Baked lemon-pepper salmon drowning in a sea of butter, garnished with an abundance of thick, juicy overlapping lemon slices and a soft dusting of chopped parsley. Roasted Brussels sprouts tossed with diced bacon and slivered almonds, sweetened with a drizzle of honey, and spiced with a pinch of cayenne pepper. A springy spinach salad with apple bits and avocado cubes, topped with crushed walnuts, dried cranberries, and homemade olive oil-dijon dressing. A luscious, technicolored fruit tart that sparkled like a jeweled crown resting comfortably in its bright pink pastry box.
These were the meal components neatly tetrised into the canvas bag that I had just belligerently launched into the back seat of my car with the same velocity as if I were trying to rid myself of a live grenade.
Following this motion, I leapt into the driver’s seat and threw my car into reverse without checking my surroundings for pedestrians. In that moment, I chose to elect the looming risk of striking a small child with my car to that of turning my head even a fraction of an inch and possibly locking eyes with the man sitting in the maroon Toyota Corolla to the left of me, who had just terminated our courtship. I screeched my car to a halt, threw it back into drive, and barreled out of the parking lot like a demon speeding straight out of hell.
With exception of the tart, which I had purchased, I had spent two hours tenderly laboring over the meal that had no doubt erupted within each of its respective containers all across the back seat of my Mazda as I raced down the freeway toward my home at breakneck speed. Tears blurred the brake lights of the cars in front of me, and my face was hot, on fire from agony and embarrassment. Dollar signs from the outrageous amount of money I had spent shopping on my lunch break for this picnic danced around my mind like an insolvent carousel. I had insisted to myself that a nice meal in the park on a beautiful summer evening would be worth the time and effort I had put into it, in addition to the charge I would incur from paying my cell phone bill late.
Clark Kent and I had matched on Tinder, where his opening message to me was, “Marry, fuck, kill: Sauron, Voldemort, Darth Vader.” How he had guessed my inclination toward world- and galaxy-dominating villains, I will never know, but this worked on me better than I think he could have anticipated. Not only this, but his profile photo was the spitting image of Clark Kent in a white button-up and classic black tie, with thick, square glasses, broad shoulders, hair curl and all, as if he were moments away from shedding his business attire to reveal the discernible Superman outfit beneath as he embarked in pursuit of a lawbreaker. Thus, the moniker under which I referred him to friends was born, and they all agreed it was uncannily fitting. This tall, dark, and handsome nerd who checked off too many of my boxes seemed much too good to be true.
Clark Kent was my first date after a long-term relationship had ended that I was quickly ready to move on from. We met for the first time on a Sunday afternoon at a popular Portland bakery, where I holed up in the farthest corner from the door so I could see when he came in. When he did, I lost my breath. He was the most beautiful person I had actually seen in real life—an actual embodied comic book character. I gulped my water to hide the fact that I was smiling like the village idiot who had gotten away with something they had no business doing.
Our date lasted three hours. We spent a considerable amount of time in the coffee shop, then walked across the street to a park where we sat on a bench to talk and people-watch, finally kissing after what felt like eons. I broke my rule of not kissing on first dates, which I had adopted on account that by the end of most first dates, I am not inclined to kiss my companion. He needed to leave to get ready for a D&D session, which made me like him even more, and he walked me back to my car, where we kissed again before he left. For the first time in a long time, butterflies stirred intrusively within my stomach, like Godzilla awakening from deep below Tokyo Bay.
Over the next week, we texted each other furiously. Living twenty miles apart with busy schedules, seeing each other was going to take careful coordination, but we were determined to make it happen. The following Monday was Memorial Day, and I had been planning to leave that Friday to visit my family in Idaho. Sundays were really the only days he was available, and I’d be out of town during the upcoming weekend. Then, on Thursday, he texted me in excitement that he had been accepted into a radiology program and was absolutely elated. I took this opportunity to suggest that we meet at the International Rose Test Garden for a quick celebration with Martinelli’s and cupcakes, since he didn’t drink and we both had a detrimental sweet tooth. He agreed and said he would move some things around to make it happen.
We met at the garden, where we drank bubbles, ate triple chocolate cupcakes, and made out behind each and every rose bush available to us over the next two hours. Near the end of our visit, he said that getting into this program meant that he would be a lot busier and that it would be difficult for him to move into something serious, but he really liked me and wanted to be up front with me about his time commitments. I thought for a minute before responding that I would be willing to try if he was. “That’s what I hoped you would say,” he said, smiling and kissing my forehead. I leaned into him and inhaled, taking in the perfume of a thousand different roses surrounding us like an avalanche of summer.
