An incel, an arab and a nerd walk into a bar
This is not the beginning of a bad joke, it is worse: it is real life.
I attended a dating mixer at a new social club in my city. Not because I’m on some romantic crusade for a soulmate (that myth died a long time ago), but for two very different reasons. First, I swore to myself that the next five years of my life would be a final prelude before motherhood—a stretch of time filled with as many moments, mistakes, and memories as I could squeeze in. Second, I wanted to show up for life, so life would show up for me. Even if the night was a bust (which, let’s be honest, it probably would be), I’d have one more rep in the muscle of being present. Being ready. Because someday, there will be an event that changes everything. The only way to be ready for the life-changing moments is to practice in showing up for the mundane ones. But I won’t lie, I felt anxious the night before.
There’s this quiet, sinking feeling many women have to brace themselves for before any romantic encounter. It is a kind of self-imposed subconscious moral defeat. You prepare for the subtle rejections, the inevitable comparisons, and the mental competition you, unfortunately, signed up for when you see other women. And yes, I’ll pull the race card because you know some people at these events aren’t expecting to see someone like me. But still, I went. I always go. I always show up. I reminded myself that I’d leave with new female friends. So I wore my favorite fringe green dress (the same one from the party with the gays), did my makeup, and, like Daniel, went into the lion’s den.
The moment I walked in, I spotted a group of women at a table. They radiated a magnetic kind of energy, the kind that makes you gravitate towards them without thinking. I knew instantly these were my people, at least for the night. The girls were stunning. And I don’t mean that in the way women sometimes call other women beautiful to soften the sting of competition. No, these women were objectively gorgeous—each one a different race and size. And then there was him—the incel. Before I could get settled, they told me to get a card. At the event, everyone had to get a card from two different decks, and if you found a person with your card match, you both got a free drink.
The incel looked like a budget version of Chris Williamson - the face of a model but the mind of a teenage basement dweller. He was an objectively beautiful white man, even with that wigger buzzcut. He sat at the head of the table and was pontificating about how women are all dating the same “terrible group of men”, totally blind to the fact that he was sitting at a singles event. You could tell this man had occupied his limited intelligence with red pill content. One of the women sitting closest to him, clearly interested, indulged his stupidity. She was nodding along, pretending like he made any sense. I decided to shift focus and engage with the woman closest to me. We exchanged Instagrams before I left the incel’s orbit. There had to be better conversations elsewhere.
I moved to the group of girls beside me, and we hit it off. We exchanged wartime stories about our terrible dating experiences, and how we all ended up at this event. I showed them my card—a King of Hearts, the only blue card in a sea of red ones. We joked about our backgrounds and decided to venture deeper into the heart of the mixer. That’s when we encountered The Arab.
The Arab thought that he was God’s gift to women and made us guess where he was from. He had the pride of a Frenchman and the skinny jeans of a refugee who just got off a boat in France. The other girls threw out the usual guesses, and I, realizing how retarded the situation was, started naming the most ridiculous places I could think of. Honestly, he wasn’t ugly, but he wasn’t cute either—just your typical Arab guy with a big schnoz. I wasn’t interested, so I excused myself.
That’s when I met a girl who complimented my dress, and we ended up in a quieter room, talking about life. She was in that challenging place of late 20s and early 30s - the in-betweens. In between her single friends and married friends. In between the career she wanted and the one that she had been building for the past 8 years. In between the love life she envisioned and the dumpster fire that is the modern dating market. I told her not to listen to anyone—least of all a stranger at a dating mixer. Instead, I told her that life shows up for you when you pursue your personal legend. I told her my story—the story of showing up, again and again, even when it felt like I was failing. Of how I had beat odds that seemed impossible. Not because I was the smartest or the most capable, but because I never stopped showing up. The universe rewards those who show up.
In this journey, I've made new allies and lost some friends. I'm unsure of the path but certain of the outcome: I would win. She soon got a text message from her friend, so we had to rejoin the party. I hope she heard what I had to say. We didn’t exchange numbers, but maybe that wasn’t the point. I've always been fascinated by the butterfly effect of people brought into our lives: the dance teacher who signed Beyoncé to her first show, the friends who told Rachael Lindsey to apply for the Bachelorette, the friend who encouraged Chloe and Halle to upload their videos to YouTube. All these people were catalysts sent by the universe to bring change into the world. I hope I was that for her.
As we made our way back to the general room, the girls were still talking to the Arab. They told me they’d found my card match—a scrawny Asian guy: the nerd. He was from Singapore, which felt serendipitous because I love Lee Kuan Yew (the founding father of Singapore) and had so many questions about his life. We connected instantly. We talked about everything from Bitcoin to his mandatory military service (a requirement for every Singaporean man). We're both engineers with political ideas that could get us arrested for multiple hate crimes in various European countries, Australia, and Canada (Justin Trudeau is Gäaaay). He wasn’t the most attractive man (not even close), but he was funny, smart, and very autistic. We exchanged Instagrams, and he messaged me later that night.
This event reinforced what I've always known: life is dynamic. There is actually a Black woman married to a Singaporean man (the brother of the main character from "Crazy Rich Asians"). Do I think anything would happen with the Singaporean nigga? No. But I love the fact that I’m constantly setting myself up for an epic story, the way every great protagonist does. And life keeps rewarding me with more amazing plotlines. I and Singaporean nigga were probably the only people that matched that night. The bartender was confused when we showed up and reminded him not to mess this up.
My hope and prayer for myself is not that I find some magical love of my life, but that I turn my love life - an arena I abandoned after realizing my efforts were better spent elsewhere - into one full of dynamic stories. I want a love life that matches the ambition of my career, and the audacity of my dreams. I want life to continue to surprise me. I want to experience the improbable meet-cutes, even if I know the romance would be short-lived and end in heartache. I want to experience those late-night adventures that only last for a weekend while I'm in the city, even if I never see that man again. I want stories that I can share with my future daughters, because, unlike my mother, I want to give them the dating advice I never got.
I want to have a life full of stories, romantic ones included.