The man generally held responsible for internet dating as we know it today is a native of Illinois called Gary Kremen, but Kremen was out of the internet dating business altogether by 1997, just around the time people were signing up for the internet en masse. Every era has its own utopian possibilities: ours is the chance to make our lives more bearable through technology. ‘Tattoos are a big part of my friends’ and family’s life,’ he wrote. That night I scrolled until I found a handsome man who had written a benign invitation: ‘Let’s get a drink.’ I looked at his profile. ‘Let’s go now you and I’ always comes into my mind, but I’ve never broadcast an OK Cupid chat signal, I just respond. Let’s become friends and explore somewhere.
Let’s get a drink after Koyaanisqatsi at the Castro. Let’s grab a brunch, lunch, beer or some such for some friendly Saturday revelry. An OK Cupid Locals invitation has to start with the word ‘Let’s’: I refreshed the feed that indicated whether other people in the neighbourhood were sitting alone in bars. I returned to my mobile and opened OK Cupid, the free internet dating service. At night the room had the temperature and pallor of a corpse. I had fiddled with the knobs and the gas, but couldn’t figure out how to ignite it. There was a cast-iron gas stove in the fireplace. When I moved in, the receipt for the blanket was on the mantelpiece.
The couch had a woollen blanket woven in a Navajo-inspired pattern, exemplary of a trend in San Francisco that a friend of mine calls ‘White People Gone Wild’. I allowed myself a moment’s longing for my living room and its couch. He handed me his mobile and pointed to a Facebook post. One came over to show me why they were laughing. A few stools down, two men broke into laughter. He turned his back to me to watch the monitor over the pool tables, where the pool players now applauded some exploit. Then I pretended to watch the game on a monitor that allowed me to look the other way. As the only man and the only woman alone at the bar, we looked at each other. At the other end, around the corner from where I sat, a bespectacled man my age watched the game.
A lesbian couple cuddled at one end of it. The bar had red fake leather booths, Christmas lights and a female bartender. A basketball game played on several monitors at once.
I sat on a stool at the centre of the bar, ordered a beer, and refreshed the feeds on my mobile. A man would go to a bar alone, I told myself. After I finished, I moved to the couch in the empty living room and sat under the flat overhead light refreshing feeds on my laptop. One Tuesday I had lentil soup for supper standing up at the kitchen counter. My friends in town were married or worked nights. I am not usually comfortable in a bar by myself, but I had been in San Francisco for a week and the apartment I sublet had no chairs in it, just a bed and a couch.
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