Ah, the New York Times's Modern Love column--a treasure trove of weirdo navel-gazing dating stories. Today's tale is a goodie: it's by Liz Falletta, a developer and architect, and it's about dating a guy in Los Angeles who does not own a car. During the course of the writer's courtship with Bob, the poor carless dude actually gets hit by a car after it jumps a curb on Sunset Boulevard. It's nutty all around. Here are our favorite parts:
1. "Bob did not own a car. This approach to life might be reasonable in a city like New York, but it made him an oddball in Los Angeles, where prospective dates should be geographically convenient and should drive, if not a fancy car, then at least a reasonably comfortable one. Despite Los Angeles’s efforts to improve public transportation, dating usually requires some freeway driving. What kind of car one drives matters because much of the date will be spent in it." (We've actually made these calculations.)
2. "With Bob, I was beginning to see his lack of a car as a bad sign."
3. "the fact that I was driving somehow made him the 'date' and me the 'dater.'"
4. "All this dating was fun and reliably hilarious. I was able to add numerous locations to my 'Bad Date Map of Los Angeles,' a pet project I started when Bob was run over. I learned all the best places to make out."
5. "Then last summer Bob contacted me out of the blue to see if I wanted to get together. I had not heard from him in nearly 10 years. A road accident involving some cyclists in Los Angeles had Bob thinking about his own brush with death, which evidently made him think of me."
6. "True to form, his continuing lack of a car, whether out of conviction or necessity, was again problematic. This time he rode his bike to the bar in my neighborhood but forgot his lock. So before we could go in and have a drink, we had to put his bike in my car (now a Subaru)." Image via Lucyrk in LA
· Looking for Signs That It’s Meant to Be [NYT]
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