Opening Night

Describe the perfect date.

"Do people really still ask these unoriginal cliches? Dinner and a movie, awkward hand-touching in the cinema and pathetic single-stemmed roses, hastily purchased 10 minutes prior to the date? To me, the crux of a good date isn't about what two people do or how much he spends, but instead about the hope it gives them. A perfect date is one where neither party ever develops the impatient toe-tap, the stifled half-yawn, or the inconspicuous watch-glance. To me, the best dates are the ones that are completely unstructured. Just head out together, with nothing planned and no tables booked, no cute script memorized and no discussion questions prepared for moments of awkward silence. 

One time we just took a walk together with no intention of going anywhere. A passing comment about how Library Mall's construction was finally completed after two years led to us deciding to walk along the new pathway instead. That change in course brought us to the newly renovated museum's gift shop. Little comments about the painfully pointless decor that the gift shop sold made me optimistic; you can't hate so many of the same things without having some sort of genuine connection. The back and forth repertoire was organic and sitcom-funny without being rehearsed, the casual way his hand sometimes lingered on the small of my back thrilled without being overly PDA-ish.

From the gift shop we entered the museum-actual, and realized that we stumbled on to the grand opening night of the newly refurbished Chazen. We were among the work of Warhol and Picasso, and I was enthralled by the beauty he resonated, glowing even beside masterpieces of the greatest artists the world has seen. Perhaps the timing was what made all this even more magical than it surprisingly turned out to be - it was exactly two months after the last time I'd seen my previous, which was in turn exactly two months after we first met. I was slowly being brought back to the mentality of believing in relationships. 

For me, at least, this was a date that I perhaps needed most at that juncture of my life. It gave me a boost of hope and a taste of what I'd been missing, as well as the touch of a man I'd come to dream about for months to come. The unfortunate fact that I'd been unceremoniously dumped without warning a few weeks later didn't change the fact that it was a date I deeply cherished. As easy as it is to write him off as a lying, manipulative jerk, but that wasn't the question now was it? The perfect date, that was what I'd gotten."