My Only Friend La Croix - Chapter 5
The rain and fog let up and finally we had a sunny day. I decided to walk to work after a quick stop at Spro, passing a few people on the street on the block. Those who walk in San Francisco all live in their own little world; people aggressively avoid eye contact with those who might even be their neighbors—too many AirPod-wearing folks rushing between their 6:15 AM yoga class and 8AM work meeting.
Scary stories propagated on the internet promote the importance of being distrustful of others. I was taught as a child to avoid “stranger danger,” but San Francisco takes it to an eleven, passively learning to not even perceive strangers—just avert your eyes, a floating entity to swerve. True crime podcasts fills ears, planting a seed of paranoia. Men on the street shoot up in broad daylight. I can’t blame the walkers for wanting to maintain their sphere of isolation for that fact alone.
I was glad that I had the type of childhood without too much helicopter parenting, fortunate to bike around the neighborhood without billboards of payroll software and startup banking ads occupying my periphery, or the nagging pull of a smartphone, begging to be released from my pocket. My bike rides along the canal path in Tempe brought me the nuanced pleasure of feeling the slight change in humidity in contrast with the desert air that filled the rest of the neighborhood. The low sun gave a final breath of warm air to the desert and kissed it goodbye and goodnight with a pink sunset.
I downed my coffee and made it to the office. Alex and Jay were there, discussing Alex’s recent breakup. I went into the kitchen, pulled a shot of coffee, then pulled up next to them.
“I think it’s time I get back to it,” Alex said. “It’s been enough time, I think. More fish in the sea!”
“Yeah, dude!” said Jay.
“Koza, how’s stuff going for you? Still pretty fresh, right? How are you finding dating here?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I said. “I was seeing this girl before I came here and I’m still trying to figure out my feelings, there. She moved to LA, and I think we’re both thinking that we wouldn’t want to do long distance, but I’m tempted to propose it.”
“Oh-ho, don’t do it dude! You definitely don’t want to do long distance! Don’t do it dude, it’s not worth it,” Allen said. “I’ve been there, done that—there really are so many people here, I’m sure you can find someone.”
I shrugged. “I’ve been going on dates.”
“Like, what? Are you on Bumble or Tinder or something?”
“I’ve been using Hinge and Tinder, yeah. I think online dating sucks, though,” I said.
I didn’t know why I held that dissonance—to hate online dating yet continue to do it. I had used dating apps since I entered college and had the pervasive feeling that it was somehow crippling my ability to date naturally; I had an awareness of the early internet in which fewer aspects of our lives were caught in a web of technology, so I thought that I was somehow missing a developmental opportunity in using the apps. They were a crutch. Perhaps I used them because it felt like it opened up more possibilities, but my impression was that it was like having a soda machine in your home—too much access to empty calories bringing dissatisfaction over making the healthy choice of going to touch grass.
“Here’s what you have to do. It’s just like sales,” Allen said.
He posted up next to the whiteboard and took the cap off a red Expo. “You have to cast a really wide net, honestly, but you need to know how qualified the leads are right away. You can’t just go for anyone—even if you have reason to disqualify someone, you might as well.” He drew a big cone on the whiteboard. “It’s worth it to be choosy with your funnel.” He made little Xs within the widest portion. “Then you hone in on something about their profile—and that’s another thing: you absolutely shouldn’t waste your time on someone who has a profile that gives you nothing. You need to have something in common or something worth talking about right off the bat. If she doesn’t mention any activities or hobbies or whatever, that’s a hard one.”
He continued to draw on his dating pipeline, adding letters and layers to each step of his funnel. “Then you have to try to get off the app as soon as possible. A few exchanges and then you need to set aside time to go on dates—like, Saturday, Sunday and Monday can be the day that you send out messages, and you should try to lock something down for Thursday. Girls don’t like to go out on first dates on the weekend—it’s too precious of time, but if you can get a date going on Wednesday or Thursday, that’s perfect,” he said.
Something about it felt overly systemic for me; I didn’t want to play a numbers game, I craved something more authentic and romantic. That might be asking for too much. It rubbed me wrong; it almost seemed like the next words out of his mouth would have been: “We could actually probably write an algorithm to do it for us.”
I thought about how Allen said that he had just gotten out of a serious relationship. Was this attitude new, or something from his old days having a resurgence? I felt wrong that he discounted the idea of me trying to be in something dedicated and long distance instead of playing the field, having three girls at a time in an inorganic and sterile dating pipeline. Is this now the common virtue—to spin the wheel and get the biggest, best prize, optimizing a pipeline built on technology and letting the nuanced choices of our body and gut feelings fall by the wayside? I was not ready to wish away all of the things hindering us from advancing into our technological future.
I pulled California agreeability as Allen seemed really into it and I didn’t want to spoil his fun, so I nodded along. He continued talking to Jordan and I went to the fridge to crack a Pamplemousse La Croix. I wished that I could distill the advice that I received from My Only Friend into something less hazy. All he ever tells me are things I don’t wholly understand, and that’s not for lack of trying. I was constantly getting inputs from My Only Friend La Croix which evaded me like a black cat, perfectly attuned in presence and reception, turning a corner, allowing another to only catch a glimpse of a fleeting tail.
“It’s important that you find a girlfriend by July, dude. I don’t know what it is, but it’s like cuffing season in San Francisco. If you haven’t found a girlfriend by then, it becomes way harder—everyone is paired up,” he said.
“That’s wild,” I said to him. “I’ll keep that in mind.”