can figure out who the bad guys are and she can put them in jail. She would actually finish the book I gave up on and make me feel silly for missing the ending. She calls me out on my conjecture and ratifies inklings I am too timid to act upon. It’s a nice dream to escape to, especially when you’re surrounded by 30-year olds who seem to have something similar already.

I matched with a lawyer on a dating app a few months ago. We had both lived in Israel, so I used that as an opening line. The conversation was bland. She did not really ask questions, which shouldn’t surprise me anymore but always does. I think she did corporate litigation in the financial sector—there was a dispute between an insurance company and its asset manager, if I remember correctly. Really riveting stuff. This is surely what people go to law school for. The long hours and the $300,000 in student debt and the charcoal-grey pant-suits are worth it for that triumphant moment when you help a multinational financial conglomerate save that extra dollar. Of course she didn’t have time to ask me questions about my boring life. She was important.

Dating apps—and the awkward texting that follows the 1-in-10 matches that actually illicit responses—make you question your communication style. Am I being too clingy? If I don’t ask questions, will she think I'm self-interested? It takes so much effort to get someone to actually show up for a date. Remember, they’re important people with busy, hectic lives and often two phones (with which to ignore you). I have realized now that how someone texts is a good reflection of what kind of communicator they are. Remember: people in America are scared of phone calls because calls too intimate and require you to be genuine and in the moment and this is terrifying for people who are used to having a carefully curated digital presence. If they’re a good communicator and they like texting, it’s a joy because you can take time to measure your words and send each other podcasts/articles. If they are a good communicator and don’t like texting, they’ll tell you that and I think that’s fine too. But most won’t. Most will not make the effort to accommodate, even slightly, someone who communicates differently.

After a week of Ms. Litigation being busy and me second-guessing my communication style at every turn, I decided to give her a yes or no choice. Monday night, take it or leave it. She said yes and I swear I even sensed a hint of enthusiasm. There was an emoji and I believe and exclamation mark—she may have felt a feeling. I realized that with these important, busy types you have to give them easy decisions so I suggested a place and a time and she said yes. We fixed on Monday 7:30 in Brooklyn, near both our apartments. I had a date.

I went straight home from work instead of going to the gym. I was surprised she could get off work so “early”. I told her about the bar that played live music and the epic Cuban sandwich nearby.

That exchange happened at 7. "No problem", I thought to myself genuinely. Then at 7:30 I got the following:

I’m not going to be one of those clingy guys, I kept saying to myself. “It’s totally fine. People have busy jobs and plans change – don’t take it personally. You’re always weird about people showing up late to stuff or canceling at the last minute, just learn to go with the flow. Be cool.”

I used my new-found time to vacuum the house, do the dishes and even passive aggressively clean up after my housemate. 8:30 comes around:

“9 is perfect” I lied, as if I hadn’t just sat around for 2 hours like a total loser. If only I was important and busy, I wouldn’t have these problems. Are all lawyers like this? This was hardly my first time embarking on damned intimacy with an attorney. The two I had briefly dated prior to this were exactly the same: cold, driven and constantly seeking laughter and love from me. They never asked questions. They shortened “very” to “v” and “morning” to “am” and I wonder what they did with all the time this saved them. I remember with one, I decided to do an experiment and curb my enthusiasm for just one day. I didn’t text her, let alone share memes or articles or music. I suspended my personality one evening and waited. I had only seen her 3-4 times but we had had good dates. Finally at 4pm the next day I get a text that simply exclaims“Shravan!”. I think she expected me to have sent her a joke or asked her about her boring client in D.C. It was nice to feel “wanted” I guess – it would have been nicer if she’d asked a question or shared a thought. But she was working on the Acela back from D.C. and I guess I was her monkey.

