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Dr. Derek Merek was a sick, sick man.
Literally and figuratively. He’d come into the office this morning with a slight fever and what he’d described as “a tickle in his throat.” By eleven he’d progressed to a racking cough and chills. I’d tried to convince him that he was making a bigger deal out of it than it actually was because he had a deception study date this afternoon and he wanted me to go in his place.
I had done my fair share of deception study dates in the beginning of our research. We had both decided that it was best for the data I did not continue. The fact that Dr. Merek had asked me to go in his place was actually a very good indicator that he was quite ill, but I still resented him for it. He should be taking vitamins and eating kale. He has children after all, he should be taking better care of himself.
But that is how I ended up outside a cafe that could only be described as “trendy” with a FindURPartner.com profile for Marie Harris open on my phone.
She fit the profile for the study precisely. Early thirties, an award-winning journalist, never married, but one serious relationship that had ended some time ago. She liked cooking, Audrey Hepburn movies, and spending time with her friends. I had seen literally hundreds of profiles exactly like hers. I had been on ten of these ‘dates’ and I’d read dozens of sets of notes from Dr. Merek’s ‘dates’ with women like her. I knew what to expect from this encounter:
- Confusion. I did not look like Dr. Merek. He was taller than me and had a beard. His eyes were gray and mine were brown.
- Either pleasure or disappointment. Many of the women who were expecting Dr. Merek were pleasantly surprised by my appearance. I was younger and fitter than he was and women were generally pleased about this. But many wanted the tweed jacket and beard and didn’t let go of that expectation just because I had bigger biceps.
- We would engage in conversation. It would be awkward and stilted, as was expected from a first meeting.
- I would ask her my questions and she would be confused, but amicable because people are generally polite and will choose the path of least resistance when they encounter something out of the ordinary.
- I would inform her of the study. She would be confused and maybe a little upset. She would eventually sign my consent form and I’d be home before 5:00PM on weeknight, which was unusual for me, but not unpleasant. I’d probably be able to go on a run with my neighbor for the first time in a month.
I made my way inside and found her immediately. She was sitting alone in the middle of the cafe and seemed to be engrossed in the book on her lap. They were always reading a book, even the ones who made no mention of enjoying reading on their FindURPartner profile. I postulated that they thought it made them seem interesting. Dr. Merek said it was because of a scene in the movie “You’ve Got Mail.” Having never seen that movie, I stuck with my hypothesis.
It wasn’t part of our research, but Dr. Merek had started keeping track of the most common books that were brought to these dates. Books by Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte were the top five, but Zora Neale Hurston and Maya Angelou had both recently showed up multiple times. Occasionally it’d be a magazine like the Harvard Business Review or Psychology Today , but Dr. Merek didn’t track those as thoroughly, which I thought was pointless. He said it was just for fun and I knew that he’d appreciate the data point, so I was looking at Marie’s book and not her face when I approached her.
“You’re Marie.”
“Yes?” There was the confusion. Right on schedule. Her book was The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade. A very interesting choice for a first meeting and one that would definitely throw Dr. Merek’s data all out of whack.
“I’m your date,” I explained, moving to take off my coat and purposefully keeping my gaze off her face. I didn’t like making eye contact while the women warred between disappointment and pleasure. It made the situation so much more awkward.
It took her a few seconds to evaluate me and reshuffle her expectations, but she did. Her voice was a little too bright when she stood to greet me properly. “ Oh. Hi. Hi. Please sit down.”
And then, after a few more seconds passed. “Derek?”
“Yes. I’m Derek. Derek is my name. That’s me.” I reminded myself to smile while I shook her hand. Her nails were painted blue, which I thought was an interesting choice too. Most of the women painted their nails for the first meeting, but usually in more demure colors.
“Do you want anything?” she asked as I sat down across from her. “I grabbed a drink already.”
She was definitely disappointed. My ego was not at all impacted by this. The women that we were studying were not at all my type. It didn’t make a difference to me that they were just as likely to be disappointed by me as they were to be interested in me.
“No,” I told her, hoping that her lack of interest in me would me that we could wrap this date up quickly and neatly. “Let’s get started.”
“S-started?” she asked, but I was distracted by the buttons on my watch.
