Big Silence

Before a first date, I treat my apartment like I’m about to be filmed for one of those Vogue “73 Questions” videos or an Architectural Digest home tour. I’m heading into a third-round interview for something love adjacent, and I need to rehearse my answers, because I’m annoyingly perfectionist and infuriatingly overthinking.

Windex every surface. Refold the throws on the sofa. Fluff the cushions with the zeal of someone who’s definitely not chill. Light a candle with an insufferable name like Tom Ford’s Fucking Fabulous and spray my perfume around the apartment because I find the scent of me oddly comforting — a touch narcissistic or simply self-loving depending on the light.

I arrange the bookshelf in my office on the off chance we end up back at my apartment and on the more off chance he demands to see my office and examine my book collection. You never know! I arrange them to appear intellectual but also like a psycho killer who moonlights as a war crimes hobbyist with the volume of books I have on Josef Mengele, drug use in the Nazi regime, political conspiracy theories, and other light romantic fare. It’s important my taste in literature set the mood for romance. 'Hey baby, want to come up and see my extensive Heinrich Himmler biography collection?' A surefire way to stay single and vetted by Homeland Security.

I pluck exactly three stray eyebrow hairs. And most importantly, prep talking points: witty responses, clever questions, and the verbal equivalent of a pre-show ritual just in case I spiral into the “Ana, don’t fuck this up” part of my brain, or need in a “break glass in case of emergency” kind of way.

Him (in my head): “What do you like to do for fun?”
Me: “I love to cook, particularly for other people. I like doing big banquet dinners with different cuisine themes and cook my way around the world, all from the comfort of my own kitchen. I read a ton when I have the time and space from work. I love love love to write — it’s really the thing I hope to do full time when I sell my company one day. I ski all over the world by myself. Back country, in crazy parts of the world like Riksgransen, Sweden and Girdwood, Alaska. What about you? (It’s important to never forget to ask him about himself and sometimes I get so nervous that I forget.)

Him (in my head): “Biggest red flag in someone else?”
Me: Golfers. It’s not even a red flag — I’m just leaving the table. If you say ‘I shot a 79,’ I assume it’s just your age.

Him (in my head): “Biggest red flag in yourself?”
Me: I don’t know you well enough to answer that question honestly. (He could also figure that out on his own time — his job, not mine)

I run through tons of other possible questions so that I feel polished but don’t sound robotic. Off the cuff but, clearly, wildly not off the cuff. Sometimes I'll stop by a bar for a quick drink before the actual date. I make sure it’s one of our accounts so that I can mask my liquid anti-anxiety medication with Amante account support. Maybe it’s one of the many Sant Ambroeus, which carries us in every location in the country (not to brag or anything), or The Soho Grand, which was a whale I was trying to hook for months that finally brought us into a cocktail on the menu last month. I sit alone, practicing my rehearsed answers on the bartender, who has no idea I’m not actually trying to charm him, but treating him like the conversational equivalent of the blowup doll from Lars and the Real Girl.

Then I show up to the date. And sometimes, the conversation flows like wine. Sometimes, it is wine. Sometimes it’s fueled by wine.

So you sit down on a first date. The conversation moves with the agility of a gazelle — elegant, impressive, and probably doomed on the Serengeti of modern dating. Cue the lions. You’re finishing each other’s sentences in a way that feels like the moment in history you’ll look back upon as the start of your own greatest love story. It’s not. You go on a second date. This time dinner on top of drinks. It’s warm and perfect in a way only a story both borrowed and owned could ever be. Maybe footsy under the table. Leaning in closer over candlelight, careful not to singe your long, perfectly yet effortlessly blown out hair. You finish the bottle of wine. The waiter flips the empty wine bottle upside down in the bucket like it’s an Olympic medal ceremony for a successful date. He knows it, we know it, so does whatever eavesdropping older couple is seated at the next table over.

Maybe you go home together, or maybe you wait another couple dates. A couple dates turn into a month, perhaps two, and suddenly you're off, propelled by the crack of a fairytale starting pistol. The race is going round and round the track. It starts off graceful, effortless. By lap three, month three in this metaphor, you start to get tired. The simplicity of the early days has evaporated because the limerence is gone. Now you notice the things that tick you off. Maybe it’s that he doesn’t shower when he gets off a long plane ride. Maybe it’s his propensity for taking phone calls at the dinner table. Maybe it's the way he's constantly tilting his head to the side, fishing wax out of his ear with his finger, and examining the precious treasure he’s dug up (not that I’ve ever dated someone who did that).

