Say you need to try harder. You need to try harder because you were pleasantly surprised by his smile and the first date went better than most. There are few pleasant surprises after a decade on the apps, so you commit to the six-hour second date. Talk him down to six hours of excursions from ten, but feel you’ve somehow wronged him. Wronged him because he clearly likes you. And you should like that. But all your dates with men feel wrong. You like the art museum at least, so you meet him there, where he leads you around as though you’d be lost without him. You cringe when his indelicate fingers find the small of your back. You cringe but still you share the Uber afterward to the botanic gardens. Talk to the driver instead. Wish you could recruit the driver as a third wheel. Your date’s cologne smells like rancid wine, which should be a good enough reason to bail, but it’s only hour two and you’ve made a commitment. Men are sensitive. And you should care about that. Hour two bleeds into three and you turn your back to him to photograph the Ivy and Chinese Wisteria while he rambles on about the older woman who rejected him through a text after months of dating. I still can’t believe she did that, he gripes. Maybe the woman pushed his hand away when it found the small of her back. His hand is there once again, on the small of yours, leading you out of the garden, past Lovers Lane and the once-famous cupcake shop. Despite the romantic undertones of the stroll, your body rebels and you jerk away. He’s in the middle of another monologue and doesn’t notice. Your rebellion has something to do with the rancid wine smell. Is it something else, too? It’s the smell, the monologues, and the coming to your senses around hour four that this man pressured you into a six-hour second date. Like he pressured you to share a single lounge chair on the first. But I’m cold, he replied, climbing onto your chair even though you said you’d rather sit separately. The pressure of his body snapped your favorite sunglasses in half. Like he pressures you now to sit on a bar stool at the restaurant he selected ahead of time. You mentioned on the walk over that you have chronic back pain, but sit with no back support anyway. Anyway, as he was saying, he’s just installed a surround sound system in his apartment. Nah, the sound doesn’t bother the neighbors at all. Thirty minutes on speakers and you finally admit you’re beat. Five hours and thirty minutes in, he insists on walking you across the bridge to the train. Hour five-and-a-half is still his time. Still, you get the sense he’s annoyed you don’t want to go to the 10 p.m. digital innovative art exhibition. Or maybe he’s hurt because he wants you to like him. And you should like that. How openly he speaks of his fractured relationship with his father, a last ditch effort to earn the comfort you failed to afford him. In your last ditch effort to see if things could possibly work— because you had been pleasantly surprised by his smile— you place your hands on his chest and kiss him as the train stops at your feet. You let his tongue push against yours, just to be sure. In the darkness of the train tunnel, you decide he’s the last guy you’ll ever kiss. Say you hope you’re right. Say you haven’t tried hard enough with men. Say you need to try harder.
