Evie and Brent
Evie is a 32-year-old website designer who lives in midtown. She says her style “ranges from conservative to playful” and that she loves shopping for clothes. She says “I love photography. I love to crack jokes, and to see comedians perform. I also love to read, anything from Douglas Coupland’s books to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.” Evie does yoga, and says that she counts “reciting the alphabet backwards” as one of her talents. “I’m waiting for this skill to come in handy one day.” My friend John isn’t in town very often because of his job, but when he is, we try our best to make plans for dinner and drinks.
It allows us to have a proper catch up, rather than a Facebook-messenger catch up.
For the most part, these dinners have been just the two of us, but life happens and John started seeing someone he wanted to bring. So, I asked Brent — a mutual friend — if he wanted to be my platonic date for the night. I jokingly told Brent this didn’t mean he could get “handsy,” but I wouldn’t have minded if he did.
I actually would have been totally OK if he tossed the “platonic” part out the proverbial window. Asking someone to be your “date” is pretty cut-and-dried, is it not? And Brent is pretty cute. He agreed. Reservations were made at a nice restaurant. The wheels are in motion.
As any girl on a platonic date would do, I selected my outfit days before, and made plans to get my hair dyed.
The day of, I text-messaged my married friend Michael to confirm that I was about to go on an actual date. Lately, I keep coming across guys who don’t want to commit to the idea of anything being a date. Too much pressure! We are merely “hanging out.” In this case, I felt I shouldn’t need to confirm: there were four people about to indulge in delicious boeuf bourguignon.
So, you can imagine my surprise when I got to the restaurant and spotted Brent at our table with a woman.
Most guys bring a lady some flowers, or maybe wine. As I walked toward the table, I went through a list of possible options of who this woman could be. What I wasn’t expecting to hear was that she and Brent had just started dating and he invited her along. There I was, the fifth wheel on my own date.
I’m familiar with the whole “he’s just not that into you” concept, but having your date, even platonic, bring a date to your date is just . . . I dunno. I kept my cool as best I could. It was nice to see John and meet his girlfriend. And sure, maybe Brent’s other date also felt like a fifth wheel, but I frankly didn’t care to ask.
John kindly paid for the, um, five of us. I prepared to head off to my private car service, a.k.a. the city bus, when I heard John say “Brent can give you a lift home, right Brent?” At that moment, Brent and I looked at John, like “Are you kidding me?” I did owe props to John: Brent had brought a date to our date and kind of deserved payback.
There’s nothing more uncomfortable than being in the back seat of a tiny sports car with two people in front of you flirting mercilessly.
It was like I was being forced to watch a romantic comedy in which I was the loser who clears the way for the happy ending.
Now my dates, “platonic” or not, have a “maximum number of persons” limit. Evie rates her date (out of 10): 2 The Dating Diaries are readers’ accounts of their best, worst and weirdest dates as told to the Star. Want to be a dating diarist? Email datingdiariescontact@gmail.com