The food was not representative

This report covers a second date with the subject referred to here as M., held on Saturday, April 25, at 4:00 pm, at a restaurant in a strip mall near her neighborhood, 45 minutes from my house. The date ran between 45 and 60 minutes. It is recorded above at 60, which is the generous end of the range. The cost was $84.02, paid in full by me. At the lower end of the range, the date lasted exactly as long as one leg of the drive to it.

The first entry in this file documented 180 minutes and an account that balanced. This one documents 60 minutes, a restaurant that neither of us wanted to finish, and the same balanced column in a form where nothing else balanced at all.

Summary of charges

• Duration: 60 minutes, upper bound of an approximate range
• Travel, round trip: 90 minutes
• Questions asked by me: 10, approximate
• Questions asked by M.: 10, approximate
• Phone checks by M.: 0
• Phone checks by me: 0
• Out-of-pocket costs: $84.02
• Amount contributed by M.: $0.00
• Follow-up: pending at filing. Requested by me that evening, agreed the following day.
• Disclaimers issued: 1
• Contact between dates: daily, volume not counted

Time in the car exceeded time at the table by 30 minutes.

The premise

I proposed that we go somewhere serving the cuisine of the country M. is from. The stated reason, which I also believed, was that I would learn more about her. I want the method on the record: I selected a category of restaurant as a research instrument, for the second date in a row, having already spent the first one working through 4 prepared questions in order.

M. found the restaurant. It is a small place in a strip mall, next door to a massage parlor. She chose it and I agreed to it, and I note both halves of that because the premise was mine and the address was hers.

I offered to pick her up. She suggested we meet there. This is the second consecutive date to end with 2 cars in a parking lot, and the first one to begin that way.

Arrival

I arrived early. I arrive early. It is not a courtesy I extend selectively and it should not be read as one here.

M. arrived 15 minutes after the hour, and texted ahead to say she would. The heads-up is recorded because it arrived before the delay rather than after it.

We had been texting every day since the first date, 5 days earlier. The cadence is on the record and the volume is not: no count was kept, which means the only labor this file can price is the labor that happened in a car or at a table.

The interval between my arrival and hers was spent in a strip mall parking lot next to a massage parlor, at 4:00 in the afternoon, in the neighborhood of a woman I had by then met once.

The food

Neither of us liked it. That is the whole finding and it is mutual.

M.’s assessment was more specific than mine and more damaging to the premise: she did not think the food was representative of the cuisine it claimed. The evening had been constructed on the theory that this category of restaurant would tell me something true about where she is from. Her verdict was that it did not tell me anything true about where she is from. The instrument returned no reading, and the person it was pointed at is the one who said so.

There was one exchange with the waitress. M. asked whether a dish came with specific garnishes and sides. The waitress said it did not. M. gave a dissatisfied look.

I recorded that look at the time as a point in her favor. My reasoning, as it stood in the strip mall, was that she was expressive and wore her emotions openly, and that this was attractive. I am not revising the assessment here. I am filing it, with a date on it, in a document whose entire purpose is to be read again later.

The fourth question

The 4 questions I brought to the first date end with what are you looking for. I have asked it in sequence, from a list, of a person I had met 20 minutes earlier. It is the question on my form that does the most work, which is why it is last.

On April 25, M. asked it of me.

I did not have it ready. The answer I gave was that I am looking for a life partner, someone to build a life with and retire with, and I arrived at that through a delivery I am not going to represent here as clean. It was a fumble. The substance was there and the sentence was not.

M. then said it back to me in a clearer form than I had managed. I agreed with her rephrasing.

The position now on the record is mine in substance and hers in wording. I had carried that question to a stranger on a Monday as though it were an instrument I owned, and on the following Saturday I could not operate it on myself, and the person I had pointed it at handed it back working.

Communication

At some point M. mentioned that someone had asked her for more frequent communication. She said that if I asked her for the same thing, she would oblige.

I did not ask. I recorded it as a good sign and moved on, and it is the first statement in this file that meets the form’s definition of a disclaimer: the subject accurately describing what she will do, in advance, without being asked.

What she described was a mechanism with a switch on it, and she told me where the switch was on the second date. The arrangement it describes ran for weeks afterward without the switch being touched.

Positions stated on this date: 2. Hers is the switch, volunteered. Mine is the life partner answer, which was given because she asked for it and which she then had to rephrase before it worked. The column counts both, and it does not record that one of them arrived unprompted and the other had to be extracted and repaired.

Findings

Questions came out even a second time, 10 and 10, approximate by the same method as before. The counts balanced. The answers did not: hers were fluent and mine, on the one question I have asked other people from a list, had to be rewritten by her before it was usable. A count of questions is a poor instrument, and it is the instrument this report has.

Phone checks were 0 and 0 for the second consecutive date, now across 240 minutes of table time.

Physical contact: 1 hug, at her car, initiated by me. That is the second consecutive evening to end that way and the second to be initiated from the same side.

Limits set: 1, hers. I offered to collect her and she preferred to meet at the venue, which is the first figure on any of these forms that the other party fixed.

Nothing else was even. The premise was mine, the drive was mine, the bill was mine, the follow-up request was mine, and the 15 minutes of waiting were mine. The venue and the verdict on the venue were hers. The two columns this report can measure with integers are the two columns that balance, which is a fact about the columns I chose.

There is no rationalization on this form either. Nothing required justifying. The food was bad, the date was short, and I asked for another one before the day was out.

Costs

• Food and drinks, including tip: $84.02
• Total: $84.02

The figure covers the entire outing. There were no separate purchases, which distinguishes this date from the first one, where the cheapest line was bought on another day and nearly went unrecorded.

Cost per hour in person: $84.02, against $47.91 on the first date. The rate per hour rose by 75 percent while the duration fell by two thirds.

Cost per question asked by M.: $8.40. Fuel for the 90-minute round trip is not recorded, on this date or the last one.

Running position: 2 of 2 dates held, $227.75 out of pocket, 240 minutes in person, 180 minutes in the car.

Status

I asked for a third date by text that evening. M. agreed the following day. The second date had itself been agreed by text on April 23 and held on April 25, a gap of 2 days.

The follow-up field reads pending, which is the state it was in when the report closed. I asked that evening and she agreed the following day, which is the second report in 2 to close pending overnight and is now the pattern rather than the exception: this file has yet to record an agreement made in person. The messages resumed daily.

The account remains open. At 240 minutes in person and 180 in the car, the ratio of table to road is 1.33, and it is falling.