When we met up in person, it was underground in a long, thin rectangle of a basement bar. One clean length of the room was entirely covered with antique Singer sowing machines. They were mounted and drilled into the wall in a grid-like pattern. If I had to guess - and I couldn't imagine why I'd ever have to do such a thing - I would say there was seventy eight of them on that wall.
They sold burgers and beers and played loud house music. None of this seem to bear are real connection to the dense and heavy collection of rusted tools of garment creation that dominated the room. But that was ok, cause Sienna told stories and ate fast and talked about remorse and responsibility.
Sara and I met in a friend's restaurant. They were short-staffed on a Saturday night and they asked me to come in and generally fluff around in an attempt to distract the customers from a delayed and slowed kitchen. I must've distracted her better than the gentleman who had brought her in for dinner.
She was a lawyer at an outrageously expensive law firm that specialised in Intellectual Property Law and Trademarks. She felt guilty about her fees and offered pro bono services to a charity for families of inmates on death row.
When Sara was a eleven, her mother inherited a house from an aunt and she spent her teenage years growing up poor in a wealthy neighborhood. This left her craving objects of status and looking for opportunities of overt generosity. Balance comes to all of us in different ways.
We went for a date to an Italian restaurant that required you to bring your own wine. This was down in the basement of a mediocre nightclub with shiny black walls and sticky green carpets. I think the restaurant was a sorta 'permeant pop-up' type deal. They ran the restaurant down there till about 10pm and then they slid away the tables and revealed a dancefloor.
Stephanie had an accent and a buzz cut. A mutual friend had intentionally sat us next to each other at a Passover Seder. After the Seder wrapped up, we went for cocktails in the basement bar of a boutique hotel. She knew the bartenders and we drank for free and took key-bumps of coke in the staff toilets.
There was sexual tension between us and we liked the same music. But I got way too wasted and had to escape back home alone and silly in an Uber.
The next day, the mutual friend texted to find out how the night ended. She sent me Stephanie's phone number, but we never did meet up again.
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There's something about first dates in a basement. Something that makes it easier for the truth to flow.
When you're underground, the consequences of up above seem far and faded away. And the space left by that fade is, instead, taken up by a commitment to speak the first thought that comes into your head - a loyalty to the unfiltered truth.
And, I don't know if you feel it too, but I miss waking up next to someone who values loyalty over consequence.
Because, they will open up the basement bars again one day. And they will switch on the lamps and fill up the ice-wells and lay out the interlocking, beige paper hand-towels in the restrooms.
But, like Plato and his fucking cavemen, what truth are we gonna find down there, now that I have seen how short your shadows cast out here in the screaming, bright light of a beating Southern sun.
