Ghost of Dates Past
If you’d told me in my early 20s that I would look back on the relationships of that time when I was 30 and feel both sorry for myself and grateful none of them worked out, I probably would’ve rolled my eyes in the way that always makes my mother say, “Wow! Do those things have a motor?” All anyone wants when they’re that young is to be taken seriously, and all anyone wants the minute they turn 30 is to return to that earlier era when nothing had serious implications.
But it all felt so serious. For example, I dated this guy who worked at The Holy Donut on Exchange Street before the tourists ruined it. I also worked on Exchange, at a now-defunct stationery store, but we met in a Gothic Literature class at USM. I caught sight of him in his ratty, cat-hair-coated sweater one sunny September day and fell in love with who I imagined him to be — a brooding poet, probably, or something equally bohemian. We bumped into each other at Bard Coffee during our lunch breaks one day soon after, which wasn’t quite as romantic as I’d imagined, but was, at least, very Portland.
We went back to Bard for our first date, which is how I came up with my no-coffee-dates rule — the cafe was so brightly lit and full of that rushing-off-to-work feeling as to be tragically unsexy. I took him to the speakeasy behind Blyth & Burrows for our second date, which is how I learned he didn’t drink. That wouldn’t be a red flag now, but it absolutely was when I was 23, because drinking was my only hobby. Regardless, I graciously accepted when he invited me to his apartment to “cook for me” (if you’re a regular here, you know what that means) for our third date.
He lived on one of those side streets off Congress that doesn’t feel like a real neighborhood — not quite the West End, but not Parkside, either; just a few square blocks of anonymous apartment buildings. When I texted to alert him of my impending arrival, he was outside the building to greet me. He pulled the handle of the front door to escort me in. It didn’t open.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
“What’s up?” I asked, clutching the bottle of Martinelli’s I’d brought him in such a way that I could have defended myself with it if I needed to.
“We’re locked out,” he said, scratching his head in utter disbelief.
It should have been telling that my first thought was, Oh good, I can go home, but just then a man in bike shorts pushed his way out the door and my date jumped to grab it with such gusto that I’m sure he pulled a muscle.
The hallway he led me through was not unlike the hotel in The Shining, and the winding staircase we climbed to his apartment resembled those of the towers where I’d always imagined angry kings locked away distressed damsels. When we entered his studio we were greeted by smoke — he’d left the customary third-date stir fry on the burner while coming to get me.
I gave myself the tour while he tried to rescue our meal and found little more than a bookshelf containing the complete Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series, a couch that looked like it came from the sidewalk, and a double bed enveloped by a curtain that reminded me of something a Victorian ghost would wear. Behind the curtain, perched atop the duvet, sat a very fat cat.
“That’s Legolas,” my Prince informed me, approaching with our food. The naming of a cat after a fictional elf sent a shiver down my spine, but I persevered.
I wish I could tell you I was ravished behind that bed curtain. Or that I bequeathed my date the bottle of apple juice, made my apologies and escaped. But neither of those happy endings came to pass.
Instead, I sat on that roadside couch for three hours, pushing my food around and struggling to make eye contact with this man who did not at all live up to my romantic ideations. We compared Old Port job horror stories and discussed the past week’s Gothic Lit lecture. I was willing myself to die, or at the very least, to be kissed. When I looked out the window I saw my reality reflected back at me: the sun setting over the city of my youth; the streets I once romped with hopeful passion now awash with autumn light, signaling the end of this phase of life and the start of a new, serious chapter.
As I wound my way back down those stairs, unkissed and already deleting his number from my phone, I felt like the Victorian ghost from the bed curtain had possessed me, and if any man dared make eye contact on the street, I would pass right through him as he felt a mysterious chill.
Emma Chance also writes The Overshare at emmachance.substack.com.
