by Hawke, Jessa
The day of the date quickly arrived and before Jen knew it she found herself standing in front of her vanity mirror, wondering what kind of makeup she should apply. What did guys want to see these days? Were they still into the heavily applied mascara? Or did they like it more subtle than that? Before she could stop herself she'd thrown her makeup kit across the room to land with a thump on her bed. She was over it already, not the date but caring about what guys thought about her. If the dude she was meeting didn't like how she looked he could fuck off as far as she was concerned. It then occurred to her that she didn't know his name. Not that she hadn't seen it a bunch while looking at his profile, she just couldn't recall it.
As she left to walk down the block she smiled as the sun hit her face. She liked the way the warmth. The way the breeze ruffled the leaves in the trees made her smile. There wasn't anything like being outside on a cool day in late July in the Midwest. If she really tested the air with her nose she could smell the pollen wafting over the small capitol city of Des Moines from nearby fields. The traffic on the street beside her wasn't that bad. She liked it here. Jen had lived in Chicago for six years but then gone through a bad breakup with the asshole guy she'd been with. It had made her not only hate the guy but also hate the city. There wasn't anything comforting about Chicago, despite what people would tell you who lived there. Unless you liked fearing for your life while you walked home at night, or having to tell homeless people on the trains to respect your personal space, it just wasn't going to be your thing.
She'd moved after the breakup, thinking that absconding with her cats and car to a small town to the west would be a good idea. She'd never planned on being in Des Moines long term. There just didn't seem to be anything to the place at first glance. But the more time she spent in the city that more she came to appreciate small town living. The lack of people driving like they thought they were in the bumper car ride at the local amusement park was one of the best things. She didn't miss the assholes driving like madmen in traffic at all. Another thing she didn't miss was the smog that had kept her up late into the night coughing for weeks at a time when the pollen count would combine forces with the pollution in the summer.
But there were things she missed, she admitted to herself as she rounded the corner on the quaint little street and headed to the sushi place. First and foremost she missed how many single men used to hit her up on the regular when she lived in Chicago. There were so many guys worth dating that were single for reasons that didn't make sense. She'd once met a model who was single because he didn't drink. For whatever reason that always seemed to be a deal breaker, he'd told her. He'd bring it up on the first date and whoever was sitting across from him at the table would of course tell him that it didn't matter if he drank or not. Who cared about something like that. But then, as time went on, it became more and more of a wedge between them. He'd come home from a day of strutting his stuff on a runway, or posing for a photo shoot, and there whoever he was trying to kindle a relationship with would be, sitting on the couch, already drinking. He'd told her that it always went the same: he'd ignore it for a few weeks, but then, eventually, things would get so out of hand that he'd have to say something. There were times that he'd offer ultimatums, or even barter with them, but in the end the booze always won out. Always.
And that was something that Jen just couldn't understand. She didn't drink a whole lot, not like some people, but she still had a few every now and then. But it wasn't like she wouldn't be able to walk away from the liquor of the super hot, super smart, awesome guy she'd been talking to had asked her to. But unfortunately she'd fun into this model right after the break up and sent her packing. But despite the lack of prospective suitors she didn't regret the move at all. It was one of those things that she knew would end up being something that made her grow much more than sitting around Chicago would have. And that's what a lot of people in Chicago did because there weren't many parks that were worth a damn, and going for a stroll after dark was often times a very bad idea. So people sat, either at the bar or at home, and often times drank.
As she neared the sushi place her thoughts of Chicago faded. It was time to buckle down and make a good impression. Even though she hadn't put any makeup on, or really tried to dress to impress, she planned on wowing her date with a stunning smile and a quick wit. What else did a person need to leave a good impression?
The sushi place was packed, something that Jen hadn't expected. She'd hoped that it would be just half full, enough so that if there were dead spots in their conversation they'd be drowned out by the murmur of others. She hoped there wouldn't be any dead spots in the conversation though. She really wanted someone who was able to challenge her, but not in the sophomoric way of just being belligerent to her ideas. She wanted someone that would create an awesome dynamic that would actually enhance her thoughts, make them sharper, more dynamic, and multifaceted. A guy like that would be hard to come by though, and Jen knew it. Des Moines wasn't exactly a hub for intellectuals, although it was much more progressive than many of the other flyover states.
Jen sat down at a booth in the corner and peered out over the crowd. Everyone seemed to be in jovial spirits, eating sushi and drinking to their hearts content. It was really a great scene and she hoped that it carried over to her date. The water came and asked her what she wanted and she said a water, thinking about the model she'd met in Chicago who didn't drink. As she waited for the waiter to bring her the water she decided that as long as the conversation didn't have to revolve solely around sports and MMA then she'd give the guy an honest chance. It didn't make any sense for her to set the bar impossibly high for a complete and total stranger.
“Hello,” a voice said. “Jen, correct?”
