I can’t remember the last time I met someone not online

 ...you think to yourself as you sit in a coffee shop and watch two people begin a conversation seemingly out of nowhere and then take each other’s phone numbers and agree to go out together for coffee but intentionally this time. They had been sitting at adjacent tables; she reading The Volcano Lover and he reading Birds of America. She had sat with her back ram-rod straight with one hand around her coffee cup, only moving at all to take a sip or turn the page. He was sprawled on his chair, all limbs and languish, somehow moving constantly by sniffing and scratching and making the inexplicable movements that men at ease make in public and in private, changing for nobody. You had noticed them both over the edge of your laptop -- faceless people that you had ended up in the same room as. After finishing a paragraph of the paper you were writing, you noticed then that they had struck up awkward conversation, something about American fiction and the Met Gala, something you probably would have liked to talk about too. Her back wasn’t straight anymore, as she had affected a slouch that mirrored his, but you couldn’t help but notice how tense her feet were. He remained in the same position. They always do, you barely think to yourself.

 And then suddenly he was up, phone in hand, plans were being made and he picked up his messenger bag and walked away from her and her awkward feet and you and your laptop. She sits, slightly pink in the cheeks and goes back to reading but you can see that her eyes aren’t moving. She’s just staring at the page, digesting her chance meeting that will lead to more coffee and more conversations about Sontag and Moore and the Met Gala, and hopefully less overthinking on her part, but that’s all  part of the fun in the early stages, isn’t it. 

 And then she leaves too and you think to yourself ‘I can’t remember the last time I met someone not online’ and the whole meeting you just witnessed feels like a nostalgic 90s throwback when people actually met in coffee shops and it wasn’t just a lie you told your mum when she asks how you met the guy you had gone on two dates with who you had actually met on a dating app. You think, this feels like something out of a Nora Ephron film, except of course You’ve Got Mail which was entirely about meeting people online. Oh and Sleepless in Seattle, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan met through the radio that time, and they weren’t even in the same state. So maybe not those two Ephron films specifically, but definitely the kind of film set in a shining, sunlight dappled city where everyone wears expensive looking beige or black coats and manages to live by themselves in huge apartments despite working in hospitality or owning failing businesses. The only marker of poverty seems to be that they don’t have a view of the city from their apartments. The rich, however, regularly spend their evenings considering the skyline in all of its lit-up entirety from their obnoxiously large penthouse windows, thinking about the charming person they recently bumped into while carrying a huge bunch of flowers or pile of books or briefcase or cup of coffee. They stare at the skyscrapers that look warm and important and like all of life is happening within them and they wonder if that person will call like they asked them to, and what will happen next if they do.

 It all seems worlds away from the crowded coffee shop in an English north western city you are sitting in, although to be fair to the city, it does have a growing skyline with lots of tall buildings that have a lot of life happening inside them.  You think about the last date you went on. It was in one of the two art galleries in this same city, galleries you knew like the back of your hand because you had visited them so often. You’d been on dates with other men in restaurants and bars and coffee shops like the one you are sitting in right now, and had found the issue of who was paying the bill nauseatingly anxiety inducing. It wasn’t that you couldn’t afford it (although you did make suggestions for cheaper places), it was the pomp of the ceremony that you found difficult to deal with. When a man is paying for the bill he really wants you and everybody else to know it. When you’re splitting it, which is what you prefer to do, there’s always an awkward conversation to be had. You enjoy neither of these situations.

 And so, you had suggested your second favourite (that is to say, least favourite) gallery to meet up with a guy you had been speaking with for three weeks on a dating app. Should the date be a disaster, you wouldn’t have to avoid one of your favourite places for a little while while you got over it. There would be no awkward conversations over payment, especially if he turned out to be a “I didn’t have a starter so I’m paying a bit less” kind of person.

 Unfortunately the date had been a disaster, but you seem to have been the only one out of the two of you to realise.  You could tell immediately, from the lazy way he was flicking through his phone when he stood waiting for you, that he wasn't nervous, and you had liked that. You had expected, therefore, a quiet confidence in him, especially as the texts you had swapped were full of easy conversation that didn’t leave you wondering what to say next. The confidence did not turn out to be so very quiet as you had assumed, as he walked around the gallery slightly ahead of you, making sweeping statements about the artwork that you knew or strongly suspected weren’t quite true. He asked questions about you and then didn’t concentrate long enough to hear the full answer, interjecting with what he really wanted to talk about. After you had said goodbye to him, you had composed a text that thanked him for a lovely afternoon but you were quite busy at the moment and perhaps they could stay friends. Before you had a chance to send it, he had sent a gif of Bob Ross painting a landscape with a message saying that your date had been good for his “inner nerd”, and did you want to go to a bar with him tomorrow? You reworked the first message you had typed out, waiting a few minutes before sending it. You intentionally didn’t look at your phone for a good couple of hours afterwards, and when you did you could see that he hadn’t replied and actually, had blocked you.

 So you had avoided that gallery for a few weeks because the art became tangled up with his misinformation about whether the artist was dead or alive, had lived in Berlin or Paris. There was something in there that could be articulated in a thread of tweets, or a long Instagram caption maybe, about how you wouldn’t have this problem if northern art was properly funded. Maybe then, you’d say, a city of nearly one million people wouldn’t only have two options to get their art fix; two galleries you could walk around in less than an hour each. (Which, as it turns out, had been a small mercy while you were on that date, but that is beside the point.)

 Thinking all of this, sitting in a coffee shop behind a mid-range laptop staring at an essay that you haven’t added anything to in five minutes, you feel like a bit of a knob. Maybe you were too harsh on that man. Maybe he was nervous and trying to show off. You do actually like Bob Ross, and sending that gif was quite cute, but you’d made up your mind. Maybe you shouldn’t be angry over arts funding, but the amount of foodbanks you walk past on the way to the university campus. Maybe you’re angry at both. Two things can be true at the same time.

 You wonder where the Met Gala couple will go on their first date, and who will pay the bill. They might also go to one of the two art galleries -- you hope they do, and you hope that he is a little less forthright and she is a bit more patient than you and your date. You give up on the essay for the day and decide to go home to your studio flat in one of the up-and-coming areas of the city. You’ll probably watch a film, maybe a Nora Ephron one -- you’re in the mood. Later that night, your phone pings; it’s your mother sending you an article about online dating app success stories with the caption “have you tried any of these? xx”. Your loneliness feels like a physical weight.

Jessica White is the editor of Another North, an online literary journal for writers from the north of England and writing about the north of England. She is also a PhD candidate at the University of Liverpool, researching representations of gendered labour in the materials and textiles industry in the Victorian novel. Her previous work has featured in Severine Literary Magazine, Left Foot Forward and The Victorianist. She also writes mini book reviews on her Instagram. 

Jessica Andrews is the author of Saltwater and co-editor of The Grapevine. She writes fiction, poetry & journalism. She is currently working on her second novel.