Hey, it’s me, Sarah. And this is Note to Self, a newsletter where I talk about whatever I want. Today, it’s a tale as old as time: That One Guy.
When I met him, on tinder, I was 22 and he was 29.
This was back in “Early New York” — my first year out of college and in the city. Then, everything felt ephemeral and in that sense, already nostalgic. I was working in a fancy office with Herman Miller desk chairs, but sleeping on an air mattress, spending more on one nice meal than any item of clothing I owned, and climbing a fire escape before I’d call a locksmith.
And yet, under a pile of Duane Reade receipts and single-ride metro cards, I was accumulating a semi-adult life. I could feel myself changing, the way you can when you’re 22 and your frontal lobe has not yet fully formed. I got a full-time job, signed a lease, and downloaded my first dating app.
And that’s when we met. His name was Dick (his name was not Dick). At the time, I didn’t know that he was just a character in my coming-of-age story. Can you ever know before it’s too late? What I did know was: he was a writer, he was very handsome, and we had the kind of chemistry that makes you think about why they call it that.
It began over text. We had an immediate, disarming rapport in this medium, falling easily into a cadence that was flirty to the point of competitive. Both the nocturnal type, we stayed up late trading twitter references and making elaborate inside jokes. Dick seemed to think I was clever and I was immediately addicted to his approval. He was, after all, 29 — the oldest and coolest age a man could be before it got gross. He lived outside the city, occasionally commuting in to meet with his editor. I was terrified but desperate for a chance to meet him in person myself.
It happened a few weeks later. I wore heeled sandals and a Zara dress that clung to every plane of my body. “Is it a little too…much?” I asked, twirling in front of my roommate before I left. She lifted a devious brow at me. “Isn’t that kind of the point?”
He was sitting at the bar when I walked in and I swear to you that the crowd parted like it does in the movies. We shared a blank, breathless stare before hugging awkwardly and then stumbling to a quiet corner table. “Wow,” he said when we sat. “What?” I asked like an idiot. He waved me away. “You’re gorgeous, you know that.” I knew better than to tell him that I did not know that.
I was intimidated by his ease. Though I’d had a couple of long-term boyfriends, I’d never really dated; I’d certainly never met a man from the internet at a dimly lit tequila bar in Manhattan. It was all fun and sexy games when we were flirting over text, flexing our writerly tastes into the wee hours. Now he was staring into my eyes with his fingers hooked around the back of my knee, and I had, evidently, forgotten how to use words.
Reading me easily, Dick took the lead. He asked about my day, my job, how long I’d been single, how my last relationship ended, and what I was looking for. I jammed my straw into the sunken lime wedge in my margarita and prattled on, sharing too much for far too long. But he didn’t seem to mind. When I spoke, he looked at me like he wanted to eat the words out of my mouth. Instead, he ordered us another round and pulled the empty glass from my hand, replacing it with his. “I think you need a fresh lime to stab,” he said.
After a couple more margaritas, we left the bar and made out on Sixth Street and then Second Avenue and then somewhere near Houston, where he hailed me a cab. Though I spent most of the night acutely aware of my youth and inexperience, once we said goodbye and the cab door clicked shut, I’d never felt more adult.
It went like this for a while: a few times a week, I’d prop my legs up on my shoebox bedroom wall, and we’d text in 45-second intervals until the sun came up. When we couldn’t take it anymore, he’d come to the city to see me and I’d get to practice being the clever, self-possessed woman he knew so well, in person.
This is the joke I always make about Dick: All he ever did was tell me I was hot and smart and I was like, “I think this guy really gets me.” I had only ever dated boys who seemed, in flashes, embarrassed or threatened or both by the size of my personality and the depth of my emotional world. Boys who wanted to order from me a la carte: my empathy, my deference, and just a half portion of my humor. But texting with Dick, I could be everything — dramatic, acerbic, and bratty but also tender, earnest, and openly needy. He liked all of this about me and told me so often, effusively, with words I had to google.
I could feel myself blooming under the glow of his affection, floating through my life with a dreamy new confidence. I bought myself roses, an expensive dress, an adult perfume. I was sleeping fewer than five hours a night, living on cold brew and iced lattes, and re-reading texts from the night before under my desk when the caffeine wouldn’t cut it. “Sarah Sharp, are you smiling at your phone?” a coworker shouted across the open office. It was my first New York spring and I was unbearably sprung.
It seemed, from the start, unlikely that he would be my boyfriend. We lived in different places and though seven years doesn’t seem like such a big difference, I must stress that I was as 22 as a person could be. But, prescient despite my 22-ness, I also understood that wanting more could easily drive men away. So I told him a lie, with every intention of meaning it: “I don’t want a relationship, I need to figure myself out before I get into something serious.” Unfortunately, saying these things did nothing to make them true and Dick, always quick to read me, knew it.
Our all-nighters began to spread out and I began to spiral, carefully analyzing our every interaction. He was guarded about his emotions despite his curiosity for mine. He loved to give me advice and reassurance but rarely opened up enough to need it in return. Besides, what advice could I give someone I looked up to so much? I began to feel frantic that I had nothing of substance to offer. What he seemed to like most was how much his affection and approval meant to me, and that thrill has an expiration date.
