May 28th 2007
Mason comes over to my mom’s house and we watch M in the basement. His hair is short, and he’s wearing a pink button-down shirt. I keep thinking that he’s way too attractive to be hanging out with me. When he walked through the door, my mom silently mouthed, “He’s cute.”
July 10th 2007
Simon and I meet in a bar in Germany. It’s not really a date because we were already out anyway. He talks to me in an Irish accent so thick that I can’t understand him. We leave together, and when we get outside, he kisses me roughly on the mouth and then on the forehead before swinging his arm around me and hailing a cab.
My shared room at the hostel is empty so we fuck all over it. On every bed, in the entrance way, on the bathroom counter.
He leaves and then two days later, at 6 a.m., picks the lock to my room and crawls into bed with me while four other strangers try to sleep. We sneak out of the room and I straddle him over the toilet in the bathroom of the second floor hallway.
After that, we kiss on the sidewalk out front and he says he’s going to come back later that night. I tip-toe back into my room, and the guy in the bunk across from me is grinning.
May 28th 2007
Mason and I watch the movie in the dark while sharing a bag of sour candies. Our fingers are covered in sugar and neither of us can sit still. He slides his hand over mine and I just stare down at it thinking I might throw up. When the movie’s over, I tell him I’m craving a corndog and he makes it his mission to get me one. We say bye to my mom and I get into his minivan.
July 20th 2007
David and I meet in a bar in France which isn’t really a date because we were already out anyway. He only speaks French and tries to put his hand down my pants while we’re sloppily making out all over the dance floor. I tell his English-speaking friend not to let him follow me home.
May 28th 2007
We drive around for at least three hours. We drive around until it gets dark and it isn’t until then that we track down this retro little drive-thru that has corndogs on the menu. We order two of them, and I eat both. On the way home, we stop at a gas station where we each buy one of those individually packaged fruit pies. I get cherry and Mason gets lemon. He eats lemons whole sometimes, peel and all.
November 4th 2007
Nate takes me out for sushi. He watches me eat several shrimp tails and says nothing about it until weeks and weeks later in a string of text messages confessing his true feelings:
“Your face is like the pale of the moon.”
“Remember when we went out for sushi? I could tell you were nervous because you ate the shrimp tails.”
I respond by saying, “I always eat the tails,” and make fun of him in a letter I write to Mason.
May 28th 2007
He drives me home after we’ve been out all night eating junk food. I ask him if he wants to come in. He does and my cheeks turn red as he follows me downstairs. We sit down on the couch and I can feel sugar sticking to my legs. I put on some music I think he’ll like, and Mason spits his gum out onto a piece of paper with a poem on it. He crumples it up and leaves it on the table.
February 2nd 2010
James and I have been friends for almost three years. One night, after a party at his place, I fall into bed with him. We make out for a long time, we’ve never kissed before. After a while he gets comfortable and decides to tell me that his deep dark secret is that he has an adult baby fetish. He asks if I’d like to put a diaper on him and I realize that I’ve never really known anything about him.
May 28th 2007
I’ve already half-decided that I don’t want Mason to kiss me, but when he does I change my mind.
May 1st 2010
I meet Taylor at a bar so it isn’t really a date because we were already out anyway. I like him because he’s large, and has long curly hair and a beard, and he reminds me of a viking. I get drunk and ask him what he’s doing tonight even though it’s already two in the morning.
After he bangs me up against his bedroom window with the shades open, I ask him if he has any weird fetishes and get disappointed when he says no.
May 28th 2007
When Mason starts taking my clothes off on the couch, I try not to let the surprise show on my face. We move over to my bed and I turn up the music so no one will hear.
We don’t stop kissing through any of it. We keep our shirts on. We don’t use protection because we’re hardly eighteen and what do you know when you’re eighteen?
When we’re finished, he says he needs a cigarette and I lie about needing one too.
September 4th 2011
After chatting online for three weeks, Ryan #1 and I agree to meet at this bar that’s closer to his place than mine. I pay for most of our drinks. He walks me all the way home so I let him come in but mostly because it’s raining. He spanks me during our first kiss which, incidentally, is also our last.
September 6th 2011
I never make it to the actual date part with Ryan #2, because he texts me a picture of himself dressed as a cop and says, “Too much?”
