A fictionalized comic personal essay.
Valentine’s Day supplied several opportunities for me to mistake an ordinary interaction for a significant event. I managed most of them competently.
At the bar, a woman invited me to join a billiards game the following weekend. She was there with a man she described as a friend; they had originally met through a dating app. I spent a moment trying to work out their history, although neither had asked me to audit it.
Later, as I headed toward my car, another woman asked for a ride home and offered thirty dollars. I said fifteen for gas would do. The resulting journey contained polite conversation and a destination. Her request was for transport, a fact that did not require further romantic interpretation.
I dropped her off and drove home. There had been no grand connection, no dramatic rejection, and no evening worth arranging into a story about the state of modern love.
Then a tumbleweed crossed the road.
It was enormous. I had never seen one in that part of the city and was immediately more interested in it than in anything else that had happened. It rolled past with the confidence of an object that had somewhere to be and no need to explain itself.
For the rest of the drive, I thought about the tumbleweed. Not the woman at the bar, not the paid ride, not whether I should have made more of Valentine’s Day.
I might still go to billiards. It sounded pleasant. But if anyone asks how my romantic evening went, I will have to admit that its most memorable participant was vegetation.