It was four months, all told. “I can tell you want more, and I feel bad that I can’t give it to you.” Of course, he was right, but I hated how he phrased it. I let my want show and it made him feel bad — both things my fault.
For a while, we didn’t speak. But then, every few weeks, I would wake up to a notification that Dick had liked 10 or more of my tweets in the night, scrolling back weeks or months. Sometimes it was flattering Instagram photos at 3 am. Once he texted to tell me how much he liked something I’d written on my blog. I wanted so badly for all of this to mean something, but I knew that it didn’t. Eventually, I told him to leave me alone if he didn’t want anything from me. He did, and somehow his absence took up even more space than the alternative.
Meanwhile, I went on a date that was so chemistry-less and discouraging, that I cried walking home. Bad dates made me miss him so I threw myself into other things: my idle gym membership and a burgeoning love of cooking. I began reading again — Patti Smith, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron.
In Ephron’s book of essays, “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” she talks about meeting her third husband, the true love of her life. She asks, “What failure of imagination had caused me to forget that life was full of other possibilities, including the possibility that eventually I would fall in love again?” I highlighted that one in my kindle and turned it over in my head for weeks (years).
Did I love Dick? Probably just the idea of him. But he seemed to be the only idea I could imagine. And wow, did I imagine. I imagined I saw him on Delancey Street. I imagined my phone was vibrating when it wasn’t. I imagined he was dating the woman whose tweets he was always liking. I imagined he would text me again, eventually.
He did, of course, and for a while, we were “on again.” It was a month before he started to disappear, offering a sheepish, “I’m just bad at texting.” A stunning choice of words, really, given that texting with him was the most intimate way I had ever communicated with anyone.
I changed his name in my phone and tried harder to imagine alternatives. I met someone new and we dated for a while. I returned to the dating apps and kissed a handful of crushes. Briefly, I enjoyed being single and silly, certain that serious would come soon enough. As if he had a special radar for this exact moment, Dick started making an effort to stay in touch.
This time around we were “friends,” which meant that we kept it light and closed shop before midnight. He sent me a piece he was working on for his column and asked my opinion. I asked him for career advice. It felt different and nice. I wanted this new chapter to be a testament to my growth. The truth is though, I had started seeing someone else, and this someone felt like something, maybe even the big thing. Now that I could imagine it with someone new, Dick’s old tricks weren’t doing it for me.
One winter day, Dick told me he was going to be in the city — “if you wanted to grab a drink.” I hadn’t seen him in over a year and I was shocked at the very idea. I was also busy, and, since we were friends and friends talk about their dating lives, I decided to tell the truth: I couldn’t see him because I had a date. Perhaps I felt like being a bit of a dick myself, or maybe I just wanted to preemptively surface the information. He took it in stride but followed up the next day to ask how it went, which I understood as an act of aggression.
A week later he asked to see me again. This was an unusual amount of correspondence from my friend Dick, and it was starting to give me agita. I asked my roommate for advice. Could I see him as a friend? She said, basically, “Don’t you fucking dare.” I told Dick I had too much to do before the holidays.
It was Christmas Eve, and my parents were in town. I had been shepherding them around the city, showing them my favorite neighborhoods, bars, and restaurants. We were rushing to a dinner reservation when I sent Dick a text. The magazine he wrote for was under fire and I knew he’d be disappointed about it. But, really, I felt I owed him a friendly gesture after denying his requests to see me. He responded quickly with a paragraphs-long text.
Picture this. I am holding my apartment door open for my parents, calling out the uber license plate as they scramble down the stairs. I am standing in my doorway alone now, so bundled up it’s hard to fully articulate my hands. I’m fumbling to turn off my kitchen light and lock the door while I skim a long ass text about this man’s work, his life, his artistry, his ego. I’m rolling my eyes a little as I race out of the building and cram into the back seat. I read the last line as the car door clicks shut. “Text me later if you want to say some things we’ll regret ;)” And now, every interaction I’ve ever had with this man flashes before my eyes, all the way back to the cab door clicking shut after our first date.
He was using me, all along. He liked me because I went out of my way not to ask for too much, because I was so appreciative, because I was a fountain of flattery, and, sure, because he thought I was cute and smart. When I started to want too much, he’d withdraw until I seemed to be moving on, and then he’d reenter jusssst long enough to confirm that he could have me if he wanted. All this time, I thought I was the one who got more from our non-relationship, who wanted too much, with too little to return. But here he was, willing to pull me away from my first real attempt to move on, just so that he could feel the glow of my affection for one late night of texting.
I tensed and untensed my jaw, staring out the window and trying not to cry. I was taking my parents to Llama Inn, my favorite nice restaurant in Williamsburg. I had gone there to celebrate my first ever raise and again when I got a new job. It was across from my favorite place to go dancing and around the corner from Night of Joy, where that one bad date ended in tears. Almost two years had passed since I met Dick. In that time, I had made myself a lovely, adult life. I had become an adult. And I didn’t know it then in the cab, but I was about to fall in life-altering love. There was a lot between us but there was so much more ahead of me — things I couldn’t even imagine, by no failure of my own.
I got drunk with my parents that night. We had the ceviche. Later, back at my apartment, my dad made cosmos and I texted a new man goodnight.
xx,
Sarah
Nothing ever good comes from a guy name D_ _k.
Loved this😂