“I’m always looking for inspiration,” she told him. “Be that in people or in experiences.”

He nodded, only half-listening. He couldn’t relate. He was, in no way, an artist. To him, artists just had something in them that he simply did not have. Like an extra chromosome or something. Or an extra chip in the brain. He liked that. He liked the thought of something so small making all the difference. The human body was incredible. 

Hers was too. Her waist was small, but her hips were curved down to her thighs. He wanted to hold them. Grasp them with his hands and pull her in closer to him. Only, this was the first date, and maybe, if he was smooth enough, that move could be for later.

For now, he had to listen to her stories. 

“How long have you been writing music?” he asked her.

“My whole life, really,” she answered. “What about you - do you play any instruments?”

“None. I wish I did, though.”

She nodded. Waiting. But to her dismay, that was the end of his story. He probably should think of something else to add, if he ever wanted to touch those hips. “But I think it’s great that you write music. I read once that the guitar is the best instrument to write music with because it substitutes for the entire orchestra, almost. More effective than, say, writing music with a piano.”

For a brief moment her eyes lit up, and he knew he got her. “I completely agree. There’s so much you can compose with just five chords. The potential products are endless.”

And he did believe that. He believed in the endless opportunities, which was why he had another date lined up after this one. Cassandra, 27 - her profile picture was of her with her guitar, and was cute and all, but she seemed like the type where you had to buy her two, maybe three meals before you can get anywhere. He had guessed that when she insisted they meet for lunch instead of dinner. Jessie, 25 seemed more promising. Almost all of her pictures had her with a drink in her hand and her head tilted back like she was mid-laugh. She agreed to meet up for drinks, and maybe a dinner - maybe sex instead of dinner.

Cassandra, 27, elbows on the table, leaned in closer to him, like he had a rope, an invisible one that he was pulling her with. He tried not to smirk. Most people didn’t like dating, but he loved it. He loved it when a stranger he had met was suddenly so into him, like they had seen something in him that he had never noticed before, and it was feeding him. 

Maybe Cassandra, 27 wasn’t so hard as he initially thought. Maybe he had a chance with those hips. 

At least her lips, which were full and a light, rosy red, just like how he liked them—at least she should give him her lips.

The date ended, and he walked her to her apartment building, trying to hide his anticipation. His hands in his pockets, he stood in front of her, trying his best to make it seem like he was so much taller than her, and leaned in. She gave in, but pulled away just when it was getting good. 

It didn’t matter too much to him, as he took a cab to the bar where he was supposed to meet Jessie, 25. She had a tight-fitting red blouse and although her hips weren’t as wide as Cassandra, 27, she had the face that made up for her rather plain and straight body. Her bone structure was movie-worthy and her lips were pouty and pink. The lips were very important to him. 

She ordered a Jack and Coke, and he ordered the same so she wouldn’t feel alone. They had drank enough and were deep into the conversation enough that he began talking about tits. He wondered if women could feel their tits change size, and asked if it was true that one tit could be bigger than the other at one point.

“First of all,” she began, brushing her hand against his. “Women don’t use the word tits.”

“And what word do women use?”

“Boobs, breasts...I love it when people over enunciate the plural. Breasteseses.” They laughed as they leaned in closer to each other, not knowing what it was exactly they were laughing about.

The sex was perfunctory. All the right moves were there, but it wasn’t enough to change his life. So he kept looking. He eventually matched with Marissa, 26. They met for dinner at this Italian place downtown. She had the lips and she had the hips, and her blue eyes were magnetizing. He found himself leaning forward as they sat across from each other and the waiter didn’t even bring them their menus yet.

She was nervous, he could tell. She avoided much eye contact with him and she smiled instead of talking back. It was either she was shy or was a bore, he had yet to find out.

The waiter handed them the wine list and he ordered some chardonnay. 

“Sorry, I don’t drink,” she says.

A bore. “That’s alright. We’ll just have water, then.” The waiter left to put in their orders and he folded his hands on the table. “So, I read that you work for a non-profit?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What does it do?”

“We invite homeless people to have dinner with us. A church near the Bowery let us have their cafeteria so we have this potluck and gather volunteers to engage in conversation with them. Bridge the gap.”

“That sounds really cool.”

He could sense her relax. The tension in her shoulders released and she too leaned forward in her seat, resting her elbows on the table. “We try to let them know that no matter what, God is always with them.”

Fuck. Out of all the women he could match with, he had to match with a Praise the Lord, I Won’t Drink or Sin girl. “Oh.”

Her face fell. “You’re not a believer, I take it?”

He began turning his glass of water. “The whole thing just...it doesn’t feel real to me.”

“Well…then how does it feel?”

He blushed. Not because she was staring at him, but because he knew if he continued talking, he wouldn’t be able to feel those lips later on. So he shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”

“You can tell me.”

He studied her and then replied. “The whole thing just seems like bullshit to me. It’s just a way for people to justify their sad feelings, instead of facing reality.”

Her expression was unmoved. Perhaps she had heard this spiel before. Maybe a homeless guy or two had said the exact same thing to her. “And reality to you, is...?”

“Everything is simply cause and effect. The world created religion in order to make sense of this chaotic world, and to feel protected. But that doesn’t mean that it’s true.”

“I see,” was all she said.

They moved on to other things, but already he knew tonight was going to lead to nowhere. And he was right. She insisted that she take a cab home, and when he offered to share cabs, she said that it was alright and reached her hand out for a handshake. He was disappointed, but on the train ride home, he matched with another girl, Lisa, 23. They messaged each other for the rest of the night until they made plans to meet at a coffee shop Sunday morning.

