The Group Date

They are gathered around the mini coffee table in my living room, my two friends, Lucia and Jamie. It is our ceremonial Monday night Bachelor viewing, something we have done for years but are all pretty guilty about doing so. Well, not guilty enough to ever stop.

I grab the Merlot and head to our too small futon and right as I sit back, I feel my foot graze Jamie’s glass on the edge of the table. It happens in slow motion...tilting left, right, left, circling around...a splash exits the cup, almost as if it is defying gravity. I gasp, Jamie gulps, Lucia cringes. All waiting for the big red drop to land on my new white carpet. Jamie, the quick one, sticks out his foot and his equally as white sock absorbs the splash of wine, mimicking a bloodstain.

We decided to opt for white wine next week.

This season of the Bachelor is getting boring. Nothing really is happening. No sparks, no funny moments, just repetitive drama. As we spend the time ignoring the show, scrolling on our phones instead, Lucia bellows, “LOOK!” My head whips around to see what all the fuss is about, Jamie exclaiming next, “Oh this is something we HAVE to do!”

Lucia points her bright pink phone in my direction and my eyes catch a quick glance of the ad. It is a dating app...for friends.

I’m what Lucia and Jamie like to call the ‘mom’ of the group. So while they’re starting to set up a profile, I’m checking reviews, reputability, and wondering if downloading this app will give me a bug or something. It doesn’t. Everything surprisingly seems to check out.

This app creates a group profile where all three phone numbers can be set up to one account. So when all friends under the profile agree to ‘star’ a group, a chat with everyone involved pops up. Sounds a little confusing and it was at first. Who am I kidding, it still is confusing. But it seemed like a fun thing to do to pass time in what had become our slowest Monday night.

Lucia was a wizard on this app, telling us where to click, who to star, what to type. Soon enough, we had set up a group first date…in one hour. However, this actually is comforting because I’m not walking into a date blind and by myself, making my friend peek around the corner repeatedly to make sure I don’t get abducted. Sorry. Morbid.

Either way, I figured we have nothing better to do right now, we might as well go out and meet some new people. Quickly changing out of our sweats and the Merlot-stained sock, the three of us head out the door to meet our potential new group of friends at the bar downtown.

We grab a booth, order some drinks, and wait. The common theme seems to be: way less dreadful than if you were on a ‘normal’ first date. If we get stood up, it’s not a waste of time or energy, the three of us can still have fun.

Jamie spots four friends who seemingly match the group in the photo and gives them a nod. I grin and Lucia lets out a loud “Y’all must be the group!” and signals for them to sit down.

It’s a weird dynamic to answer first date questions in a round robin. Eh, it was more of pop-corning answers but you get the gist, it was awkward.

But like any date, we started to warm up to each other and began to have some astonishingly interesting conversations. I ended up having a surprisingly long conversation with the girl who sat across from me, Maia. She had a biker-badass kind of attitude and played the cello. I grew up playing the bass, so we laughed about how ridiculous we looked as little kids with enormous string instruments barely even able to hold it up. She spoke about the way she loves to read and hates to write, I admitted the opposite. We have a similar taste in music, but could not agree on a common tv show. She says Friends isn’t funny, I gasp while proceeding to declare, “You know what? Fair.”

This group date started to turn into more of a date-date, which was entirely unexpected, especially for me. That’s more of Lucia’s thing.

Maybe first dates don’t have to be so agonizing.

But the discouraging clock was ticking and the buzzer on my alarm clock was getting nearer. We all had work tomorrow and decided to trek on back uptown.

I never saw Maia again.

Schedules wouldn’t match up, work became busier, the response time became longer between texts, and we ran out of topics to talk about. We really only clicked for those short hours at the bar, with the background noise of our friends chatting, music playing, and clanking drinks.

This isn’t something I regret, just something that wasn’t meant to be. A moment in time between two strangers, being kept at that.

As Jamie, Lucia, and I sit back on the tiny futon pouring Pinot Grigio, ready to watch another potentially boring episode, I’m glad we took a spur of the moment decision to head on out there and drop our tradition for one night. It allowed me to pop out of my regular schedule and let time go by slower by doing something different...rather than allowing life to pass me by. I’ll find comfort in keeping this Monday night viewing session, but will make sure to take a new route home or stroll through a different park on the weekend.