Real romance

I have rarely felt as young as last Friday. Not because I didn’t drink alcohol and my liver was like new again or because I ordered a green smoothie instead of a kebab on the way home, but because I real life met a woman. Not on Tinder, not on Bumble, not on all those other apps that seem “so much better than the old ones” these days, but in real life. offline. analog. On the world.

Getting to know each other in this way is almost unheard of these days. I don’t really care about that either, I’m okay with that, is that over, that eternal chatter, oh oh, apps are so awful, it’s so superficial, just picture everything, and then write that back and forth, too bad too bad , I can’t hear it anymore. Of course, the stories of getting to know each other are kind of boring now, but some of us are quite happy when the first meeting takes place on a screen. How is that possible? Because in real life, we make the vastly worse fall.

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I played boules. Excuse me, petanque. Or as the cools call it: jeu de boules. This ball throwing has suddenly conquered the city. A few years ago everyone was playing ping pong, excuse me, table tennis, then everyone jumped into the lake in the middle of winter, ice baths, another hype, I never got it, I mean how stupid do you have to be to think that to do, before work, into the cold water early in the morning, as if you had nothing better to do than snuggle.

Now suddenly half of my friends, mostly the guys, just a few women, I have no idea why it’s such a man thing, maybe just my perception, I couldn’t count, at least everyone suddenly spends their evenings on gravel squares. If you take “sport” really seriously, there are a surprising number of them, join a club, I don’t know what that means, but it’s mentioned all the time, so I think it’s important.

“Always those long introductions, he never gets to the point, what did I actually read, mimimi…” – I’m creating the mood here, people! Atmosphere talk!

So we are on a pétanque court. Field. Rail. gravel and balls. In my team there are three of us, there’s a guy, a very determined one, who always wipes his balls with a cloth before throwing, totally exaggerated, but well, he was also responsible for 80% of our points, so he can’t say anything, and then there’s, let’s call her… Pascale.

Pascale is funny and nice and very bad at pétanque. Really bad. Instead of throwing the balls, she rolls them. Never far enough. Really never. Be her tactic, she says at one point. “I’m making a wall!” We’re having fun. The ball polisher gets upset. Not clear, but I’m sure he’s boiling inside. I like Pascal. And even better after every beer.

After the last match, which we lost en masse, I find her extremely attractive. Hanna would call it a crush, but I don’t like the word crush. But I love Pascal. Like a person. In real life. If we’d met on an app, I probably wouldn’t have swiped right, but that’s a problem with apps, admit it: people like Pascale escape (ESAP, come on!) from us because you’re neither smiling nor talking neither hears nor sees playing boules.

We all went to a bar, eventually everyone left, Pascale and I were still there. It was like before, the summer of 2010.

The bar closed at two. We went home, no kissing, nothing. A pity. I found. But we weren’t on a date. And I didn’t even know if she was single. I didn’t know what she wanted either, her signs were, as so often, rather vague. And of course I don’t want to put her in an awkward situation. We’ve already talked about that. We all agreed.

The next morning I had a request on Instagram. Excellent investigative work, I thought, and I told her so. Runs smoothly, I decided. And was wrong.

There’s nothing my generation does better than wandering. Not because we all think it’s cool. I don’t know anyone who isn’t angry that no one is doing “nails with heads” anymore. And yet no one does. Everyone makes vague plans. Everyone stays informed.

I’m no better there, don’t get me wrong.

So Pascale and I stayed “in the loop”. “And what are you doing today?” – “This and that. And do you like that?” – “AH great. I do this and that.” Corrosive. We didn’t go out, we just said what we were doing. Maybe hoping that one of them will say, oh yeah, that’s where I’m going too, if the other mentions a party you’d like to attend too.

Since she was very active in sharing her life on Instagram, I always knew if she was going through with her plans. But of course that didn’t really help. I didn’t want to make a demonstrative appearance where she was. Would have been a bit exaggerated.

And then my dear community and here I expect applause because we all know it’s not a masterpiece but it happens way too rarely then I did it even though I didn’t know if she was single and not super obviously interested but anyway, looked me up on Instagram, which I interpreted in my favor, and then I texted her if she wanted to go swimming with me. she wanted. But didn’t have time. But please “another time”.

I would say she has a boyfriend.

But maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted.

as long as

am