Lisa, 23 looked nothing like her pictures. For one thing, the girl in the photographs was twenty pounds lighter with long brown hair. The Lisa, 23 that showed up had a pixie cut which he hated on women, and a muffin top, her fat gushing out of her tight jeans. 

But she laughed at almost all of his jokes and was willing to press in for a kiss, so he kissed her anyways. She invited him up to her apartment, so he had sex with her anyways. 

He felt the same afterwards, so he continued to scroll through the dating site and messaged a red-head named Marble, 24, whom he was certain was in some way involved in the adult film industry. Based on her face alone, she probably played a teenager in a sick fantasy video. Normally, he wouldn’t go for someone with thin lips, but he needed something to make up for the disappointment that was Lisa, 23, so he asked her out anyway. When she spoke, and she spoke of her breasts, she referred to them as tits, and he said, “I thought women didn’t use the word tits.” And she had found him cute for saying that. The sex was wild and dizzying like he had just gotten on a rollercoaster, or better yet, a plane in turbulence. 

Maybe this is it, he thought, maybe I just needed wild sex. 

But in the morning it was the same, so he went on. 

That night, he went out with friends for some drinks. He made it a mission to get as drunk as possible so he got all the heavy stuff: gin, whiskey, vodka. 

And in the morning he suffered through the headache. He blamed the headache for messaging Lisa, 23 again and the next morning he had woken up in her bed and felt a twinge of disgust when he saw that she had a Trump bumper sticker on the side of her bed-stand. 

Maybe the God is With You girl could change him. Make an honest man out of him. So he took the risk of being rejected, and messaged her for a second date. To his surprise, not only did she reply, but she agreed to meet with him. 

Of course, she had asked him to visit her at the church where her non-profit had another one of their Convert The Homeless nights. He didn’t mind as much as he thought he would; perhaps the girl was thinking the same along the lines of I could change this man, bring him to Jesus, and wasn’t that his point, too? 

She made him a plate of chicken and mashed potatoes with a side of greens and led him to a table where a man who smelled just like the subway was eating. 

“Hi there,” she began with a bright smile. “I’m Marissa, and this is my friend Matthew.” He gave a small wave.

The homeless man barely glanced at them as he cleaned off the bone of his chicken.

“I want to thank you for visiting us,” she said to the homeless guy, although she could also be speaking to him. “Do you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?”

The homeless guy was a talker. He told them everything. How he came to rock bottom. How he was dependent on drugs and alcohol and thought the two were the answers he was looking for. They had certainly done the trick, for a while. Maybe all the problems he had now was a result of his childhood. He told them about that, too. How he felt alone and thought he would see God. Because God came to those who were downtrodden, didn’t He? He didn’t see God and that affected him. All his life he felt terribly alone.

Marissa, 26 was in tears. His expression barely moved. He did feel sad, sure, but he wasn’t much of a crier. He just nodded solemnly at the homeless guy when the homeless guy turned to him to check his reaction.

“I’m so sorry you’ve been through that,” Marissa, 26 said. “But I believe that God brought you here to us.”

And then she went on, did her conversion talk, and he was only half-listening. He had been wrong--this and Marissa, 26 weren’t going to change him. 

He left, promising Marissa, 26 that they would hang out again, and that this whole thing had been fun, and she smiled and kissed him on the cheek as a thank-you-for-coming. He just nodded and went his way.

That night he blocked her on the dating site and continued to scroll on. He matched with Claire, 28 and met her at a jazz place. They ordered some beer and he could barely see her through the dark of the jazz place and they were close to kissing because of it, until the second act came on.

He recognized her voice--the huskiness of it--and turned to see. Cassandra, 27. She began singing. Those hips. That waist. He remembered, he never got around to that. Her song sounded more folk than jazz. Like a Leonard Cohen piece where a story was being told. She sang of a heartbreaker, but one who seemed so empty that the person couldn’t feel hate for the heartbreaker, but pity. Pity for your empty life, you can’t even stay up at night, so tired from the lies you’ve been sold.

 “Wanna go somewhere else?” He asked.

“No, I like it here,” she answered.

There’s an emptiness to you, and you fill it, you fill it, with more nothing.

“She’s beautiful,” she said. He had already forgotten her name. 

I’ll drive you home. Baby, let me drive you home, and I’ll give you the love that you missed all your life. But I’m sorry. I pity you, I pity you for your empty life. You can’t even stay up at night, so tired, so tired from the lies you’ve been sold.

He left the jazz club. He will block the girl he had been with later, even if he couldn’t remember her name, it didn’t matter. He went on walking. The sidewalks were bare and filthy. Everything was rotten. He hated New York, hated the city and its women. 

None of it mattered though. He wasn’t planning on staying long. He was going to travel somewhere, meet even more women, more open-minded women. Less judgmental women. Women who didn’t support Trump. 

He needed a drink. He went into a random bar and ordered a Hennessy. It didn’t do the trick, so he ordered some whiskey. There was a woman in a tight short black dress sitting at the end of the bar, her legs bare. She was watching him from the side of her eye, but he could still notice. He sat down next to her. He ordered her a Jack and Coke. She told him her name was Lisa, and he thought, had he met her before? But there were many Lisa’s out there. 

“My ex husband was named Matthew,” she said.

“Good,” he said as he took a swig. “Then you’ll be used to screaming my name out by now.”

There were many Lisa’s and many Matthew’s and many Jack and Coke’s and on and on because the world was endless with its possibilities. 

He slammed his drink down and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “So we’re leaving here, or what?” And she smiled as she leaned over, her breasts, tits, exposed, and he smiled back, thinking, this was what I needed. 

THE END

I wrote this story back in 2017 / 2018 after a guy I dated for a month off Tinder ghosted me. I hope he’s doing well in all of his endeavors.

COPYRIGHT ANGELA HILARIO

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Updated October 6, 2024