Hope Floats Across an iPhone Screen
By: Tori
I wake up and immediately reach for my phone. Will there be a message this morning? I turn it over to find a text from a friend and the latest update from Didi. I place the phone face down, wait a few more minutes, and then reach for it again.
After a promising first date, your relationship with your phone becomes complicated. You grow to depend on it, but also want to throw it across the room.
I have been single for the last five and a half years. During this time, I estimate that I have gone on over fifty first dates. Some were dreadful and some were...fine. And a very rare few kept me glued to my phone, eager for the message that would surely come my way.
I knew I was starting to get my hopes up, when our first messages were not about what we did, or how long we’d been in Shanghai—but instead about something ridiculous: dance walking. I actually found myself laughing out loud, something that never happens with someone I don’t know well.
Then we actually met.
Wanting to avoid the clichéd drinks and dinner, we opted to meet at one of the city’s Christmas markets. Though I found him attractive in his profile and during our text exchanges, I was immediately more attracted upon meeting him in person. He had tan skin, a charming British accent, a faint beard, and I could have fallen into his dimples.
“If I were to get you something for Christmas, what would you want?” He crooned casually, shortly after our meeting.
"Your face smooshed up against mine." Is what I wanted to say.
I had known before our date that he was also a teacher, but among the stalls of the market, I soon found out that he too seemed to genuinely like his students. I also discovered that we were going to the same place over Chinese New Year and that he was just as funny in person as he was over text. After a couple mugs of mulled wine, I found that I was too.
A Christmas market turned into dinner, which turned into spontaneously crashing a club and ordering 100 RMB beers. All on a school night.
At the club, though no one else was doing it, we started dancing. Slow, rhythmic dancing, in which our pelvises were completely in sync. We didn’t kiss, but our mouths and noses rested against each other. It was, without a doubt, the sexiest moment I’ve ever had on a first date.
We left the club shortly before eleven and went outside, where we finally let ourselves kiss. He whispered, “You’re fucking gorgeous.” I...was...a puddle. It was perfect.
This time, I knew it was going somewhere. And this feeling was confirmed when he texted an hour after we departed: “Had an amazing time tonight, my lovely.”
I should have realized that when my hopes were this high, there was no place for them to go but down. He wrote every day for the rest of that week, checking in, sending silly updates and questions—but never asking me out again.
I swore I would wait for him to do it since I initiated the first time. But by Friday, I was sick of waiting. I asked and he gave a day: Sunday. My hopes were starting to wane, but they were still there.
And then Sunday, it came. The black mold of dating.
“Hi hun, unfortunately I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it out today. I ate something off yesterday and it’s rebounding on me in an awful way.”
To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Apparently, I was so visibly devastated, that a stranger at the market asked if I was okay. I let myself cry on the Didi ride home and swore that was all the time I would give myself to feel self-pity. I just felt confused. Was the date not as great as I remembered? Why was I getting so upset after only meeting this person one time? Was it the dimples?
And then he texted again later that night, and then every day that week. Perhaps he was genuinely sick after all. But...still no invitations for another date.
So, I was direct with him. He replied that the timing felt off, and the fact that he was not “seizing the opportunity” showed that he wasn’t in the right place to date. He apologized and I wished him well on his upcoming travels, feeling disoriented.
A few days before our last exchange, this date sent me a quote seemingly out of nowhere: “This too, I shall endure. Heroism is endurance for one moment more.”
I am certainly not so audacious as to call myself a hero, but what else is dating but enduring for one moment, one date, more? Five and a half years seems like a long time to be single for someone who actively dates. It certainly becomes easy to ask, “What’s wrong with me?”
I retreated to my phone once more. I had received WhatsApp messages from friends in Europe, Facebook messages from friends in the US, and text messages from family in Iowa. I scrolled through my photos taken from the past five years of living abroad and slowly started to let go of the rush of insecurities. There was so much more to look forward to than a second date with someone I barely knew.
It’s going to take some time to put myself out there again. To spend the energy, to receive the: “Hey, how’s it going?” messages, to engage in the same small talk, to look to my inbox as a beacon of hope.
Despite the outcome, this date has shown me that there are good dates waiting to be had. Even better ones, without the ambiguity. And one of them, I just have to believe, is going to be the one to end all the rest.
…
Tori is a recent transplant to China. She is currently teaching at one of Shanghai's international schools. Tori has a love of exploring, meeting new people, reading, singing, and, of course, writing. Though online dating has not been as successful as she hoped, one match did tell her, "Your photos give out such a sense of joy and exuberance. You just seem to be embracing life." Another wrote, "I like the occult, do you?" The rest fell somewhere in between.
Cover Illustration by Bernard Wun @enjoymydrawings
Story Edited by Sarah Boorboor