The night I met Buff Ben, he was coming from a Hinge date. The night had begun auspiciously. My date was a fellow screenwriter who wore a Hawaiian shirt, smiled, and asked some good questions. Then he abandoned the act of polite curiosity and began to recite his achievements out loud. Not wanting to betray the tears of self-pity and envy that were coming (unlike him, I had no credit to my name), I stared at the booth divider until the check arrived. I then asked for a ride to Shatto 39 Lanes in Koreatown.
A hand placed a pair of bowling shoes on mine and I looked up to see my kickball teammate, Ben. Exactly 10 years older than me, Ben had distant hazel eyes, a fatherly face, and bulging biceps that sent a simultaneous jolt of familiarity and excitement over me; It was like he had slammed my funny bone hard against a table.
We flirted the rest of the night. I fainted when she leaned over to me and shoved a greasy fry into my mouth. “I'm a salt queen,” she whispered.
As the night went on, he would pout adorably every time he didn't get a strike. In the end he ended up winning the game.
Sure of reciprocity, I invited him to dinner the next night. She agreed but had one caveat. “Are you saying that as a quote?” he texted. “If so, I'm too old for you. I’ll tell you my right-wing opinions so you can get over me faster.” Caught up in the dizzying excitement of three-pointers bouncing back, I ignored the red flag. We met the next night at a Chinese restaurant in Silver Lake.
Between bowls of rice and steamed vegetables, I studied her face, which had seemed seductive and playful to me the night before. The long lashes gave her eyes a feminine shine, a counterpoint to her manly chin. I compared it to my own visual lexicon of roundness: cleft chin, tight curls, bulging nose. We both looked Jewish, I thought, but in different and perhaps opposite ways: Heat Miser versus Snow Miser, hot versus cold, curly versus straight. (He is Jewish on both sides and I am half Jewish). He was also tall and imposing, and I was short and funny.
During a pause in the conversation, Ben asked me where I went to college.
“Princeton,” I responded. “What about you?”
“Harvard,” Ben said.
“You like me?” I asked.
“No, I hated it!” Ben smiled sadly as he recounted his loneliness there: the time he had openly fallen in love with a fellow actor in a play before turning bitter when his advances were rejected. Plus, there was the time he responded to a Craigslist ad to lick an old man's feet for cash.
He briefly updated me on his life so far. He tried to make it as a screenwriter and teamed up with a famous actor and, full of pride, turned down an early opportunity. He showed a bitter smile. “I realized that unless you have some hidden diversity or a parent in the industry, you will never make it.” He dedicated himself to journalism and earned a blue check on Instagram for his original column in a Los Angeles publication.
Although he had only been in Los Angeles for a month, this was not the first rodeo with exhibitions of this type. Almost every date he'd been on involved some version of the “I was once you, boy” speech. In contrast to his usual effect, Ben made me want him even more. I shared my stories of loneliness at Princeton, hoping that his connection to his stories would make Ben feel less alone.. “I'm on your side,” I wanted to shout. “Together, we could support each other's dreams, hopes and identity.”
He smiled and asked me to know more about myself, as I had done with him. I felt euphoric, carried away by the current of refuge in another.
We received the check and walked to our cars in silence under an amazing canopy of stars. I leaned in to kiss him. He backed away. My stomach dropped.
“I'm sorry. I don't hang out with guys… who look like you,” he stammered, in a self-consciously funny song, as if I'd asked him to autograph my underwear.
“What do you mean?”
He chuckled. “I only date fit guys,” he said, as if this were so obvious that he didn't deserve an explanation.
I scanned his prominent pecs and tense arms. I asked her how she got so fit. She recited to me her exercise regimen.
I wrote his words furiously in my notes app. Then he put his hands on my stomach. “You have a good foundation,” she said. “I once looked like you. “Then I started exercising.”
“What did that get you?” I asked, hoping impossibly that we could rewind time to the part before he embarrassed me.
“Well, a guy of a certain caliber started to notice me,” he said in an authoritative tone.
We walk to his car. Clearly the night was over. “And I almost got a boyfriend,” she said before closing her car door. “Bye. I had a good time.”
And this was another way we were alike, I thought as he walked away. Here were two lonely intellectuals, two once precocious children addicted to the feeling of “almost.” I changed Ben's contact on my phone to “Buff Ben.” He had almost managed a romantic rejection of me without deeply hurting my feelings. He had almost gone on an amazing date with someone I really liked.
The author is a screenwriter of dance dramas for teenagers. He lives with his seven housemates and a very cute cat in Los Angeles. He is on Instagram: @keiserwilhelm
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