Missed Connection: Marriage Proposal In A Pancake At A Pennsylvania Farmhouse

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I saw you at the Duane Reade on Spring and Lafayette at 9:14 p.m. on Thursday the 16th of January. I have chestnut brown eyes with swoopy Robert Pattinson hair, and I was wearing a black sweater with blue jeans and wing-tipped lace-ups. You were deciding between Chessmen and Milanos, and your cheeks were flush with frustration over such a difficult decision. You have a Roman nose, the kind that makes you look really smart but also makes the rest of your face look really small. I’m more of a button-nose type of guy, which can be construed as feminine, but you said that it was “cute like a baby,” which I liked. I ended up picking out the Pirouettes for you, and you thought it was a weird choice, but I told you I could be an angel who knows your deepest snack desires and you would have no way of really disproving me, so you went ahead and bought them anyway even though you didn’t really want to. I handed you my business card, and then you had a laugh because you said the white shading was kind of like the business card Patrick Bateman has in American Psycho. I got confused and couldn’t tell if I should be angry or if I should laugh, so I did this thing that I usually do when I’m anxious where I sort of grunt and lean back, shifting all my weight to my heels. You told me that you actually own both the book and the movie version of American Psycho, which I thought was kind of odd considering it’s called, you know, “American Psycho,” but you smiled really big so I figured it was fine. I went over to your place under the pretense of watching the movie, but we ended up making out for a while on your sofa (the IKEA Friheten) that I was impressed by because not only did you buy it at IKEA, which we both “hate-love,” but also because it pulls out into a queen size bed, which we didn’t actually have to do since we ended up heading into your bedroom once things got steamy. Before we finally went to bed, you loaned me a beat-up tee shirt with some paint stains from when you painted your apartment back when you first moved to Manhattan in 2011. We ended up talking about our experiences in New York, and we totally agreed on how it’s a great place to be when you’re young, but unless you’re a “bajillionaire,” it’s not really a feasible place to raise kids. Even though the lights were off, and it was 4:12 a.m., we stared at each other for what seemed like ages but was actually only seven minutes and thirty-two seconds. You told me you’d never been with someone who understood you as well as I did. I told you that you were the “complete package,” and I couldn’t think of a single flaw you had. Fourteen months later I met your family at your farmhouse in Pennsylvania where you grew up, and I told you that I’d always envisioned myself growing old in “a place like this.” You looked at me in a way that seemed like you weren’t just looking in my eyes, but looking into my soul, and you told me that we were “probably right” for each other. That night I made you pancakes, which is our favorite breakfast-for-dinner food, and I buried a diamond ring in one of your chocolate chip pancake’s, which you almost ate, but I stopped you just in time, and you started to cry. I thought it was because you realized you’d almost choked to death on a diamond ring, which would’ve been one hell of a story for my friends back in New York, but you were actually crying because you were “really confused” and needed “some time to think.” It was fine though because we kissed and did other adult stuff for the whole rest of the night. I went back to New York and you stayed with your family in Pennsylvania, and a week later you texted me that you “weren’t so sure” about our future, and that your parents didn’t like that I was “an awful guest who thought it was normal to make pancakes at both 3 p.m. and 3 a.m. every day of the week while wearing a hand-me-down Transformers sweatshirt.” Anyway, I haven’t heard from you since you sent that text at 2:51 p.m. on Wednesday, March 25th. On the last day I saw you, I was wearing khaki pants with a red hoodie and black Adidas Sambas. I’ve tried to include a few details here, and while I know it’s unlikely, if you remember any of this, please give me a ring, Maybe we can kick it at my place sometime? It’s possible you also have my business card.

image – kevin dooley