Key Takeaways: Thinking is hot
Vitals:
Name: Penny again, this time in-person. Did you know LA parking meters don't take pennies? They'll take quarters, dimes, nickels, but never pennies. Very discriminatory behavior from a city that takes pride in it's progressivism.
Length of date: 6 hours
How the date was obtained: Tinder
Where: Sweet Action Comedy Show/Player One Arcade Bar in NoHo
I brought Penny to a show I help produce partly to impress, but mostly to be honest about what I do with my time. I make my love for stand-up clear up top to minimize the likelihood of this happening: they’re angry I’m spending more time out than I used to and I’m angry I ever spent less time out at all. I’m not saying I expect Penny and I to get to the point where resentment is possible, but I’m happy I took the step to make sure that if we do, problems won’t be comedy related. Also, it’s a great show! We booked amazing comics and she was cracking up to all the best bits. Shoutout Eric Rocha for telling jokes so good it was reasonable for me to throw my arms in the air and let one land around her shoulder. I don’t think I’ve ever done that move before. I’ve had guys do it to me and it always felt nice when done right. I hope I did it right. I think I did it right. The show is over, she’s smiling, and we’re looking to extend the night because something feels right. Player One is an arcade bar, so it’s no surprise the table we find is designed to look like a Rubik’s cube. Solved. We’re inside because there was a man with a snowboard outside yelling obscenities. I say snowboard because he had on a pair of goggles, but maybe it was a skateboard. I wasn’t really paying attention. Neither was she. Multiple waiters apologized for the noise and multiple times we said “Oh, it’s totally fine!” as we quickly returned to our conversation. Being the children of immigrant parents, the malleability of truth in a world with so many eyes, the difficulty of loving every emotion one is capable of–we tucked ourselves away under a blanket of shared interests, experiences, and insights and couldn't care less if the guy had a snowboard or not. “Really sorry about the noise. You can sit at one of the tables inside.” We choose the solved Rubik's cube. She asks me if I’ve listened to “Boxing Day” yet. Of course I have, it’s a fifteen-minute Car Seat Headrest song. What kind of fan would I be if I didn’t have it on repeat? Then she asks me what I think the opening lyrics mean: “The early bird catches the worm I have worms in mousetraps, baby” I take a second to think. I say maybe it’s about a person trying to trap someone who’s usually doing the trapping. The early bird is wherever the worms are, so if someone wakes up earlier than an early bird, catches all the worms, and puts all the worms in one place, then that person will know exactly where the early bird is going to be. The speaker seems to be predatory. The lyrics following the mousetrap imagery support this: “I did something bad I’m not allowed to go outside anymore” Sorry if that was tedious. Not many are interested in overanalyzing enjoyable things. I’ve been criticized for overanalyzing enjoyable things, but overanalyzing is how I enjoy everything. It’s why I became an English major. I can’t dissect a frog, but give me a poem and pens become scalpels. It’s not a skill that has come in handy on dates before. If anything, it’s been a deterrent, but the way she looked at me when I shared my thinking made me feel so attractive. I've been working on a bit about how the best part of a relationship is when a partner can make you feel confident about an insecurity. That’s what her look did. Previous dates and relationships had me feeling like I should hide my over analytical head, but Penny said bring it. Penny said thinking is hot and I really needed to hear that.
Overall Experience:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The future for us… The in-person date lived up to the promise of the Facetime date, so I definitely want to see Penny again. There's a movie night in the books!
Next Week: Probably another date with Penny.