“You’re 1 mile away,” he wrote. I had just opened Tinder, and this should have been a telltale sign of major laziness. He was unattractive and didn’t seem like a great person, but I also thought there wasn’t a lot to lose from meeting up. He worked in real estate tech, lived in Oakland, and was in LA for meetings to fundraise for his startup.

I was flexible in timing, so we agreed to meet at 8:30pm. At 8:29pm, I entered the beergarden (ahem, biergarten) Loreley in West Hollywood, the LA outpost of the beergarden in NYC I had loved since my college days.

I opened Tinder. “I’ll be 10 minutes or so late. I’ll get in an Uber soon.” OR SO????? SOON????!!!!

“Sure, no problem.” I was in LA now, and I could handle 10 minutes of tardiness. When it passed the 20-minute mark, I was annoyed.

“I think I’m going to go home,” I wrote.

“I’m here,” he responded.

“Fine. I’m at the bar.”

I had taken a shower, put on makeup, was wearing the best dress I had in my 1.5 suitcases of clothing, and was even wearing a push-up bra and heels. I wished I had stuck to my original plan of staying in and writing some music.

I keep secretly hoping to meet someone who looks and croaks like a frog in two dimensions but is a prince in real life. This is not a winning strategy. I have now accepted that this does not work within the continental US.

I saw him. He entered from the front door, which was to my left, and sat down on the stool to my right. “Sorry,” he said.

I raised my left eyebrow into a circumflex, squinted my right eyeball into a narrow slit, and gave him my best look of death.

“Uh, it’s fine. Well no, it’s really not. I’m really fucking pissed. 25 minutes late is really not acceptable.”

Sick. I could tell he liked that. Men.

We conversed and had beer for 2 hours. As I was leaving, he asked if we could exchange numbers. Was he insane?

Then I proceeded to have the night I wished I would have had to begin with. I Yelp’d my way to Pizza Press (the only place open after 11pm), ordered a pizza, forgot to pay for it out of being drunk off two beers, got hit on by model guy working at the pizza place while I told him about my date, ate the entire pizza at home by myself (well, with the cats). Perfect.

* * *

Three days earlier, I was in writing class and got a call. “Jonathan,” my phone flashed. Jonathan was in LA from SF to participate in the Techstars accelerator. “I’ll call you back,” I texted. Within the hour, I was at his apartment. He gets massively confused if we try to meet anywhere or at any time that he himself doesn’t suggest. My patience is wearing thin.

“You have a wall up. You don’t know what you want,” he says.

“Uh, no. I do know what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to be friends.”

“Well, I’m greedy. I want everything. I want friendship, emotional connection, and physical connection.”

“I’m fine with the first two.”

“Well, I’m just being honest, and that’s not what I want, and I don’t have time for anything else.”

“OK, should I just go?”

“You don’t know what you want.”

“Yes, I do. I just don’t want you, if you’re trying to get me to be honest.”

“Yeah, I want you to be honest.”

“Look, you’re busy. We’ve met three times, and two of those times have been in your apartment with you wearing your pajamas. You optimize for yourself, which is fine, but I’m not going to date anyone who puts in zero effort.”

“You never say what you want to do?”

“You’ve never asked. I’ve invited you out two other times, and it turns into a negotiation. It’s frustrating.”

“You said Los Feliz. I don’t even know what that is.”

“You can’t look it up?”

“That’s an entire neighborhood. It’s not a place.”

“You can’t ask where in Los Feliz? I mean, I know some places. I also invited you to a bar in Hollywood that you never showed up at.”

“Look, I said I’d come to Los Feliz. I can show you the text.”

“OK, show me the text. That’s not what you said.”

Pause.

“Well…”

“No, you keep bringing up the text, so show me the text or stop talking about it.”

“Come on.”

“There was another time you wanted to hang out, and when I called, you said ‘I’m in bed’ implying that I should just come over to your apartment.”

“You never give a precise time and place.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You don’t know what you want.”

“Yes, I do. You just can’t accept that what I want doesn’t match what you want, so you’re not going to listen until it does. I gotta go sleep. bye.”

“You don’t even hold my hand?”

“Why would I hold your hand? I don’t have romantic feelings for you, and you keep trying to touch me anyway. Maybe they could develop over time, but I’m not there yet, and I only like guys in that way if they’re nice to me.”

“Well, next time, be specific about exactly where you want to go, and I’ll go.”

Next day. “Would you like to meet at Joan’s on Third in West Hollywood?” I texted.

“Thanks for the invite,” he responds. I wait for some effort to roll the ball forward a little.

Five hours later. “So I guess we’re not meeting tonight?” he writes.

“Well, we could still meet up. I didn’t know when you’d be getting out of the office.”

“You never said where.”

“I said Joan’s on Third.”

“But you didn’t send the address, and you didn’t say a specific time.”

“Look, I can’t do this anymore. These communication issues are exhausting. I’m out.”