The lawyers I have dated have largely been the corporate types, not the non-profit warriors of grad-school folklore, so I’m sure I’m being unfair. Besides, do people’s personalities become a reflection of their jobs? I would argue, in many professions: yes. I think in highly specialized professions, you make choices to get to certain positions and those choices are largely dictated by how you think. I find journalists generally to straddle the continuum between skepticism and cynicism. Artists are hot, cool and weird—hot because they’re cool and cool because they’re weird. Engineers are logical, inquisitive and charmingly void of style. Those in medicine, I find, are able better than anyone else to compartmentalize—to separate their lives at home from the pain they see in the hospital, even if this means ignoring the pain they see in the world. Lawyers, as we’ve discussed, are the fucking worst.

9pm rolls around.

Put yourself in her shoes: She has been at the office all day answering emails and trying to please her boss as best she can. She has been working and traveling non-stop. All those law school tomes and that draining legalese. It’s a stressful job. Any client service job, I now realize—especially investment banking, law and consulting—is a 24/7, 355-day/year job. You get 10 days paid leave where you craft a joyful Out-of-Office mailer and go to Thailand to take elephant selfies. These firms charge their clients so much that their customers feel entitled to squeezing every last drop of effort from the team sent to solve their problem. I have so many friends in this city who earn 3x what I do and they work weekends and holidays. Would I trade with them? They are people who will always put their job first. Their job comes before friends and certainly before 1^st dates with over-eager reporters. 

It was now 10. I was more bored then tired. But I would not be the clingy, lame, rigid guy that gets annoyed when someone is held up at work. Work is so important – especially corporate litigation. I psyched myself up: I would put aside any sense of entitlement to her time (or my own time) and reframe this as a great chance to meet a smart, hard-working person who at least on some level, at some point, wanted to meet me too. I put on my shoes and texted her just to make sure this was still happening.

I can’t tell you how many times I drafted and redrafted a response to her “I’m sorry”. I thought about being honest and telling her what a waste of time this had been; I thought about being overly nice and telling her it’s totally fine. I can’t believe people are like this – that they’ve been raised be this inconsiderate. Even the “Raincheck?” came about 20 mins later. An afterthought to make her feel better. Obviously, she never responded to my final proposal. Important people will always expect you to make the first move, to keep the conversation flowing. Once you show a propensity for endeavor, a desire to be liked and a space in your life carved out for them, you’ve lost the battle. They take you for granted because they think they are better than you. Their time is more valuable and the fact that you’re able to give yours away means its probably not worth very much.

The lesson from this episode is obviously not “don’t take lawyers”. That much should be obvious to all of you anyway. The lesson is that ascribing hope to strangers is foolish and we should not expect the best from those who aren’t invested in our lives. This is my flaw. I am a romantic and an optimist and I spend too much time focusing on the potential upside. How does one temper hope and is that a good thing in the long term? Never mind forfeiting hope in strangers’ best: do we want to get to a stage where we’re always expecting the worst? This is a sad pulpit from which to view the world, I think. “No one is looking out for me, so I won’t look out for anyone else” is a Jenga-tower of an emotional irrationality—a scowling face you wear as you race to the bottom.

“Raincheck?”

Every time I think back to the impish emptiness of her final offer, I laugh. And I wonder if somewhere there is sat a woman blogging away furiously about the pitfalls of dating journalists or Indians or Arsenal fans or men in general. I hope she feels better when she’s done writing this. I hope she’s a lawyer.

Disappointing Women of New York: Part 1

The Mirage

It was the New York dinner party of beautiful 30 year olds that you see in movies and on TV. In a 3rd floor apartment in Greenwich Village, everyone was kind, curious, successful. You know the party you’re picturing in your head? It’s that. Apologetic Ivy-League lawyers and consultants telling you how it’s a GREAT time to visit Costa Rica. It was utterly infuriating. How was everyone so happy? Why was no one else dying inside? I didn’t feel like I belonged. I still don’t. 

It was too much, so I sat down in the corner to brood. These were my friends and I loved them deeply but I wanted to wallow. And then this woman Valerie came and sat next to me and we talked for one hour. 

Her eyes would get really small when laughter spread across her face—laughter that was frequent and genuine. She was brilliant. Undergrad at Harvard and law school at Yale - though it could have been the other way around without making any real difference. She looked at you with encouragement as you spoke, like how someone watches their youngest sibling get on the stage at graduation, listening to you with bright blue eyes. It goes without saying, she was beautiful, because everyone here was beautiful. 