It was the man from the profile on the dating site. Jen resisted the urge to clap her hands with delight the man was just as good looking as he was in his photos.
“Yes I'm Jen,” she said. “I'm afraid I don't know your name. I know that is probably an egregious error, but you'll have to forgive me!”
“No worries,” the man said sitting down. “I didn't use my real name anyway. Not to be weird or anything, but you never know who is going to get on the internet, convince you to send nudes, then try to blackmail you. It's a lot harder to blackmail a fake name than it is a real one! I'll tell you that much!”
The man chuckled to himself and Jen found herself intrigued.
The man continued.
“My name is Buzz,” he said. “My dad named me after the astronaut. I know that might seem a little silly, and I thought so as well, until I watched Buzz punch that one conspiracy theorist in the face for harassing him outside a hotel.”
Jen chortled.
“I know exactly what you're talking about!” Jen said. “That guy followed him around for the better part of three minutes harassing him until finally Buzz punched him. He didn't seem to have bad form for an old man.”
Buzz nodded.
“I was pretty impressed, and it made me feel a whole lot less weird about being named after him. Say, now that we are on the subject, what do you think of the moon landing. You think it was real? I mean, with all the weird stuff that went on between Kubrick and NASA, the way that they lent him special lenses in the future to shoot films and stuff. I don't know. There just seemed to be a lot going on there that seems a little bit hard to explain when you really take a close look at it, you know what I mean.”
Jen couldn't believe that Buzz was already launching into things she loved talking about.
“I think that the government had Kubrick film something before the mission. There was just too much riding on the mission to even give it a chance to fail. We were in a race with the rest of the world to get men on the moon and I think this country wasn't going to let the mission fail even if it failed,” Jen said. “The landing happened for sure because at this point we have the ability to look at the moon with not only telescopes from earth, but space stations that pass by the spot where we left the old l
anding platforms and stuff like that. So, I guess the answer is that I believe that we landed but at the same time we had a brilliant man prerecord the landing so that if something happened there would be no way that it could fail.”
Buzz nodded. The waiter appeared and Buzz ordered a water and enough sushi that Jen knew there was no way they could eat all of it.
“You don't have to order that much!” She protested. “There is no way we'll be able to eat it!”
“I know,” Buzz said. “I always order to much and then give the left over stuff to the homeless that tend to loiter outside the place. They really like sushi. And I think it gives them the protein and some amino acids that they aren't getting from eating processed junk out of the dumpster.”
Jen thought that was great. What a guy, to give expensive sushi to the homeless. That was a far cry from the people who turned in expired soup cans to food pantries and tried to act all high and mighty about it on social media.
“So what do you do?” Buzz asked.
“I work at the local Youth Shelter, and I'm busy as ever with the current outbreak of West Nile that is ravishing so many homes. The elderly and the infirm can't fend it off, so we are literally being flooded with children that had been taken in by well off retired people, but are now back out on the streets. Or would be if it wasn't for us. And all of this is tearing up their childhoods, because even though they aren't homeless it doesn't mean that losing someone that they loved and trusted in isn't scaring them. Can you imagine what it would be like to lose both of your real parents, either to death or desertion, and then you meet some people who want to take care of you out of the goodness of their heart and they pass away as well?”
Buzz shook his head.
“I can't imagine. I was lucky enough to grow up with parents who were solid and wanted me to do well. I know that I'm lucky in that respect, because there are so many people who don't want to do anything with their kids at all. They don't want to read to them, they don't want to raise them, they don't want to know they are around. It just sucks that people have kids that they don't really want. It reminds me of people that buy exotic pets and then let them go like they can fend for themselves so far away from their natural habitat. Back in the New York's sewers was filled with crocodiles. I know that sounds far fetched but I mean it! It was literally full of crocodiles because people would flush them down the toilet once they got to a certain size that wasn't so cute, or they would just release them into a sewer grate once they were big and aggressive, and it turned out the constantly war, wet, and full of rats sewers were a perfect breeding ground.”
“Holy shit I didn't know that,” Jen said.
“It's true! They had to go down there and take care of them. I've never looked into how they got rid of them all but I can only imagine it had a lot to do with releasing large amounts of chemicals that aren't good for anyone. But I'm not so sure they got all of the crocodiles, you know what I mean? How could they? It would only take a few surviving eggs to make it through whatever period it took the chemicals to break down, or even just make it to the next big rain to wash it all out into the ocean, then they'd be off again. But since it hasn't really gotten any media attention in a long time I doubt anyone has looked into it. Except maybe those unfortunate enough to be homeless, and I bet they just deal with it and think of them as oversized watchdogs.”
