Six and zero

This report covers a first date with the subject referred to here as R., held on Tuesday, September 8, at 8:00 pm, at The Van Buren, for a Thievery Corporation concert. The date ran 135 minutes. The cost was $148.33, paid in full by me.

It is the fourth subject on file and the third opened inside a week. M.’s account closed on August 18, at $2,570.94 and 120 days. S.’s ran 1 evening and $32.00 and closed on September 3. K.’s ran 1 date and $248.00 and closed on September 6. This one opened on September 7, on an app, with a message I sent.

Summary of charges

• Duration: 135 minutes
• Questions asked by me: 6
• Questions asked by R.: 0
• Phone checks by R.: 6
• Phone checks by me: 1
• Out-of-pocket costs: $148.33. Tickets $106.33, drinks $42.00.
• Amount contributed by R.: $0.00
• Follow-up: none

Cost per hour in person: $65.92. This arc: $148.33 across 1 date. All subjects: $2,999.27 across 2,640 minutes in person, which is 44 hours to the minute.

The two options

On Monday, September 7, I messaged R. on Hinge. I did not open with a question. I opened with a statement that I would like to take her to see live music that week, asked her to choose the genre, and said I would handle the rest.

She chose R&B.

I sent her two options. The first was an R&B venue on Friday. The second was Thievery Corporation at The Van Buren on Tuesday, which is trip hop and downtempo, which is not R&B, and which I had already decided to attend. I did not tell her that.

She chose the second one, and said she loves it when a man takes the lead. [paraphrase]

The panel at the bottom of this form balances in no column at all, and the one that came closest is the venue. She did choose it. She chose it from a list of two that I wrote, in a genre she had not named, one day after I asked her to name a genre, and the option she chose was the one I was going to be standing in anyway. The form counts the proposal and the venue as one question, asks which of us supplied which, and declines to answer when the answer is both of us.

I asked her to pick and then I printed the ballot.

Time from first message to date held: 1 day. That ties the shortest lag on file, which was a mall on July 1.

A venue where nobody can be asked anything

I booked a concert for a first meeting. A concert is 135 minutes of standing beside a person at a volume that turns conversation into a series of interruptions. I knew that when I bought the tickets, and I bought them anyway, because the tickets were also for a show I wanted to see.

Then I ran a question count on it.

Between sets and between songs I asked 6 questions. Four of them are recoverable: where she is from, what brought her to Phoenix, how long she has been here, and how she is liking her job. She has been in Phoenix less than 2 weeks. The other 2 questions are not recoverable and are counted anyway, which makes this figure the same class of estimate as every question count on this site.

She answered all 6. She returned 0. Not a new question, and not the same question sent back.

Six and zero

Thirteen encounters on this site have recorded a question count. For 12 of them the column came out even, 11 of those with M. across 120 days, and every form noted the evenness as though it were an achievement of the evening rather than an artifact of how the count was taken.

The column broke for the first time on September 5, at 10 and 15, in the other party’s favor.

This is the fourteenth. It is 6 and 0. That is 2 uneven counts in 4 days, after 4 months without one, and they run in opposite directions.

Those earlier figures were approximations, reconstructed by topic days after the fact, and the forms said so each time. This one is not an approximation. Six is an estimate. Zero is the only count on this site that has never needed one.

The phone column

Phone checks: 7. One was mine, a call from my boss, which I took and which is on me. Six were hers, and one of those was a search, carried out during the set, for where one of the singers was from.

The running figure before this date was 3 phone checks in 2,505 minutes. The first was a missed work shift, the second was a child calling, the third was on a couch 15 feet from a kitchen. This date recorded 7 in 135 minutes. The rate moves from 1 check every 835 minutes to 1 every 19, a multiple of 43.

I also noted, standing beside her, that the photograph on her lock screen was of herself. I drew a conclusion from that at the time and I am not entering it, because it was a conclusion about a person and this form takes conduct. What goes on the form is what I did next.

What I did next

Somewhere in the second half I stopped asking questions and started dancing on my own, and I had a good time. She stood beside me and was approximately motionless for the remainder of the show.

The evening ended there, about 40 minutes before we left the building, and I stayed in it. The sunk cost on this date cost me nothing, because the thing I was sunk into was a band I had bought tickets to see. That is the one configuration this site has not previously recorded: an expenditure that continued to pay out after the reason for it stopped.

Half a mile

Near the end of the show she asked whether I wanted to stay until the end. I asked whether she would like to go home. She said yes.

I offered to drive her. She lives half a mile from the venue. She said she would walk.

I walked her out of the building and went back inside for the end of the set.

Every parting in M.’s arc happened at a car, 4 of them written down that way, and I walked K. to hers on September 5. On September 3 the other party walked out of a venue on her own and I stayed in it. This is the first at which the narrator walked out with someone and then walked back in.

Findings

Questions: 6 and 0. The second uneven count in 14 recorded encounters, 3 days after the first and running the other way.

Phone checks: 7 in 135 minutes, against 3 in the preceding 2,325.

Genre requested: R&B. Genre attended: trip hop.

Contributed by R.: $0.00. Four subjects are now on file. Three of them have a figure in that column and all 3 read $0.00, and the fourth could not be measured at all, which is a finding about who proposes and who pays on this site and not a finding about any of the four.

Reciprocity: 0 of 3 columns balanced, on a form whose columns are ones I built.

Positions stated: 1, hers, that she loves it when a man takes the lead. It is entered on a basis of recollection rather than quotation, because I did not write the sentence down, which makes it the second unmeasured column on this form and the second one reporting something in my favor.

Limits set: 1, hers. She ended the evening and declined the ride, and the walk home was half a mile.

Costs

• Tickets: $106.33, 2
• Drinks: $42.00
• Total: $148.33

Cost per hour in person: $65.92, against $68.17 across everything this ledger has recorded, this date included.

Running position, this arc: 1 of 1 dates held, $148.33 out of pocket, 135 minutes in person, $0.00 contributed by the other party.

Running position, all subjects: $2,999.27 out of pocket, 2,640 minutes in person. The second figure is 44 hours to the minute, and the ledger reached it on a Tuesday, at a concert, beside someone who was looking up the band.

Status

The follow-up field reads none. Nothing was proposed by either party at the door.

She messaged later that night to say she had got home safe and to wish me the same. I replied that I had, and thanked her.

The following day I unmatched her.

That is the third account on this site closed by me, and the third in 6 days. This one ran 2 days, $148.33 and 135 minutes. M.’s ran 120 days and $2,570.94 and was closed by the other party. This site exists because of the larger figure. The smaller ones are what the same decision looks like before the spending starts.

The account is closed. Recoverable: $0.00.