“You mean faildate,” I teased.
“I do not mean faildate at all.”
We smiled at each other for an extended moment. Then I kind of moved forward, and they kind of moved forward, and we kissed. We pulled back, both of us still smiling.
“Okay, then,” they said. “Should we do this?” The mouse hovered over the record button.
“Um. Yes. Let’s do this.”
They nodded. And clicked.
Roller coaster car: at zenith. Hold on to your keys and cell phones, kids, we’re about to go downnNNNNNN...
“Welcome to another episode of The Love Study, the series about love, dating, and the pursuit of queer companionship in a bleak and hopeless world. I’m your spinster uncle Sidney, and this is my co-host, Declan.” They turned to me. “Hi.”
I couldn’t help grinning like a fool. “Hi.”
“So.”
“Yeah.”
“Date #4.”
“Yep.”
Now both of us were grinning with a sort of giddy recklessness, like we were together at the top of the roller coaster.
DATE #4 HOT-AS-FUCK GQ WITH RED GLASSES WHO’S EXCELLENT AT KISSING
“That is not what we’re calling me.”
“Hey, when you go out with you, you can decide on your stock photo description. But since I went out with you, I get to decide.”
“So that means I decide on your stock photo description?”
I hesitated. “I’m the subject of the study. I don’t have a stock photo description.”
Their eyes narrowed. “That’s definitely not the rule.”
“Moving right along,” I said quickly, turning to the camera because looking at Sidney was distracting. “You guys—sorry, I mean that gender neutrally—you all, this date started out as a massive fail. It was a faildate. I accept full responsibility for initiating said faildate.”
Sidney raised a hand. “For the record, I object to the terminology being used to describe this date, but I acknowledge that Declan has the right to classify dates however he chooses, as he is the subject of the study.”
“Thank you. Ahem.” I realized I was looking at them instead of the camera and tried to focus. “Our faildate began at lunch on Saturday at The Diner in La Vista. Any of you who’ve ever been to lunch on Saturday at The Diner in La Vista will probably realize why it’s not a great first date location.”
They leaned forward confidentially. “Most of the people watching have no idea where La Vista even is. It’s an international audience. Because: the internet.”
“Wait, we’re on the internet right now? I am shocked!” I stuck my tongue out at them and went back to the camera. “Anyway, as I was saying, think classic American diner, lunch on a weekend. The place was packed, and loud, and we had to wait forever for a table, then forever for our food, and to be honest, I went into serious sensory overwhelm and kind of couldn’t deal.”
“It was really loud,” Sidney agreed. “Hard-to-hear-yourself-think levels of constant noise.”
“And then we got outside and it was such a relief I had to take a minute. And Date #4 was so nice about it, y’all, like so so nice about it. Because I went into anxiety mode and they didn’t act like I was a freak.”
“You’re not a freak. Though you might have some internalized ableism about anxiety. Anyway, I would not have classified that as a faildate, even though it was a...fraught date.”
“A seriously fraught date. Which Sid—um—Date #4 then fixed by demanding I make them dessert.”
Sidney gasped and hit my arm. “I did not!”
I smirked at them. “That’s how I remember it.”
“All lies.”
“Okay,” I said to the camera. “It wasn’t a demand, and I’m the one who basically forced lunch dessert on them. But to whatever degree making your date dessert after initiating faildate can fix things, I think this did? Or spending more time together fixed it? I’m not sure.”
“I reject the notion that our date was broken, but I concede the point: it improved after I invited Declan over to sit here while I edited and ignored him for like two hours.” They turned to me. “I wanted to say thank you, again, for giving me a few minutes after I finished working to just be silent before we started talking.”
I shrugged. “Sure thing.”
“What made you think to do that?”
“Um.” I thought about it, conscious that I was dead air on YouTube, but not willing to brush it off. “I guess because I was projecting a little? Back when my anxiety was...worse than it is now, sometimes transitions were hard for me. I’d leave work and just sit in my car without starting it to decompress from work mode and get into not-work mode. I thought that might be helpful to you too?”
“It really was. And I don’t think to do that when there’s not a physical change—like driving or walking home from work—so I appreciated the reminder.” They smiled at me and I had the distinct impression that if we weren’t on YouTube right now they might have kissed me. The smile had a potential-for-kissing aura to it.
Smile auras are totally a thing.
“So I, um, didn’t do our, like, Love Study rating thing.”
“You don’t have to if—”
“Fives across the board,” I cut them off. “Physical chemistry: five. Intellectual chemistry: five. Would absolutely date again. I mean, if Date #4 wanted to.”
“Fives for me too.”
I held out my hand for a fist bump. “Not too bad for a faildate.”
“It wasn’t a faildate,” they growled.
I waggled my eyebrows at the camera. “They just growled at me. You heard that, right? Everyone heard it? Comment if you heard Date #4 growl, because I’m almost certain I—”
Sidney plastered a hand across my mouth, which was weirdly hot, and looked dead into my eyes. “Behave yourself.”
“Omhg,” I mumbled, fanning myself.
“Declan.”
I attempted to compose my face into a Serious Expression.
They sighed and unmuzzled me. “So you had a good date.”
“I had a great date. The second half, anyway. I mean it.”
“Can you—without joking—try to pick apart what separates a great date from a less successful one? I think that would be helpful for people.”