Dating : Slow Burn

Tri-tone. First one, then a burst, jumping on top of each other, the last one reverberating. No other app has that specific tri-tone. The sequence sounded like the typical opener of someone saying Hi and then sending multiple pics of themselves. Let’s hope this one had read my profile first, I thought then, opened the app, Jamie, 29, a mile away. Jamie had a face pic, good start, tortoiseshell glasses, open smile, a little bit of a patchy beard, white T-shirt, and nice arms. He looked the dirty kind of innocent. His pictures were the usual bare skin, but tasteful, arranged, thought-out. We started to talk.

We’d meet up on Friday, soon two houses on fire, predictably ending up in my apartment; we’d been drinking and at some point, he produced a bag of coke. It ended up a passionate, chaotic, intense, and tender night — messy. He stayed over, left in the morning like a thief, his white T-shirt crumpled and his hair sticking up at the back. He texted later that same morning, in all Caps: I WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN. JAMIE X

I’d just arrived in NYC half a year before in 2012, as Obama’s Forward posters were stuck everywhere, I still thought of Hope. A Southern kid just out of college, at the edge of his seat in a high-flying first job after graduation, which I got by luck alone. I was still getting my bearings, the dating scene a far cry more complex to navigate than the street grid, easy to get lost in and unmoored in the fleetingness a city will offer. I’d not yet realized how rare it was to go past a couple of dates, as an orderly line of fresh country bumpkins also coming to the big city formed right behind me.

Jamie was intensely charming, never superficial, questioning, and curious. He collected Americana, mostly 40ies and 50ies Pin-Ups, and vintage NASA stuff, everything with the arrow logo and the blue/white color scheme. He was opinionated, but the opinions were well-founded; he didn’t talk over people, he was just passionate. I could see how people thought he was self-centered; he was just firm and knew what he wanted.

We dated a few weeks, the more I tried to impress him, the more boring I got. It fizzled out, messages not answered for a while, then not at all. I tried to store Jamie like the ones before him and set sail, but that fiery first night and its quickly formed deep connection didn’t want to remain in the cargo hold for long; with something compelling about it like the reflection of the sun on waves, I never could quite bring myself to look away. Jamie had put an anchor in me. The anchor cable was long and went taut in a predictable rhythm for the next year and a bit: whenever a full moon was as high as Jamie was at that time, I got late-night messages — charming, seductive, but plain booty calls, nevertheless. I did reply, sometimes, hope being the last thing to die. We never met again, Jamie and I.