I was supposed to time these interactions. The ethics board had determined that we were only allowed to maintain the deception for thirty minutes before informing the participants of the study. Dr. Merek had not appreciated my suggestion of just using a stopwatch to time the dates as he felt that it would make the subjects uncomfortable. But I liked the precision of it, so I set the timer on my watch and looked up at her, ready to ask my first preferences question.
I looked into her eyes for the first time and promptly forgot what I was supposed to be doing. She had the most spectacular eyes I’d ever seen. Not blue, not gray, not green, but somehow all three at once. They were incredible.
“Hi.”
The word fell out of my mouth. It wasn’t supposed to. My mouth was supposed to be saying words about what she did for a living. But no, my mouth was smiling a real smile at her because she was unexpectedly beautiful. Most of our subjects were generically pretty, but she was absolutely an outlier, with wavy blonde, high cheekbones and a lush mouth. And her face was very very expressive. At this moment, it was expressing that she was evaluating me and maybe she liked what she saw more than originally anticipated. At least, she was smiling at me now and her smile looked genuine.
I was struck with the sudden desire to know and understand all her smiles. It was a ridiculous desire. I wasn’t allowed to be in a relationship with anyone who participated in the study. The ethics board had made that part very clear. At the time, I hadn’t thought anything of it. As I said, the women that we were studying were absolutely not my type, so I didn’t think it would be an issue.
“Hi,” she finally said back. She had a nice voice, but it was tinged with skepticism and that wasn’t good. I wouldn’t be able to use her answers in my data if she didn’t think we were on a date. Although if I couldn’t use her data, that meant that I could ask her on a real date.
“You’re Marie?” I asked, reeling myself in and trying to get back on track.
“Yes,” she confirmed, her eyes still perusing me. “And you’re Derek.”
“Of course I’m Derek. Who else would I be?”
“Uh…” I had replied too quickly and she was back to being surprised and confused. God, I had forgotten how bad I was at this. There was a reason that Dr. Merek did the majority of these.
“Moving on.” I gave myself a bit of a shake and tried to remember what had been on her profile. “So, Marie, you’re a writer?”
“That’s right. And you’re an engineer?” Her voice had shifted subtly, but I didn’t know how to identify what the shift meant, so I ignored it.
“Your profile said you’ve had one serious relationship in the past, is this true?”
I evaluated her reaction to this question. Discussion of past relationships was a good foundation for the conversation and it was good data to have for the AIC. How could we learn how to decrease dysfunction and disappointment without knowing what made relationships fail in the first place? And many of the women we interviewed were more than happy to talk all about how their previous relationships had gone wrong.
“Yes.” She narrowed her eyes at me.“Everything on my profile is true.”
Apparently she was not the kind of woman who would spill all of her emotional bagged on the first date. That was fine. I had plenty more questions that were designed to help our subjects open up and reveal their preferences.
“As a woman in your thirties, what are you most looking for in a companion?”
She flinched at this and looked away from me. I made a mental note to follow up on this question after she’d signed the consent forms.
“I guess…” She paused and cleared her throat before looking away from me. Clearly this was a subject she hadn’t given much thought to.
This was a typical response for our subjects. Either they didn’t know what they wanted and had a string of failed relationship to prove it or they had very exacting standards and had yet to meet someone who could live up to them. I tried a follow up question:
“So, you would you say that you don’t know what you want?”
That got her attention. “Yes, I know what I want.”
“But you don’t want to tell me?” I pressed.
“I don’t mind telling you.” She paused and those stunning eyes became a little more guarded than they’d been a minute earlier. “I’m looking for the right person.”
I waited for her to continue, as this was obviously difficult for her. I kept my features schooled in the carefully interested expression I’d been practicing since my first undergrad psychology class. It had been incredibly useful to me of the years, but it didn’t seem to be working on Marie.
“And?” I finally prompted.
“And that’s it. I’m looking for the right person.”
“Ah, okay.” What would Dr. Merek do in this situation? He asked the same questions that I had so far, but his results were much better than this. I tried a different tack. “And what traits will this right person have? Starting with the most important.”
“I-”
“And if you could rank each attribute on a ten-point scale of importance-where ten in the most important-that would be very helpful.” I added, because obviously this woman needed some direction.