September 12th 2011
Ryan #3 and I get breakfast. He admits that he likes the sound of his own voice, and I tell him that I’m not a very good listener. Overall, it’s a pretty good date.
May 28th 2007
We sit in Mason’s van, smoking and listening to Shooter Jennings. We talk for two more hours. We talk about everything.
September 17th 2011
Gabriel buys me Mexican food at 12 a.m. after a night of drinking and I swear I’ve fallen in love with him by the end of the night. He’s tall, and Dominican, and has perfect teeth.
He doesn’t call for a week, and when I text him suggesting that we at least be friends he replies, “Maybe I’ll run into you sometime.”
May 28th 2007
By 3 a.m. I’m convinced that I’m in love with Mason after knowing him for only eight hours. He flicks his cigarette out the window and tells me he feels comfortable with me. I tell him that, oh my god, I totally feel the same way.
He then takes my hand in his, swivels his body toward mine from the driver’s seat, looks me dead in the eye and tells me he thinks he might be gay.
September 11th 2011
I meet Kevin at his house on the other side of town for a “nap date” that we arranged via text the night before after we’d each separately gotten drunk. I’ve never met him in person, and I’m disappointed to find that he’s shorter than he said he is online, and his teeth are discolored from too much coffee and too many cigarettes.
We get into his bed almost immediately and watch t.v. on his computer. I feel weird about it at first, but after a while it’s just like waiting for a bus that’s running very late. You could walk but you’ve already committed so you stay put until it comes. We end up fucking all day long.
At some point during our raunchy, Sunday escapades, a switch flips in my brain and I decide that I really like him. I’m not going to lie, this probably happens after he goes down on me for an hour and half.
In any case, he has cute hair, and pretty eyes, and he’s sweet and he says nice things to me and his tattoos are cool and he smells good.
I get dressed after he leaves the room for a minute like I’m at the doctor’s office. When he come’s back I say, “Do I look like I just got drilled?”
He says, “You’re fucking adorable,” and tousles my hair.
I text him the next day but he never responds. Ever.
May 28th 2007
I can’t feel my heart breaking, so in that moment I wonder if maybe I’ll just be… fine. I enthusiastically pledge to Mason that I support him no matter what, now that we’re so close. Before he drives off, he kisses me and tells me that he’ll miss me when I move away for college at the end of the summer, and to have fun in Europe.
September 15th 2011
I haven’t seen Ben in almost four years. When he shows up at my apartment, I find that he’s shorter than I remember and he drinks all of my gin.
We makeout on the train platform but I’m not sure why. He moves to L.A. three days later and I spend the rest of that week guessing peoples’ heights as they pass me on the street.
Mason is six-foot-four.
September 21st 2011
I’m disappointed to see that Steven is much shorter than he said he is online. The little guy hardly comes up to eye level. We have drinks at a pub downtown and he orders a gin and tonic.
I wonder to myself what it is with guys and gin lately… it just seems like one of the girlier members of the booze family. I see this as an opportunity to assert my masculinity so I order a double Maker’s, neat.
I listen to him talk about art for an hour, and how girls are always trying to get on him because his beard is so awesome. I think he looks like a garden gnome.
September 29th 2011
Don and I make cupcakes at his apartment, and he tells me he’s impressed by how much I can eat. We get a little drunk, and never end up playing Scrabble even though that was the plan.
Instead I comment on every book he owns, his collection spanning several shelves. He hovers behind me, and every time I sense that he’s about to touch me, I move away quickly.
May 28th 2007
I go back inside and sit in the dark on the basement floor. I rock myself back and forth like a crazy person, utterly confused.
I unwrap the ball of chewed gum Mason left behind and put it in my mouth. I’ve never had a one night stand before. My heart bounces around in my chest and I bite my tongue on accident while chewing Mason’s old gum. I fall asleep with it in my mouth.
It’s still the best date I’ve ever been on.
René Cousineau is a fiction writing student at Columbia College Chicago. She hails from the majestic Colorado Rocky Mountains where she was raised on a steady diet of venison, Fleetwood Mac, and Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. Her work has appeared in Columbia College Chicago’s annual anthology, Hair Trigger.