What Happens When You Connect With Your Missed Connection

The bar my Missed Connection suggested isn’t far from my apartment. I opt to get there early, arriving before him to ensure there’s a drink in my hand — just in case my sober, post-work eyes and subsequent internet trolling had deceived me as to his appearance. I’m standing at the bar, rocks glass in hand, watching the slow trickle of twenty-somethings on their way in, hoping I recognize him. I do; though my enthusiasm wavers when I see he’s in a navy blue polo, cut-off jean shorts and red suede Pumas. At least he’s not wearing sandals. Part of me had hoped to see him looking like he had on the train — clothes coated in debris, flecks of dust in his sandy hair.

“Oh hey!” I’m too nervous to come up with anything slick. He orders himself a Tecate and we take a seat at a small table near the window. I’m trying to avoid the inevitable route the conversation could go if the booze flowed more freely. We’re both here because we find each other attractive, but is there any other common ground for us to stand on? I’m fumbling for conversation topics — our “how was your day?” exchange is not terribly exciting, and we lapse into silence, sipping our drinks and taking in the action around us.

“So… question for you. Do you prefer to be called Rich or Richard?” His emails had been signed with the latter, but it’s always good to ask.

“Oh I just put Richard on my emails while I was in school because I thought it would make me sound more… I dunno, ‘grown up’ in the art world. But I don’t go by either one, actually.” He made those stupid little quotes in the air with his fingers, and I’m waiting for him to tell me something obnoxious — like that I should call him “Richie.” I can hear the nasal quality of the shortened name in my head, the exact way a snobby girl from the Upper West Side would say it.

“My friends just call me Dick.”

I nearly choke on a mouthful of gin, trying to suck it down and pushing it up into my sinuses instead. The darkness of the bar provides ideal cover for me to pretend to take another sip from my glass while trying to blink away the watering of my eyes, and wipe the small, painful trickle leaking out of my nostril against my wrist.

His eyebrows are settled flatly across his face. He’s not joking. My silence has made us both visibly uncomfortable and I switch topics, afraid if the conversation lingers on this point he’ll notice I’ve been thinking he’s an idiot. “Gotcha. So, can I ask another question?” He smiles and nods, though I can’t tell if he’s amused or merely amiable. “Why were your hands so dirty?”

He looks at me sheepishly. “I’m a contractor.” His tone implies manual labor is shameful; and maybe in the art school community it is, but it was the thing that drove me to seek him out.

“Construction?” I want to hear him use a workingman’s term instead of the one he whips out for his buddies. I can hear the liltingly hopeful inflection in my voice and judging by the look on his face, he does too.

“Yeah,” he chuckles, more at ease now than before, “Mostly carpentry. All that sculpting stuff finally comes in handy, I guess.” The seal now broken, we swap stories, summing up our lives pre-New York. He moved here from the U.S.’s corn capital for grad school, artist-cum-carpenter now remodeling lofts in Tribeca after spending five thankless years pursuing an art degree. I tell him I feel like that happens to a lot of people here and the bluntness with which I say it clues me in that I need to slow down. One drink has become three and I tell him that I’m going outside to smoke, not expecting him to come with.