Book 14: Floppy Fish Kisses (Alan the Awkward)
In December of 2022, I tried the apps again. The last guy hadn’t broken my heart or anything, and I was feeling more confident after handling his ghosting. I had had this feeling for a little while that my person might be just around the corner, and I was trying to cultivate that.
When you’re single, everyone has a theory about how you’ll find the person you end up with. Most of them contradict each other:
You’ll find love when you stop looking, but you have to kiss a lot of frogs. You’ll find someone when you least expect it, but you have to believe you’ll find someone. You should keep trying, but when it’s right, nothing can stop it from happening. You attract the level of love you can give yourself, but your standards shouldn’t be too high. Basically, no one fucking knows, but the people who are happily paired think it’s so fucking easy. Of course they do. They already have someone.
Anyway, I digress. I was trying to be positive, to believe I would meet someone soon, and so I was cultivating that feeling in hopes that that particular old wives’ tale might actually work. Logically, it made sense to meet more people to make that happen. So I jumped pretty quickly back in and started swiping again.
This was the first backpacking trip I’d taken my dog on, and that made it extra special.
I didn’t message much with Alan before we set up a date, so we hadn’t even exchanged phone numbers yet. We shared a love of writing and exercise. I don’t remember much else about him (SPOILER ALERT: We did not work out).
It was right before Christmas, and I didn’t have my son with me that week. I got back from a frigid semi-backpacking trip with friends to meet up with him one evening.
He had suggested a new local place for drinks. I arrived a couple minutes early to find that it was too new—despite the fact that its website said it would be open by December, it was in fact still being created. I messaged him on the app and tried to find a well-lit place to wait. He didn’t respond, and after a while, I slid back in my car and cranked the heat up. I waited longer than I would have liked—enough past the arranged time to be beyond fashionably late. He finally responded that he was running late. (No kidding). Not the best first impression, but hey, things happen.
I was parked in a more isolated area, the only spot I could find in the busy shopping center, so I told him to meet me at a well-lit corner near the as-yet-unopened restaurant. I shivered in my faux-leather jacket while I waited for him to find a parking place.
He finally walked up, and gave me an uncomfortable hug. We chatted briefly and decided to go to Hickory Tavern, the only other place I knew about in the shopping center, to get drinks. He didn’t seem to know what to say, fully. The golden lights traced the edges of the cobblestones of the crosswalk as we hightailed it through the winter air towards the tavern. As we walked together, he didn’t quite seem to know where to walk in relation to me. He was more. . . awkward in person than I had realized from our texts. I don’t hold awkwardness against people. I’m plenty awkward myself. But this struck me as a next-level kind of feeling. But I figured hey, maybe he was just nervous.
We got a small high-top in the tavern and immediately started talking. The conversation was an odd mix of easy and uncomfortable. There were no silences—in fact, we had to ask the waitress to come back several times when she came for our orders, because we’d been talking so much we hadn’t looked at the menu yet. It started off well enough that we agreed to get dinner instead of just drinks. Alan pontificated on politics, and we shared similar opinions, but I didn’t have a chance to say a whole lot on that topic. He had never been married, and he seemed confused about his last relationship, what it was and what it wasn’t. He seemed to have wanted more, but had been with someone who didn’t want a commitment.
We traded novel synopses. He spent more time talking about his book than asking about mine. He gave me (unsolicited) advice about writing, in a way that felt condescending. I shifted in my high seat, annoyed. He was also unpublished, and to me, his ideas sounded amateur. But I tried not to let my opinion on his writing color my opinion of him as a person. It’s rare enough to find someone else who loves to write fiction, much less a potential romantic interest.
By the end of the evening, I had a feeling this was not going to work out. He was physically attractive, but there was something a little off (not in a scary way, just in a way that didn’t work for me) about him. I suspected he was someone I could be acquaintances with, but not romantically involved with.
While the waitress brought the check, he started staring very obviously at my mouth. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone broadcast so clearly that they wanted to kiss me.
I didn’t want to kiss him.
I pretended not to notice his behavior and angled my body away from him a bit. As we stood to go, I could tell he was thinking about it again. So I headed out into the cold.
He walked me to my car, and as we said goodbye, I could tell he was thinking about it again. He said I was very attractive. I said he was attractive, too—a true compliment that I was willing to give, even though maybe I should have just thanked him. Surprised, he said, “Really?!”
And then he went for it. He moved in for the kiss. My brain went to def-con 1 (or 3? I don’t know, whichever number is alarming but not too alarming). I turned my head to turn his movement into a casual hug and to redirect his lips for my cheek. Then somehow, he was kissing me anyway. I didn’t want to kiss him, and there was no room to tell him to stop. At first, I found myself being polite and kissing back, but then I stopped. He didn’t seem to notice.
As he slobbered on my lips, he raised his hands as if to put them around my waist maybe, hesitated, then flopped his forearms up onto my shoulders. His hands dangled uselessly behind me. He adjusted his arms heavily several times, like a flopping fish, like he was debating somewhere else to put them, but decided that propping his arms on my shoulders was definitely still the right thing to do (it was not). Even if I had wanted to kiss him, it was NOT a good kiss.
I should have pushed him away, but my stupid instincts were still to be polite, to not offend, to be Not-A-Problem. All the things we, as women, are trained from birth to do. I tried to turn my head away, but his unrelenting kiss followed me.
I tried to step back instead, so I could say I should be getting home. But he followed me, until my car was at my back. I was afraid if I backed up any further, he’d try to press me against it. I couldn’t even get a word in. Some men (the really good kissers) pause, check in, or leave you wanting more. There was no moment of his lips not on mine; I felt like I could barely breathe.
I’d been taking this as him missing social cues up until this point, but I started to mildly panic. If he was this oblivious, what might he do next? I moved my car key (the longest on my keychain) so that the blade stuck out from between my knuckles. Women, you know what I’m talking about. I gathered my wits and prepared to push him away, with the back-up plan to shove my keyblade in his eye socket. Finally, still oblivious, he released me.
I backed away and said goodbye quickly. I messaged him on the app that I had realized I wasn’t ready for a relationship yet, an excuse I’d used before and found was the least likely to incur wrath from the male party. I didn’t even bother to read his response.
I think Alan’s behavior came from being very bad at reading the situation, and lacking certain social skills and understandings. But it still wasn’t okay. I very much wish I’d just pushed him away and said “No,” because I don’t like to think of myself as the shrinking violet type anymore. But my programming took over in that moment. I’d like to think that next time, having had time to think about this experience more, I would react more quickly, more clearly.
This experience also reinforced how important it is to teach my own son what enthusiastic consent looks like. It reinforced a lesson I already knew the hard way, one that all men (and women) need to understand: if a person’s response is anything other than an excited yes, it’s a no.