Now you’re acutely aware that he’s constantly making plans with his friends, telling you about his plans, but never including you. He seemingly tells other people all about you but doesn’t quite include you with them in a way that would make you feel just a bit more secure and wanted — a bit less like you were being kept a secret. You hear other partners and spouses were invited to a dinner, yet you wait at home with a second dinner simmering on the stove like one of the more depressing domestic scenes out of Pleasantville. Maybe you, or rather, I, wait at home, making a variety of soups to vacuum seal and store in the freezer for a later date like a doomsday planning housewife. Sometimes it’s better to wander over to Atla and order a margarita and tacos. Bartenders can read your face, and, in those moments, he knows silence is what the doctor ordered.

Now let’s say it’s your birthday and Valentine’s Day a day apart, an oddly specific scenario but one that happens to directly apply to me. Your dad sends you flowers on both days to make sure I never feel gypped despite the proximity of the two holidays. “Happy Birthday Nooshie (what my parents call me) xoxo Daddy.” The next day “Happy Valentine’s Day Ani, I love you. Xoxo Daddy.” You wait for the doorbell to ring on February 13th. It finally does. Flowers from your sister and her husband, who never ever forget. It rings again — flowers from your godmother, Carol, who also would never forget. It rings again, a bucket of daisies from Sophia, who knows they are your favorite flower despite their categorical placement as weeds nobody wants. To me, daisies are beautifully ignored, embodying the spontaneity of picking flowers in the park as an “I was just thinking of you,” and remind me of being 5 years old and picking bunches of daisies and dandelions (also weeds) in San Francisco’s Alta Plaza Park with my dad every weekend. Another ring — this time a bouquet of broccoli from Isabel, who knows that second to daisies, you would always rather receive a bouquet of crucifers than roses.

At this point I'm basically running a small florist operation from my doorstep. My doormen think I'm either very loved, have far too many suitors and the kind of game of which I could only dream, or operating some kind of elaborate orchid-based money laundering scheme. I sometimes worry that they think I'm running a lesbian boarding house given the frequency with which my girlfriends show up unannounced and live out of my guest room for days (or weeks) on end. This is good for my lobby street cred.

The doorbell stops ringing. It’s like waiting for a text from someone new you’re seeing. You put your phone on airplane mode as if magical thinking, or rather, blissful ignorance, counts as communication strategy and might manifest contact. Spoiler: it doesn’t. It never does. You know this. And similarly, flowers never come. Not on the 13th nor the 14th. Ah well, you think, maybe next year. Not worth getting mad over so you push it aside. But you already know there won’t be a next year. Because the starter pistol was just that: an exceptionally loud, promising sound — a deceptive burst that felt like a true beginning, fueled by so much free-flowing conversation that you thought it might be otherwise. So you call it — for more reasons than just the flowers — but nip the relationship in the bud anyway. It wasn’t a fit; you were never a match.

So you start dating again. Something shifts. You meet someone different — but this isn’t about one specific him; it’s about someone who makes you question everything you thought you knew about closeness. This theoretical first date lasts hours. Moments are sentence finishing, but those moments are bookended, or rather, bookmarked, by moments of silence. You overthink the silence. Am I not interesting enough? Do I need to come up with more things to say? You try to fill some of them but try to embrace them. You go on a few more dates. They’re wonderful and magical and all the things early dates should be but still, there are silences. You consult your friends. “Do I need to worry that sometimes we just sit in silence and think?” One of your wiser friends smiles knowingly as you babble on about your silence neuroses. “Oh, Ana, this is what happens when you like someone. I think it’s been a while. Silence is a good thing. It’s both comfort with each other but also anxiety around fucking something up because you really don’t want anything to go wrong.”

