Solo Cookiewich

When Todd sent me an invitation over OKCupid to join him in Washington Square Park he enticed me with the promise of dairy filled treats. Ice cream in the park on a sunny afternoon? Come on, every woman and child would go for that. I like a cheeky cocktail as much as the next gal but I was itching to have a date outside of a bar.

“Hey, I’ll be in front of the fountain or sitting on the side chairs, but in front :), see you at 6:30,” he wrote. I never ask to exchange numbers prior to a date but the fountain at Washington Square Park has an enormous circumference with hundreds of fountain dwellers surrounding it so I requested his digits to avoid any confusion.

He declined, suggesting that it would be “fun” to randomly spot each other. It was a romantic idea in theory but once I got there and circled the fountain four times eyeing men and children a little too closely, I was annoyed. After fifteen minutes passed I took a seat by the arch, logged on to my OKCupid phone app and sent him my location and description, “I’m the cool girl with the snazzy white bike.”

No response. I sat for a total of forty-five minutes. I felt like Gene Hackman in The Conversation, just being a creep listening to people talk and watching the brooding students, cute babies, and the hot lesbian couple making out two feet to my left. I was pretty certain I was being stood up but I was enjoying staring at strangers enough to wait it out.

As the sun began to set I mounted my white horse (my schwinn) and valiantly rode out of the park. When I hit the exit a short guido of a man puffing away on a Marlboro red stopped me. “Yo,” he yelled. I pumped my breaks and realized that this man vaguely resembled the pictures Todd had posted on OKCupid.

I momentarily tried to summon a polite girl inside of me, I tried forcing a fake smile but my inner bitch came crawling out, “You are forty-five minutes late. Not cool at all. I’m busy so I’m going to be on my way.”

He took a deep drag on on his burner and blew a cloud of smoke in my face. “Sorry, so much traffic getting in to the city and then I had to park my car. I live in Jersey,” he said. I brought up that his profile said he lived in the East Village. “Yeah, I put that so nobody would stalk me.” I assured him that I didn’t believe he needed to worry about that.

In his profile all of his pictures had close-lipped smiles. As he puffed away and revealed his yellow teeth, not pale yellow, I’m talking corn on the cob yellow, I quickly understood why. I asked if there were any other details he concealed on his profile. “Yeah I put down that I work in tech but I really work in finance.” Aha, another unnecessary lie. He was clearly a weirdo, and not the flavor of weirdo that I like.

In the five minutes we talked he smoked two cigarettes. It would have been impressive if it weren’t so disgusting. I mounted my bike again, he put his hand on my handle and I quickly removed it. “Let me get your number,” he said, mustering up every last bit of machismo.

“Nope,” suddenly I was relieved that Todd had declined to swap numbers from the get go. “That’s okay, it’ll be ‘fun’ for us if we run into each other again.” I waved him good-bye then pedaled away to the nearest deli where I bought myself some ice cream. Clearly my date was a bust but that didn’t mean my sweet tooth should have to suffer too. A solo cookiewich on a street corner wasn’t exactly how I imagined my date going but goddamn it was delicious.