movie adaptations. Once she went to a reading by Jeffrey McDaniel (a performance poet we both liked) and messaged me immediately when she got home. She wrote, “I was hoping you’d be on!!!” That was a spectacular moment. I could see my own doofy grin in the reflection on the screen.
Luckily I could play it very cool through a wireless connection. Celine had actually never seen my face, because my Facebook profile had a picture of Tolstoy instead of a picture of me.
Celine was born in France but lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She went to this snooty all-girls’ school with the daughters of hotel magnates and faded rock stars and their second wives. Celine told me all these things about her life that she didn’t tell anyone else, like how her classmates threw parties at their lofts when their parents were on Martha’s Vineyard and got their malti-poo dogs drunk on Smirnoff Ice. Celine—like me—didn’t drink, which probably made us the only two teenagers in the world who weren’t chugging beer every Friday night. Celine smoked, but only clove cigarettes. Besides, it didn’t really count because she was European. And she had tried pot twice, but the first time was only to see what it was like and the second time someone had tricked her into it with brownies, which she couldn’t turn down because she had PMS (I didn’t ask more questions about that story).
As a European, Celine surely appreciated someone with sophistication, intelligence, good manners, and a broad knowledge of literature and culture. These are the exact traits I’ve developed during my years reading in the Alexandria Library, smushed between the ginormous breasts of the children’s librarian and Live Bait, the bar/strip club/fishing supply store next to the library.
Celine and I had upgraded to the intimacy of the text message after I moved to New York. We agreed to meet up in late August to hang out and get to know each other. We planned on a coffee date. But then I switched it up: instead of coffee shops, I searched online for French restaurants on the Upper West Side. I texted Celine: “Change of plans,” and I sent her the address of the restaurant. She would think I’d found a great coffee shop halfway between my train station and her apartment, but really, I would wow her with a fancy dinner from her native land at a place called Les Poissons, which had good reviews of its food but also a review that declared, “The waiters were unforgivably rude.” These two comments combined led me to believe it was an authentic French restaurant.
Yes, I know, I am a suave and romantic gentleman. In fact, this move showed me to have the elegance of Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, the spontaneity of George from A Room with a View, the boldness of Harrison Ford in Star Wars, and the technological skill of Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail.
But even when you’ve got a romantic plan in place and you’re wearing a collared shirt, there’s nothing more stressful than waiting for your Internet date to show up. First I started to question myself. From “Is there too much gel in my hair?” down to “Loafers? What was I thinking?”
Then, when she was sixteen minutes late, I began to worry about her. Was she still as cute as her pictures? Maybe she’d looked like that once, but she had gained three hundred pounds. Or had gotten her entire face pierced. She was now ninety percent metal and could never return to her home country because of the airport metal detectors. Or she could be an alien. Or she could be a murderer. Or she could be a man!
Seventeen minutes into my wait, anxiety switched to primal fear. I looked rapidly around the restaurant. Who was in this restaurant to protect me if Celine burst in with a chain saw and metal face? There were two tables of older couples, and by older, I mean old enough to order alcohol legally. Then there was a table of scientists in lab coats who were toasting to some discovery. Wow, that stereotype of the mad scientist wasn’t so far off….
Until—
Oh. My. God. There she was.
I’d never understood what science classes taught you about matter, about the very physical stuff of existence, but there she was existing in real life, taking up a solid outline of space between the fancy glass doors. She wasn’t text on my computer or a