Jen couldn't help but like Buzz. Even though they were talking about things that weren't serious she could tell that he was genuinely excited to talk to her. That was a good feeling, something that she'd not even know she sorely missed. There was so much of this feeling lacking when she'd tried to talk to guys in Chicago before the move and when she settled into Des Moines. Most of the men she'd talked to either hadn't been able to keep the conversation going or kept bringing back to things so petty she couldn't help but not care at all. For instance one of her early dates in Des Moines had insisted on having a very long conversation on how to pollinate corn in a controlled environment—it turned out many of Iowa's youth took jobs in the field during the summer for jobs. It wasn't that the conversation was completely and totally asinine, it was just that Jen couldn't understand how the man hadn't clued in that after about five minutes there just wasn't anything else to talk about. But he had been drunk so the conversation had just droned on and on. Another date she'd gone on the man had kept talking about his stock options and how much money he made. He just kept going on and on as well.
But not Buzz. Buzz was good at conversation, and one of the main things was that he liked to talk about interesting things. Just from looking at the expensive Italian jacket that he wore Jen could tell the man was very well to due, but he hadn't brought it up even once. Something that she wasn't used to. Most of the men who went on dates wither her saw her beauty and wanted to let her know that they had all the money she would need, as if they were going to get married and skip off into the sunset together. Which, as cool as that might be for some, wasn't what Jen was into. She wanted to get to know someone for a good long time before even getting too serious. She'd learned a lot about dating, men, and relationships from her failed relationship in Chicago. One of the things was not to move fast at all. The longer a couple took to get to know each other, the more they were likely to succeed. Why try to rush to the end of the story right after opening the book? It just seemed so childlike.
Jen slowly came out of her reverie and back to the conversation. Buzz was talking about the time his father had taken him to astronaut camp in Florida, how they had all donned suites that simulated zero gravity by hanging from a construct with wheels that didn't let your feet touch the ground. The students had had to push off with enough force to “float” to the next thing they could grasp onto and push off from. Buzz got that look in his eye that people get when they talk about something that they had really loved. It was something that Jen found extremely charming. He talked about how his father had always wanted to go to space but he was too tall, and besides that Vietnam had left him all screwed up in the head. Not to the point where he couldn't function, but to the point where he couldn't get in a space shuttle and shoot to the moon. That made Jen feel said, but she kept looking at Buzz's eyes and the look of longing, wanting to go back to that camp in Florida and see his father's face one more time as he pushed Buzz around suspended from the contraption. Buzz said he'd never seen his father so proud or happy.
Jen kept smiling and nodding. The dinner was going well, even though it was taking a long time for the sushi to show up. She didn't want to bail yet and that was a good thing. There really wasn't anything like being able to hang out with someone a little bit and enjoy their stories, even if their stories were so remote only they could really flesh them out in their mind.
“What about you?” Buzz said. “What's your favorite childhood memory?”
Jen had to think for a second? Was it when her father had taken her deep sea fishing and she'd caught a sizable shark? Or was it when she'd hit a home run during a softball game and calmly trotted around the bases? She was having a hard time picking one out, and having an even harder time looking away from Buzz's eyes. They were so deep and dreamy, the color of the steam that rises off of hot pavement during a cool rain. She wondered why Buzz was single, and then realized it probably was for the same reasons that she was single. Buzz was obviously a smart guy and didn't want to settle for anything else than what he wanted, just like Jen. At least that was what Jen hoped was going on. If it was something more sinister she wasn't able to pick it out right away.
“I guess it would have to be when we went out to the ocean to go fishing and I ended up hauling this big shark out of the deep. I had no idea that would happen. As a kid you know that sharks exist in the water, and obviously you watch the movie jaws and stuff like that, but I just couldn't fathom that I would actual catch one of them. Then we got it on the deck of the boat and it was flopping around everywhere, trying to breath and not being able to. My father jumped in and cut it loose, then grabbed it by the t
ail and flung it overboard. The thing must have been close to fifty pounds because my dad was a big guy and he had to really give it his all.”
Jen was lost in the moment for a second but quickly returned to the present.
“Wow,” Buzz said. “That's a hell of a story.”
Jen nodded.
“I never went swimming in the ocean again!”
They both laughed. The food arrived and they dug in. Buzz was well mannered, careful to mind his Ps and Qs at the table, something that Jen really appreciated—there wasn't anything worse than a messy eater. It didn't take them long to scarf down the food and finish their drinks. After that Jen became uneasy that the date would fizzle out, but Buzz had no intention of letting that happen.
“Waiter,” he said. “Would you please bring us some drinks?”
“Sure,” the waiter said. “Is there anything in particular you folks are looking for?”
“Not really,” Buzz said. “Is there a sample platter of four ounce drinks we could try?”
The waiter nodded and was off.
“You know,” Buzz said. “Our waiter is hot. And I think I know him from somewhere.”
The comment caught Jen off guard, not because she had a problem with men expressing attraction to other men, but because most men seemed to have a problem with it and Buzz was a masculine guy.