My wife wants me to pick her up at a bar. We’ve been married for more than twenty years, so I appreciate her willingness to consider my application again.
The arrangement is straightforward: we pretend we’re strangers, I approach her, and I try to charm her. She wants me to commit completely. No breaking character, no falling back on the fact that we already know each other extremely well.
I’m game. I like that she asked. After this long together, being invited to flirt with my own wife sounds like a good evening. There is just one small gap in my qualifications: I have never picked anyone up at a bar.
We met through a friend of a friend. There was an introduction, which apparently did more work than I appreciated at the time. I don’t remember precisely how I met my previous girlfriends, but none of those relationships began with me approaching a stranger in public. My romantic history has relied heavily on a supporting cast.
I think I can manage the opening. A small, tasteful line. Introduce myself. Ask whether I can sit down. These seem like reasonable things for a man to do with his face and voice.
Then she says yes.
This is where my preparation ends. I can picture myself sitting beside the woman I’ve been married to for two decades, suddenly unable to think of a single question appropriate for someone I supposedly just met.
There’s also the problem of knowing the answers. I’m meant to be curious, charming, spontaneous—and convincingly unfamiliar with my wife. She has requested a stranger, and I would like to deliver one who can sustain a conversation.
So that’s where I need help. I walk over, introduce myself, ask to sit down. She smiles. I sit.
Then what?