So you have this new lens to think about silence and suddenly the hush feels good. It’s silence while he’s doing the NYT crossword on the sofa by the fire while I make dinner. Maybe he’s knitting, we don’t judge. We’re both doing a thing we love in close proximity — that’s good silence. There’s first date silence when everything he has said in the first ten minutes makes you want to gouge your eyes out with a fork. So you simply don’t reply to avoid being too mean. Terrible. There’s third date silence that is markedly different from the good kind of date quietness. You’ve discovered you actually have nothing in common, and this won’t be moving forward, ideally equally understood by both parties — bad silence, but at least productive. There’s quiet car ride time. That’s medium — not good, not bad, just normal. There's museum silence when you're both walking slowly in a contrived pensive way, staring at art pretending to be deeply moved. Cultural silence. There's therapist silence when they're waiting for you to say any thoughts out loud. Expensive silence. But then there’s dinner dates where you just sit and look at each other. Then you overthink the extended eye contact and look away. That’s the very good kind. Then there’s laying in bed, first thing in the morning, right before you fall asleep, or after whatever it may be — you’re quiet and still but feel emotionally and physically cozy. That’s great silence.

I'm sitting at the Titsou bar at Fouquet’s (another Amante account 💪), watching the bartender work in complete concentration. There’s music but he doesn’t hear it. It’s quiet because it’s off-peak hours. I watch the quiet precision of someone who knows their craft, one I have come to respect so much given my line of work. And then it hits me. This is the whole point. The comfort of shared silence, of being alone together without needing to fill every moment with noise because we’re both comfortable doing our thing. Him, spinning a drink with a bar spoon in a crystal mixing glass. Me, scribbling in a journal trying to come up with an interesting topic to write about next week.

I think we're conditioned to fear silence in a far too noisy world. Walking down the street — headphones in listening to music or a podcast. Run on the west side highway or lifting weights in the gym — only sociopaths work out in silence. And even they probably have AirPods. Yellow taxi? Taxi TV because the touch screen to turn it off either doesn't work or requires an engineering degree to operate, so Sandy Kenyon with the Eyewitness News Movie Minute becomes your involuntary ride companion. Sitting at a bar writing, like the bar at Emmett’s on Grove where I’m sitting as I write this (another wonderful Amante customer) — chatter everywhere, noisy people on either side and behind. The bartender makes small talk, which is welcome and wonderful but also accentuates how little silence exists, particularly in New York. There’s something cliched and sickeningly poetic in there about being in the most populated city but seeking solitude with one person — urban loneliness or whatever you want to call it. Don’t worry, I too am rolling my eyes.

With a friend, we don’t think about the silence because we don’t think about fucking up a friendship with a lack of repartee. Your friend chose you, they’ve been there forever, there is no fear that they’re going to drop you because for a moment you were so overwhelmed with feelings or happiness or love that you simply have no thoughts running through your head. Friend silence doesn’t feel like silence because you aren’t thinking about it. You don’t even clock it.

Years ago I wrote about my future life, and what my ideal 20 years down the road would look like. I love reading different takes on love — whether it’s bell hooks or Rilke. How do great thinkers, mediocre thinkers, and civilians think about love? Rilke famously said, “True love is being happy alone together.” I thought about his point, and like the competitive asshole I am, doubled it. True love, *I think*, is being happy alone in silence together. It’s transcending beyond words, to being comfortable sitting across a table, in front of a fire, in stillness of movement and sound wave. True love is sharing a mutual hatred of “people”; a hatred of everyone and no need for anyone, but a theoretical us.

So as part of the exercise — years ago, mind you — I started writing a probably far-too-perfect story about this theoretical you and me alone in a cabin in the woods, curled up next to a fire with a stack of books and record player, for eternity. I could feel alone but not lonely, alone. I, or the hypothetical we, could sit in utter silence, reading, cooking, or simply sitting without ever giving the lack of repartee a second’s thought because it was cosmic. Because it fit. Only then would I relinquish my fully formed single person unit for what I believed could be even better as a double; and a double that worked in blabber but even better in silence.

As it turns out, all the apartment staging, the rehearsal for the Vogue interview I will most certainly never be asked to do, becomes noise. Connection actually happens in the unguarded moments that come so close to being indistinguishable from awkward to a third party but are in fact oh so different. Turns out, the magic isn’t in the clever answer. It’s in the pause. The breathing — heavy, light, or panting. Real magic happens in the spaces between words. The part where you stop rehearsing and just let yourself be and sometimes being is quiet. Silence, as it turns out, is disconcertingly, unnervingly extraordinary. I don’t have a punchline, just a quiet hunch.