“You want me to rank personality traits on a ten-point scale starting with what I find most important?” she repeated, frowning.
“Not just personality traits, physical attributes as well. Or, if you like, you can start with your love dialect.”
“My love dialect?”
“Correct,” I told her. Then I explained in case she’d never heard of love dialects before. “What form of affection is most meaningful to you and so forth.”
She stared at me. I stared at her. It was awkward. Dr. Merek was going to laugh at me when he read my field notes. I had been here for ten minutes already and had no good data and she was clearly uncomfortable and confused.
“We should engage in small talk.” I said it as I thought it. Because he was a psychologist, Dr. Merek was very good at small talk. I always forgot how it put other people at ease, as I personally hated small talk. A lot. “How was your day?”
“Pardon me?”
“Or if you don’t wish to discuss your day, we could talk about hobbies. Do you read for work or pleasure?” It would make sense if, as a journalist, she was reading de Sade for work. It would certainly bring her back into the realm of her peers.
“I usually read for fun.”
“Really?” That was a very interesting turn of events. I honestly hadn’t been expecting her to say that. But given the fact that she read erotic fiction for fun, it would be a good data point, so maybe this meeting wouldn’t be a complete loss. “Does kidnapping and sexual torture sound like fun to you?”
This was, apparently, not the right thing to ask. She drew back like the table was on fire or maybe like she’d suddenly realized it was a pile of shit. Or maybe like she’d realized that it was suddenly a flaming pile of shit. The shock on her very pretty face was almost comical.
“What are you suggesting?” Marie asked and her voice was just as shocked as her face.
“The 120 Days of Sodom,” I said, nodding towards the book in her lap.
She made a sort of strangled choking sound. Maybe she’d inhaled a bug when she’d gasped at me the first time and was choking on it. She immediately broke eye contact with me and stared down at the table. “Oh my god. You’re completely crazy.”
“What?” She hadn’t said it very loudly, but I was pretty sure that she had called me crazy. And if she had, then I was confused. If anything, she was the one who was suddenly acting crazy. Maybe she was neurodivergent. I tried to remember if we had any prohibitions from the ethics board regarding atypical neurocognitive function. I didn’t think so.
“You’re completely crazy,” she repeated in a much clearer voice.
I decided that she probably wasn’t suffering from the after effects of a traumatic brain injury. She didn’t exhibit any classic signs of neurodivergence. Which didn’t mean that she wasn’t neurodivergent, of course. But the likelihood seemed low. But somehow this ‘date’ had gone in a very odd direction and if it continued in this manner we wouldn't be able to use my notes for the AIC. It annoyed me that this woman's strange behavior was getting in the way of my research.
“I’m crazy?” I asked, wondering where exactly I had gone wrong and if there was anyway to salvage this conversation. After all, she was the one who had seen fit to bring a novel about sexual sadism disorder to a first date. In that light, everything I’d said was a perfectly reasonable.Maybe she wasn’t the kind of person who discussed her kinks in public. But then why would she read that book in public? It made no sense.
“Yes. You’re nuts. Don’t email me. Don’t call me. Pretend we never met.”
She delivered the words in a calm and cool voice, assembling her things so quickly and efficiently that I almost didn’t realized what she was doing until she had her purse slung over her shoulder. I moved to follow her, the explanation what I was doing and why I’d asked on the tip of my tongue, but she held up her hand. The gesture was powerful and commanding and I froze in my seat.
“Don’t.” Her voice was paralyzingly firm and possibly a touch louder than the situation called for. People were starting to stare at us. I couldn’t find that I blamed them. “Don’t stand up. Don’t even look at me. And don’t think about following me either or I’ll call the police.”
And then she left. Her pace was crisp and quick, but she wasn’t running. Her head was held high and her shoulders were thrown back, like there was no question that I would obey her orders. When she opened the cafe door, the breeze blew her hair away from her face, revealing a gloriously outraged expression fit for the masthead of warship.
I was gobsmacked by the whole thing. I could feel condemning eyes on me, but I kept my eyes on the door for a full five minutes after she stormed out of it. I honestly wasn’t sure what had just happened, but Dr. Merek was going to have a field day with my notes.