The warm rays began to disappear from my skin as the setting sun withdrew inch by inch behind the hills of Washington Park. Families and couples around us were packing up to leave, and as the last group straggled up the amphitheater stairs, we followed suit into the parking lot. The time had come for us to say our goodbyes, but with the threat of my trip to Idaho and the knowledge that we would not see each other until next week, we somehow found our way into the back seat of my Mazda, where my bra had been cast out from underneath my dress like that couple from the Garden of Eden. Families all around us were clamoring into their Subarus and preparing for departure, yet the two of us had our tongues down each others’ throats like we were mining for fossils there, our hands in places criminally unsuitable for the eyes of the children buckling into their seatbelts a mere meter away.
Eventually, before the park attendant could reach us with his menacing “get the hell out of here” highbeam flashlight, we sidled out of the back seat of my car into the now-emptied parking lot and finally said our real goodbyes, kissing goodnight once again before returning to our respective homes.
“He’s in school to be a radiologist,” I told my mother on the phone the next day as I was preparing for the six-hour drive to Idaho. An explosion of laundry lay in a mountain upon my bed, and I was scrambling around the room to gather what I needed while chattering excitedly to my mother like a magpie on loop. I hadn’t the slightest idea of what being a radiologist involved, as I was purposefully determined never to go near a hospital or doctor unless I was dying, which, even then, I could do in my own apartment for the very low cost of free (minus the cleaning deposit). Did he fix hospital radios? Did he radio the choppers landing on the rooftop helipads? Did he monitor radiation in cases of potential Patient Zero mutants, like in a Fallout situation? The most basic of information that I had was this: that he would be working in the medical field, which felt like something to tell my mother about. I hoped that this would, for the time being, hush her insistence that I find a man who could take care of me.
My mother, bless her soul, is the absolute truest living form of Mrs. Bennet if there ever were one. It is god’s honest truth that Jane Austen conceived the character of Mrs. Bennet based on a prognostication concerning my mother a century and a half before she was actually born (no one can prove this claim otherwise; I will contest any and all objections to this in a court of law). It takes one factor and one factor alone for my mother to determine whether or not she approves of the men I bring home: the occupation in which they are professionally compensated for. As I had spent most of my time on this earth being the enterprising fuck-up daughter who brought home army dropouts, baristas, toy store clerks, and, god forbid, comedians, the prospect of dating someone in the medical field felt noteworthy enough to mention to her in an effort to keep her from telling me that I need to make better choices.
All three of my younger sisters were married, and one was even on her second marriage. As the eldest daughter, this felt insidiously unfair to me, as I was about as close to having a ring on my finger as Neptune is to the sun. If this had indeed been early Victorian times, such as the setting for Price and Prejudice, I surely would have been deliberately eschewed from the community on account of being unsuitable for marriage, which is decidedly the worst possible thing any woman can be.
As the weekend advanced, Clark Kent and I flipped between texting each other nerdy pick-up lines and absolute smut during my entire trip, which I could not enjoy to its fullest extent because all I could think about was running bases on the Clark Kent Memorial Diamond once I returned to Portland. When my tiny, innocent nieces approached me asking to watch clips of Disney movies on my phone with their little fairy voices, I leapt to wipe the phone of all messages from him and put the device on Do Not Disturb, just in case they tapped on an incoming Rated R image from my suitor as the opening act of The Lion King played, which would force me to explain the new addition of a rarely-seen pale serpent that was now a part of the Circle of Life ensemble.
Where my mother lived, there was little-to-no cellphone service, specifically with concern to my own sending of photos and possibly with inscrutable concern for dirty photos. I know this because though I could receive photos from Clark Kent, the many racy ones that I took would not send in exchange. In a particularly desperate moment, I drove the ten minutes into town under the guise of running to the store for dessert, simply so that the smut photos I had taken in the guest bedroom of my mother’s home would finally transmit to the intended recipient while I browsed the bakery section of the Super 1 Food Mart for a banana cream pie.
Finally, the day arrived for me to depart from Idaho. My six-hour drive back to Portland felt like twelve. It was complete agony. As I broke every speed limit racing back home, we texted about how it would probably be too late to do anything but get drinks once I returned since we both had work in the morning and the drive from Idaho to Portland would kick my ass. I wouldn’t be home until 8pm or so and would then have to shower, get ready, and drive 30 minutes to Hillsboro to meet him.
“Bring an overnight bag,” he said. “You know, just in case.”
Fast forward to several weeks later, well into our whirlwind, where I was deeply smitten with him. All signs pointed to him feeling the same about me. We texted each other often, saw each other as much as we could, and even wrote a story for his D&D campaign together. One night he suggested that I play Dark Souls for the first time and sat next to me, offering advice and laughing when I would animatedly become upset at what a horrible game it was. We watched movies, ate phở, browsed Powell’s, and visited a calligraphy exhibit together. I was confident that our relationship would continue moving forward, and I knew just how to make it happen—a romantic picnic in a beautiful wooded park.
