This is the third in a series of summer blog posts where the author takes us through the ups and downs of queer dating for the first time. You can find her previous blog post here.
She was named after wine on the Internet.
Her screen name on OkCupid some sort of foreshadowing for our first date, a bottle of Riesling on her roof looking out at the night sky.
First dates can take a lot of turns. Sometimes, she’s everything you’re not looking for in all the wrong ways. Sometimes, she’s pretty and smart and pays for your cupcakes. Sometimes she takes you to a nice restaurant and thinks like you. Sometimes she kisses you in your apartment’s living room and falls asleep with a smile on your face.
I don’t remember what her voice sounds like. Because the funny thing about great first dates is, sometimes there isn’t a second chance for factors you can’t control.
She goes back home early and you’re left wondering what could have been. Summer flings are meant to be fleeting, but when even the chance for fleeting disappears, what are you left with?
Maybe I’m not simply seeking the thrills of casual dating, of radical, polyamorous queerness. Because sometimes her name is almost the same as your ex-girlfriend’s. Perhaps I am seeking something that I won’t admit to myself. Perhaps I am following a tear in the fabric of the universe with a sewing needle thinking that will be enough. Perhaps I think this will be enough.
She went back home a few days ago, according to what she told me. I wonder if she’s thinking the same, if she has invented any memories of what might have been. I am thinking of parallel universes.
A friend told me recently that he thinks chaos theory is a model for queerness. I think he may be right. Trying to define this constant nebulous cloud of exploration only increases the entropy of the entire experience. Trying to define my own self-exploration might be a futile endeavor.
That being said, I do miss her in the way I miss something that never quite was. Kissing her felt nice, and I think it’s all right to miss something that was simply nice, too new to be complicated.
Simple, nice, and walking out of my apartment almost wine drunk and looking beautiful in fluorescents. And that won’t ever change.