This text is the third in a series of columns written by the author of the Too Match newsletter exclusively for Madrid Secreto. Too Match is a diary of failed dates. A dyke version of Sex and the City, but in Madrid and, unfortunately, with less sex. You can subscribe to their newsletter at this link.
In a world where there are probably as many types of shampoo as there are people, Tinder is the closest thing to walking around the hair care aisle of the supermarket: the options are endless but never convince you, and you live with the suspicion of always taking home the same one that, to no one’s surprise, will leave you wet and with a mess on your head. Your shampoo and your idealmatch are out there, so you might as well keep looking.
The match with N. was a last minute; emergency shopping late on a Sunday, when the 24h supermarket is colonized by a mass of haggard-looking thirty-somethings in tracksuits looking for something quick to grab, and you realize that this is the closest you’ll ever get to an after-party in your life as a functioning adult (the only person who eats a donut about visits to a certain supermarket is 74 years old and has the last name Roig).
The September rainy season had just begun. I had returned from vacation so depressed that I opted for the strategy of making an appointment at the hairdresser’s and on Tinder. If that went well, I would have something to celebrate and, if it was carnage, it would become the reason under which to camouflage a post-holiday horse depression. Two hours after making the match, I had a date with N. that same afternoon.
I didn’t realize the temerity until I left the salon with a shorn ego, a Victoria Beckham haircut and fifty euros less on the bill. Thou shalt not experiment with your hair is the third commandment to keep in mind to start a date off on the right foot, after Thou shalt not try Crossfit for the first time the day before and Thou shalt forget your ex (or at least pretend to have done so).
N. was waiting for me sitting on a terrace in San Ildefonso, probably the square with the least personality in Malasaña (a neighborhood that bases its personality on open take aways). When she got up to say hello, I almost asked the waiter for a beer and a scaffolding. N. was tall at KPMG tower level, and I’m more at the level of the trash can where cigarette butts are thrown at the door. She played on a basketball team from the age of 7, while I’ve probably retained the same height since that age. Fortunately, like La Rosalia, we were both tall enough to overlook that difference.
N. had studied at ICADE and, like the rest of the lesbians coming out of Pontificia de Comillas, she was Basque, surfed and since 2013 has had the same Bastille song as a ringtone on her cell phone.
Besides stature, we were a few years apart. The roller coaster ride of the job market had just begun for N., while I had been suspended upside down in a looping loopfor some time and was beginning to seriously consider the benefits of loosening my belt and falling into the void.
N. , on the other hand, was about to join a large consulting firm, which is the quarry of the miners of the 21st century: 400 years of progress and advances in labor rights that have given us the same exploitation, but in exchange for a playmobil-sized folding bike with which to cross the Paseo de la Castellana in a suit and a corporate backpack full of overtime to be able to say with a smile: “it’s as if I were paid to learn”. Capitalism’s greatest victory has not been to teach us to buy things we don’t need with capital we don’t have, but to convince us that the greatest salary is the one that is not paid with money.
A large consulting firm is the quarry of the miners of the 21st century.
I have the same memory of my date with N. as I have of the bowl of crackers that accompanied the conversation and the beers: bland but filling. I went back home stuffed and yet I could still meet up with her.
We did, days later. N. was a colleague of the owner of a bar in Plaza 2 de Mayo (Madrid’s version of meeting someone with a boat), so she took advantage of the preferential treatment to achieve a feat: to get a table on the terrace on a Thursday night.
It was precisely the peak time when all the regulars of the plaza coexist: kids playing in the park, homeless people stretching out on the benches, teenagers and erasmus students taking out their littles, dog walkers, used book sellers picking up their stuff and people going into the public restroom for, ahem, different uses.
As we shared a pizza, N. confessed to me that she was a staunch follower of Aquí no hay quien viva, which is the Spanishmadeleine de Proust; the only series that 21 years after it aired is able to awaken vivid memories from any everyday scene. Her greatest longing was to find that person with whom to sleep embraced under the dim light of the television, rocked by the misfortunes of Belén López Vázquez, the contemporary equivalent of lifelong marriage and the only romantic ideal to which our generation can aspire.
Aquí no hay quien viva is Proust’s Spanish madeleine.
She also loved documentaries, the more boring the better. N. claimed to have a strange weakness for those in which actors dressed as Neanderthals appear recreating scenes from prehistoric times. I recommended a very good one they usually show on Telecinco, called La isla de las tentaciones (Temptation Island).
When the bar was closing, he asked me to come in. We went down some wooden stairs to the dining room, where no one was there, and we continued drinking beer, smoking pitis and playing songs on the cell phone, until N. took my hand and told me to come closer. I got nervous, while she approached me and gave me a snog, all under the watchful eye of the owner, who was following the scene from the stairs with a reduced visibility entrance. It was something between a First datesdate and an LGTBIQ+ version of a Cosa Nostra meeting.
After that day, N. kept writing me and inviting me to plans with his friends, but my mind was elsewhere. More specifically, on another potential match with whom for some mysterious reason I thought I had connected more despite the fact that we had not yet met in person.
The reality is that N. didn’t convince me, so instead of giving the plans she proposed to me a chance, I blew the only bubble that we young people today can inflate: that of expectations with a stranger (because, as you know, it’s better to know bad than to know good). By the time that blew up in my face, the tables had turned: N. didn’t care about me, and I thought I had what I deserved, for being a smartass.
Some time later, I ran into her at a karaoke bar in Goya on a Wednesday morning. I had just quit my job, while N. had already become a consultant miner. But instead of accompanying her barren lament with Antonio Molinasongs and soot on her cheeks, she was singing Wisin y Yandel with a waterproof eyeliner that masked the same hours of slavery. We looked at each other, like someone who recognizes that shampoo she tried for a while and can’t quite remember why she stopped using it, and we went on with our business. I may be single for the rest of my life, but you’ll see what a great hair I have.