The Austin Dating Chronicles

I keep thinking one day I am just going to walk into a library or a bar or a supermarket and it will happen. That will be the day. Maybe our hands will touch as we both reach for the same produce, maybe we will make eye contact as we shift through the aisles of books, or exchange a sly glance at a busy downtown bar. I keep reimagining this day and doing everything in my physical power to manifest this, the beginning of the rest of my life. I know it will happen. If not this time, then the next date, the next swipe; the next time I leave my house.

But it doesn’t.

It hasn’t.

And it won’t.

Because life isn’t like the movies. Life is getting texts from guys you just matched with on Hinge or Bumble asking if you’re still awake at 3AM. Life is going to the bar with your makeup all done, in your sexiest outfit, blackout drunk, and still feeling like the ugliest girl in the room. Real life is gaining twenty pounds after a two year long pandemic and everyone you match with is ready to go to pound town.

There is no invisible string tying you to me because “you” are a fantasy. Because at this point in space and time, you don’t even exist. Time curious time, has given me no compasses or given me no sign, so I just sit and continue to wait. Wait for nothing and for no one because right now there is only me and no you.

You see the movies don’t show you that dating is comical in the way that history repeats itself. There is no movie that shows how horny everyone is after a two year long pandemic where we couldn’t get six feet within each other, let alone fuck anyone. There is no survival guide on how to navigate the plethora of post collegiate douche bags that continue to pour into the city.

I keep reimagining the day where the universe will turn on its head, where I will end up like David from Schitt’s Creek, with a white picket fence and a cute ass husband.

But it doesn’t.

It hasn’t.

And it won’t.

And maybe that’s okay because I was always more of an Alexis anyways.