I had never been on a subway, but if this girl was anywhere near the pictures she had online, I was feeling brave and thought I looked like I knew what I was doing. The thought crossed my mind that staring down at my phone every few minutes was going to give away the fact that I had no idea what I was doing, but it was New York, and I\u2019m not sure anyone would have made eye contact with me if I tried.<\/p>\n
Why in God’s name did I choose Chinatown? It was the only place I knew at all in New York, and someone suggested a dumpling restaurant that had great reviews. I wanted to feel at least a little familiar with my surroundings, and it felt like this girl owned the whole city with the way she talked in our messages to one another.<\/p>\n
The night before, I had been stood up, and I spent way too many hours in a shitty bar in Midtown staring into the worst old fashions I\u2019d ever had. But they were cheap, by this city\u2019s standards, and the bartender saw I was in a bad mood and she kept giving me doubles on the house.<\/p>\n
The next thing I know, I\u2019m back in my hotel room, buried in conversation with this girl through text messages who showed up on my dating search (like I\u2019m going to say what site it was) at the most curious time, fortune or fate.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t lie, after a few drinks, and the night I was having, everything she had to say felt poetic, and here I probably thought I was Voltaire reincarnate. In hindsight, I\u2019m sure I sounded like a drunken mess, and everything she said was perhaps backed up by more than a hint of hesitation, but this memory isn\u2019t 20\/20, and maybe the details aren\u2019t so important anymore.<\/p>\n
Canal Street, I had to get off at Canal Street. That\u2019s the only detail I thought was important enough to focus on through the whole subway affair, and somehow 15 minutes later, I was stepping off the subway onto the platform feeling like I had just invented calculus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had never been on a subway, but if this girl was anywhere near the pictures she had online, I was feeling brave and thought I looked like I knew what I was doing. The thought crossed my mind that staring down at my phone every few minutes was going to give away the fact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyleaf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyleaf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyleaf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyleaf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyleaf.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyleaf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":868,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyleaf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions\/868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyleaf.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyleaf.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyleaf.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}