The hosts were a gracious couple, bubbling with anecdotes but pausing to hear yours just as readily. They waltzed from guest to guest, taking turns serving snacks and refilling glasses: imagine a pair of synchronised swimmers but in even better shape. Where are the normal people? This party had exquisite home-made pizza. Where are the people eating pizza out of pizza boxes, where the excess oil has created an Exxon Valdez spill in the corner? 

I had known of Valerie and spoken to her briefly before at some other dinner party. I thought: man, whoever gets to hang out with her is a lucky guy. I was projecting, of course. She may have been a total psycho. But she wasn’t, as I was finding out. She was even lovelier, more tenacious and eager to learn than I could have imagined. I couldn’t believe she cared about my rant on why healthcare and education are never election issues. Even I have gotten bored of that rant.

I found myself falling for her when we began talking about the things we despised. The fickle nature of the stock markets, cliched pet-peeves, Skrillex, lawyers and American faux-politeness. 

I dropped a reference to how much I loved one of the many movies no one else had time to see and she lit up. I think it was “Embrace of the Serpent”. She had seen it too. She loved going to the movies too. There are a few of us who actually go to the cinema to watch films and stay for the credits and stand in line to buy overpriced popcorn with all the old people because we like the experience of going to the movies. She asked for my number and told me she was in a movie club she wanted to invite me to. 

Was this real life? My mind couldn’t process this. I had never been in this situation before. You know when things feel too perfect and you check your pockets to make sure you have your keys and you do have them - and you’re just having a great day? What the hell was happening. We exchanged numbers. While half my brain was engaged in the conversation, the other half was playing a side-game, imaging a life together and a future of indie cinema and squinty-eyed laughter. The cynic was too busy being utterly infatuated. 

We were just sitting there, finishing each other sentences. I felt a sense of belonging among those talented, shiny Senior Associates (some were junior V.P.s, I’m sure). 

“You should definitely come along to our next film club meet,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder. And then it came. “Wait, actually you should meet Eugene, I feel like you guys would totally get along.”

Oh no. No Eugene. Please be the gay best friend. Please Eugene, I need this. 

But Eugene was her boyfriend or fiance or husband or something. Strapping, gentle and totally confident in Valerie’s regard for him. He strolled over and shook my hand with a smile. They kissed the kiss of a couple in love and I made an excuse about having to go to the bathroom before Eugene could ask the thoughtful question he was about to ask. 

I have thought about that conversation a lot. Have I ever been someone’s Valerie or God-forbid, someone’s Eugene? Until I fix my own insecurities, I’m sure I will project unfairly onto suspecting strangers whose only crime has been to have been human. Until then, I fear I will always wait for a Eugene-shaped Exxon Valdez to come out of nowhere and send me back to my one-seat movie theatre. 

Everything was Soft

She went to take a shower right after I came out. It was 8:16 am. It was a bright Spring morning but cold enough that you felt the dry air pinch you in those desperate seconds between the warmth of the duvet and the embrace of the water.

She didn't say anything as she passed me on her way out of my room. She just smiled and closed the bathroom door quietly.  

She had made the bed. Her clothes were neatly laid out on it. I closed the door to my room and put my office clothes on the bed next to hers. And couldn't help but I look at her clothes. I'll never forget how different they were, those two sets of clothes lying there without bodies to fill them.

All her clothes had gentle curves. Mine were all straight lines. Her shirt was smaller than my shirt. Her jeans were bluer than my jeans. All her clothes were soft, all my clothes were taut. Everything was soft.  

My belt was heavy with a thick metal buckle. Her's was braided, woven. 

My shoes were size 10. Her shoes were zip-ups. 

My socks were black. Her's were gentle pink with sky-blue polka dots.

We had used the same soap but she still smelled better than me when she walked into my room, draped in a damp towel.

I wore cologne and she wore laughter. 

"Can you, like, wait outside please?" she said. "I need to change."

The silence of an empty kitchen reminded me what a gift those mornings were. Mornings spent together.