▸ Column · Modern Gotham City, contemporary dating-app era
TWO-FACE replies.
Replied to by Two-Face, with a rebuttal from The Penguin.
The letter
Parker and I matched on one of those apps back in March. Over text we're honestly kind of electric — voice memos, terrible puns, once stayed up until 2 a.m. arguing whether a hot dog counts as a sandwich. (I know.) But we've met for coffee twice now, and both times it's like someone cut the power. Long silences. Stirring our drinks. Reaching for our phones. On the second date I literally texted him a joke from across the same tiny table because I couldn't say it out loud. He admits he freezes up too, which I guess is sweet, but now I'm scared we only work through a screen. Do we keep showing up to these painful in-person dates, or was the spark just a typing thing that was never going to survive daylight?
— Frozen in Person in Gotham City
Two-Face replies
Let's look at the evidence. Prosecution: two meetings, both dead on arrival — you couldn't push words through your mouth across a table maybe eighteen inches wide. Defense: you stayed up until two in the morning trading voice memos with a man you'd never been in the same room with. Both things happened. Both are real.
Half of me says the freeze is just fear wearing proximity's face — you keep going, force daylight until the ice cracks. The other half says the screen version of Parker is the magic trick, and the coffee shop is where the curtain finally ran out. Two honest readings. Neither one is lying to you.
Here's what I earned in a courtroom before I earned this face: there's no authentic self hiding behind the awkward one, waiting to be discovered. You have two selves. He has two selves. The texting pair and the coffee-shop pair are all four of you, equally real, and you're asking which set gets to be called "the relationship." The coin has no preference between them. So I'll flip.
Heads: two more dates. See what thaws. Tails: close the file.
But here's the only honest advice I can offer — when the coin is in the air, notice which side you're hoping for. You already have the verdict. The coin just catches you telling the truth.
— Two-Face
The Penguin weighs in
Waugh-waugh! Leaving the heart to a coin flip — how charmingly deranged. Harvey has mistaken a logistics failure for a philosophical crisis, my dear. Coffee shops. Beige walls, paper cups, nowhere for charm to breathe. I have personally strangled promising business partnerships with a poorly chosen table — I know precisely what a bad environment costs.
Find somewhere atmospheric. Low light, a menu with actual ambition, surroundings that give the man something to stand against. If Parker still freezes after that, then he is a poor investment and you close the account with grace. But submitting it to chance? Waugh. That is what people do when they lack the wit to arrange their own outcomes. I never have, and I never shall.
— The Penguin
▸ Read next