First Date, Each State
This title had me laughing the first time.
I don’t intend for this writing to be like my other writings. This is not a love story, I already wrote a few. I’ve taken a lot of pictures of couples, from one side of the state to another, one backdrop to another. I was in Piazza San Marco when I’m following a couple because I had no clue where I was going. Upon the Rialto Bridge, I witnessed couples sharing kisses, hugs, taking pictures, and walking with hands tied to each other. It wasn’t a good place for being alone. Though I’ve never really been inside the sphere of two souls, I never mind. They tell stories, sometimes. Their gestures are genuine, their words aren’t always romantic but that’s what couples do.
Spent some years being an outsider, when I got into one, I wondered what are in the mind of bartenders? Or baristas as they saw us talking over drinks? They spend the day witnessing couples. The new one, the old one. The flirt, the fight. The smile, the kiss. The very first time someone ever asked me for a date was in Venice. We both traveled alone so we could use some company. We met in front of the Piazza and strolled through the alleys, picking up gelatos while someone judged us because it wasn’t the weather for a gelato. He’s from Seattle so he can bear the cold. I was trying. We chose a random Italian diner by the Grand Canale and ordered Spritzes. The waiter greeted us in Italian, stroked a smile, and turned on a heater because Venice was colder than it looks. We were there until the place closed, then I decided to call it a night. Maybe it wasn’t a date, but it’s Venice — if that’s not romantic in Venice I don’t know what is.
THE SECOND TIME. Barcelona.
I took this offer on a whim because I was upset that I didn’t get to visit a friend in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, while I only had three days before I leave the country. I finished my very last final paper and paid a visit, alone, to the Van Gogh exhibition. That afternoon, he asked me for drinks and I agreed since he was in my neighborhood. But this one made me nervous, in a good sense.
I told him I was a first-timer at a bar when I went for my first date there. First-timer, no cap. He’s Dutch, three years older than me, Groningen alumni. Blonde, and has this Scandinavian mixed-with-some British accent.
Before you get any further, this may sound like a college admission essay but I actually love to listen to strangers telling me random stories about their wandering or stall owners with the stories of people they only met once in a lifetime. You can feel their excitement while their faces lightened up. To talk with strangers mean that I actually have to talk and have real conversations with a real human. He’s real. Something an introvert could never imagine doing on a daily basis. Conversations freak me out, always, and I hate being the center of attention. So I let him talk and took it from there.
Then the next day got more interesting. I visited the same place, and Jordi, the bartender, remembered my face.
“The moment you walked in, I knew you guys were met just that night and you were trying so hard to keep up.” He then served me a pint. “If you sat on the counter, it is my job to defrost you two. They pay me for that.”
He’s not wrong. A bartender is an open-source journal. If you can open yourself to your hairdresser while getting your hair cut, you can sit on a bar, alone, and they will listen to your stories, no matter how dumb they are.
“Put it this way: If there’s an American sitting on one side of the counter and a German on the other side, me, the bartender, is there to break the ice, introducing the American to the German and vice versa. But you sat on the couch and you guys seemed to have fun.”
Although Jordi probably deserved an award to recognize a boho bar romance instantly, it wasn’t the first notable interaction I had with someone behind the counter. My friends and I chatted with a waiter at a Michelin restaurant in Genève. I listened to a German chef about him and his dad almost died on a trip from Benin to Ghana. And an Indonesian restaurant owner who built her business by the street of Via Laietana. Sometimes it’s not about your own love story, but how I perceive others. Maybe I will have some about how others perceive mine. But not soon.