We had planned the picnic a week in advance, and I had offered to do everything: arrangements, food, etc. I wanted to do something nice to help alleviate the stress he was dealing with between his two jobs and family problems, as well as his recent acceptance into the radiology program for his schooling. This was offered entirely to benefit my own selfish agenda: his recent stress level was taking away from attention spent on me, and I desperately needed to remedy the situation with the perfect date before it developed into a pattern. “I’ll plan everything, and I’ll come to you,” I had texted him after rubbing my hands together like a scheming villain. “Don’t worry about a thing.”
I had driven twenty miles in rush hour traffic on a Wednesday evening from Southeast Portland to Noble Woods Park in Hillsboro to meet Clark Kent for our picnic. I was nervously excited to impress him with the dinner I had been planning for a week. I couldn’t wait to see him.
But something was wrong. He didn’t meet my gaze or return my hello as he somberly ambled toward me from his car once we met at the park. We began walking the trail to the picnic area in a sharp silence that kicked me in the stomach with every step that I took, with him trailing a couple of paces behind me.
It reached a point where I could not take it anymore. “Is… everything okay?” I asked, stopping to turn and face him. [Author’s Note: If you ever find yourself in the position of having to ask someone this question, know that before receiving your answer that things are most assuredly Not Okay.]
He stopped walking. His face twisted up into a look of pain and despair as his eyes met mine for the first time since climbing out of our cars together, and, instead of answering, he simply let out a noise that I can only describe as an exhale of hesitance.
It was then that I started to head back to my car.
If this man had sent me a text message the day before, or earlier in the day, or, hell, even an hour before, which read, “I can’t do this anymore,” I would have wept. I certainly would have wailed and sobbed for some time and then would have called my sisters and best friends to wail and sob to them about the promise of what could have been. I then would have walked the twelve feet to the bar across the street to drown myself in gin and tonics for the remainder of my evening, only after safely deleting his number from my phone.
Yes, I would have wept. But I also would have found myself in a situation in which I had not spent two hours cooking and thirty minutes driving beforehand only to be dumped, and my bank account would still have money in it. All of these things I valued more than being broken up with in person, which is, in fact, something that I do not value at all.
Dump me over text. Dump me over the phone. Dump me via certified mail, sure. Please dump me via skywriting. Dump me via a fucking singing telegram, I beg of you. Anywhere but in person, where you can watch the devolution of a perfectly confident and secure adult woman transform into a blubbering, wailing, pathetic gob of goo now stuck to the floor like a piece of discarded, chewed-up gum.
I would rather my partner of twenty years tell me that they want to end our relationship via Facebook Messenger than to my face, so that I can process it on my own terms and avoid exposing weakness by crying in front of them. This can be traced back to my screaming abandonment and rejection issues as a direct result of being the product of a broken home, which is something I try to bring up as quickly into the first date as is natural; usually after the waitress asks what drinks she can start us off with.
By now, I was huffing and puffing from lugging the meal I had affectionately tendered toward the perfect locale for dinner in the woods and was being dumped as I navigated a hiking trail in pointed-toe flats and a summer dress. This was something I would wish on only my worst of adversaries, and even then, only the top five who had wronged me.
Behind me, I could hear him saying things like, “I like you so much,” and “I just can’t do this right now,” and “maybe in the future.” But my heart was beating like a war drum in my ears, and everything he said sounded garbled, like we were underwater, or possibly very far away from each other. As I trudged back up the trail toward my car while stepping over roots and avoiding ditches, I began to cry. From the utter humiliation of having put together an extravagant date idea under the gullibility of impressing Clark Kent with a perfect night or from the disappointment of another one bites the dust, I could not tell. It was probably a mix of both.
It was then that I threw the canvas bag into my car and took off from the park, leaving behind any semblance of dignity I might have had before arriving at the park that night.
As I raced back to Portland from the aborted picnic, I wondered if this was all happening because he had come to see me perform stand-up comedy the week before and found my set unfavorable. If this were truly the case, I could not blame him. If someone I was seeing invited me to watch them perform a set at a stand-up show now, I would block them without a second thought. This situation could only be made worse if I were being invited to an improv show, in which I would then call the police on the inviting offender before blocking them.
This breakup devastated me. I had spent much of my time fantasizing about a future with Clark Kent, and it was over. For weeks, I laid in bed. I didn’t eat. I listened to too much Lana del Rey. I talked about him excessively to my friends, who were gracious enough to listen and respond to me when they should have just left my messages on “read.”
Weeks passed, and I managed to pull myself out of the funk. I slowly crept back onto dating sites and into meeting new people. One person in particular had caught my interest: a handsome, dark-haired man wearing sunglasses in most of his photos who had the biggest and most infectious smile I had ever seen. I caught myself smiling back when I looked at his photos. My friends affectionately dubbed him Bruce Banner. “He’s the complete opposite of Clark Kent,” they said. “You need that.”
Bruce Banner and I began to talk, and a couple of weeks later, after a lengthy exchange of pleasant messages that I found myself looking forward to each day, we set a plan to meet. He suggested a picnic at one of the Rose Gardens close to my house.
“I’ll bring everything,” he had texted. “Don’t worry about a thing.”