The Art of Affection

1-

warnings: alcohol use/abuse, takes place in a bar, explicit language 

How many terrible dates should I go on before giving up completely?

Tonight's bachelor is named Daniel. He's handsome, in a boy next door type of way, with sandy light hair and a cleanshaven face. He actually looks like the pictures on his Hinge profile, which is an infrequent occurrence in my experience with online dating. Even more rare, he wanted to take me to dinner, instead of the inside of his apartment.

While we're looking at our menus, Daniel tells me he works in finance. Fifteen minutes pass as he superciliously gushes about his salary and how he's only two years out of school and already his boss's favorite, due for a promotion and pay raise any time now. I would say he's acting like I'm not even here, if it weren't for the way his eyes deliberately linger on the line of my understated cleavage every minute or so.

"...and you're still in school, right?" He asks before taking a long sip from his beer. Parched after all that talking. "Longview, your profile said?"

"Yes, I'm a junior."

He smiles. "That's a good year. Lots of memories from college. What do you study?"

"I'm getting my BS of Fine Arts in studio art." At his blank expression, I add, "I'm a painter."

Daniel suddenly laughs, startling me a little bit. "I understand now."

"Understand?"

"I was wondering why a pretty college girl would be on one of those dating apps." He says casually and placatingly. "You're looking for a man. Someone to take care of you after you graduate, isn't that, right?"

It takes me a moment to process what he means. Any points I gave him for being cute are immediately erased, and as he smirks at me from behind his beer, he really isn't even all that cute.

Even still, I remind myself to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's just coming off like a douche bag because he's nervous. Maybe he's not super egotistical, just passionate about his work.

"I'm on that app-" The same one you're on, too. "Because I want to meet someone. But trust me, I fully intend to work after I graduate. I'm not getting this degree for nothing." I add a light hearted chuckle and smile, more willing to tolerate a little embarrassment than to accept another failed date.

"Oh, I'm sure you intend to work." Daniel says. "With an art degree, though? If you really wanted to be financially independent, a more practical approach would be to keep the art as a hobby and pursue something with more of a market."

"Like finance?" I suggest.

Daniel smiles. "Exactly."

Needless to say, Daniel won't be getting a second date.

It's not even nine thirty when I get back to my apartment. My roommate, Jasmine, isn't home, just as we had carefully agreed upon. I wanted the entire place to myself in case the date went well, and I decided to invite him upstairs. Thinking a man would ever see the inside of my bedroom was more delusional at this point than optimistic.

I simultaneously throw myself onto my bed and surrender the hope of ever losing my virginity. In some twisted irony, it really feels like the more I want to get rid of it, the harder it seems to stick.

Those public safety announcements really worked on me growing up. I thought sex was something you should only do when you loved someone or when you were older. I didn't date anyone in high school, so it never occurred to me that sex could be fun and causal until I got to college. I assumed I would lose my virginity in at least the first year because I wanted to have sex. But I also didn't want to sleep with just anyone. Definitely not with drunk, whiskey dicked guys you meet at most parties. Not with the bleeding heart, ostentatious and conceited guys in many of my classes. I just wanted it to be with someone I didn't hate, someone I could stand to be around, and actually trusted.