A date that audits clean

This report covers a first date held on Monday, April 20, at an Italian restaurant in the subject’s neighborhood, 45 minutes from mine. The subject is referred to here as M. The date ran 180 minutes. The cost was $143.73, paid in full by me. A second date was agreed by text 3 days later, on April 23.

This is the first entry in the file. It documents an evening in which nothing went wrong, which is not the condition this kind of accounting is usually opened under. It is filed anyway, because an account that balances is still an account.

Summary of charges

• Duration: 180 minutes
• Questions asked by me: 10, approximate
• Questions asked by M.: 10, approximate
• Phone checks by M.: 0
• Phone checks by me: 0
• Travel, round trip: 90 minutes
• Out-of-pocket costs: $143.73
• Amount contributed by M.: $0.00
• Follow-up: pending at filing. Requested by me. Agreed 3 days later.

The question counts are reconstructions. Neither of us was keeping a tally at the table. I arrived at 10 and 10 afterward, by listing the topics I remember answering and the topics I remember her answering and stopping when the lists ran out at the same length. The figure is approximate and is labeled approximate in the scorecard for that reason. What is not approximate is that the lists ran out together.

Scheduling

I initiated. I did not open with small talk. I asked her on a date, and she obliged, and the entire scheduling record for this evening is that exchange. Scheduling attempts: 1.

I proposed the restaurant. It is 45 minutes from my apartment and it is in her neighborhood, and both of those facts were known to me at the time I proposed it.

The questions

I brought 4 questions. In order: who are you, where are you from, how has that shaped your world view, and what are you looking for.

M. answered them at length. She was born outside the United States and moved here after a divorce, with her children, to start over. She was forthcoming, and she did not have to be drawn out on any of it. Then she asked me the same kind of question, and kept asking, which is how the count came out even.

At some point in the same conversation she told me her ring size, unasked. It is size 4.5. I did not write it down, and this report did not record it until a later one had to go back and find where it came from.

Recorded events

Four, in order.

The first is that she walked across the parking lot toward the restaurant and I saw her, and the sentence in my head was that she was beautiful. It is the only verbatim quotation this report contains, and I am the one who said it, and I said it silently.

The second is that her drink arrived and she did not like it. I had it sent back and remade. I record this as an event because it is the only point in 180 minutes at which anything was returned.

The third is that at the end of the evening I walked her to my car, where a dozen roses were waiting, and gave them to her, and then walked her to hers. The roses were bought before the date. They spent the evening in a parked car 45 minutes from my apartment while I was inside establishing who she was and what she was looking for.

The fourth is that I hugged her before she got into her car. It is the first physical contact in this arc and I initiated it. Nothing further was attempted, and the column that records this has 1 in my half and 0 in hers.

Findings

The account contains no disclaimers. No statement was made that accurately described an unwillingness to do something, and there is therefore nothing here to time-stamp against a later outcome. The column is empty, on the first form in the file.

The account contains no rationalization. The field on this form asks what narrative I told myself at the time in order to keep going, and the honest entry is that no narrative was required. The conversation was good. I was enthralled. She was willing to see me again. Those are 3 statements of fact recorded without a supporting argument, and I am aware that this is the sort of line a later entry gets measured against.

Phone checks, 180 minutes, a table for 2: 0 and 0. There is nothing on file yet to compare it against.

The questions came out even at 10 and 10. The proposal, the venue selection, the bill, the returned drink, the roses, and the walk to both cars are one-sided, and the party they are one-sided toward is the one filing this report. The road is the one line I cannot call one-sided: she drove 40 minutes to my 90, which the form credits and which is still more than twice as far. Reciprocity in conversation is the column I chose to measure, and it is not the only one that balances any more.

Costs

• Dinner, The Vig, including tip: $128.73
• Roses, 1 dozen, purchased separately: $15.00
• Total: $143.73

The dinner figure is a single line and is not itemized here. Every line on this form came off a card statement. Fuel for the 90-minute round trip is not in it and is not recorded anywhere else.

The roses are the only line on this form bought on a different day from the evening they belong to. They were purchased the afternoon before and entered here because that is the date they were handed over.

The flowers are roughly a tenth of the evening and dinner cost something like 8 times what they did. They are the line a reader would have guessed was the expensive one.

Cost per hour in person: $47.91. Cost per question asked by M.: $14.37. The second figure required a denominator that was not 0, which is the only reason it could be computed at all.

Status

The follow-up field on this report reads pending, which is the state it was in when the report closed. I asked for the second date and it was agreed by text on April 23, 3 days after the first, so the field stayed pending through the 21st and the 22nd.

This file is opened at 1 of 1 dates held, $143.73 cumulative, 180 minutes in person, 90 minutes in the car, 1 dozen roses at $15.00. There is nothing in it to recover, because nothing has been spent that I would want back. The account is open in the ordinary sense, which is the sense in which every account starts.

The audit found nothing. The auditor proposed the venue in her neighborhood, drove 90 minutes, paid $143.73, asked 4 prepared questions in order, left flowers in a parked car for 3 hours, asked for a second date, hugged her at her car, and opened a file on the evening anyway.