All February, we'll be talking Romance in Restaurants. Today, Helen Holmes — a culture reporter at The Daily Beast and the lead singer of a punk band — reminisces over an awkward meal with a Reply Guy, and the domino effect it started.
Fresh out of college, I was desperate to claw my way into professional journalism. I lived in a messy–no, dirty–bedroom, which I proclaimed was my God-given right as a creative citizen in an essay I wrote for the New York Times. The clip was a huge win, but what I needed was a full-time job so I could start paying for my own fucking life.
As I made connections, I sometimes got professional jealousy confused with romantic interest and chased emotionally stunted New York magazine employees. Hello, fellow Capricorn moons.
In addition to wrenching situationships with fellow reporters, there were Reply Guys – those keyboard warriors who “excessively respond to [your] social media posts.” As I was to learn, Reply Guys come in tiers. There’s the friendly slacker who, because he’s a bartender or “freelance photographer,” has plenty of time to stalk your tweets all day.
Then come the married Reply Guys. If they’re foolhardy and risk-inclined, they work in the same industry you do. You figure, what’s the harm in opening up a little to such an eager audience member?
Next thing you know, you’ve been added to a Close Friends on Instagram that you never aspired to access, peering at someone’s bare, hairy chest, and you think to yourself, dude, aren’t you a father? His recklessness is not your problem, you tell yourself, and it honestly isn’t. There’s no way you’re the only girl he’s talking to.
Several years ago, I went to see Paramore at the Barclays Center. As the crowd bled out into the street, I was flagged down by a Reply Guy I recognized. He was a blogger, and I was blogging, but he wasn’t successful enough to inspire my envy. He had dark hair and an expression I associated with a thirsty dog eyeing a brimming water bowl.
While writing this, I scrolled back through our scattered chat history. I’d been way more of a brat than I remembered, casually telling him about other hookups and ribbing him for his interest in me.
Boys, you should know – when a girl tells you sex stories up front, that means she doesn’t care what you think of her, which means it’s very likely that she has no interest in having sex with you. Men aren’t too bright, but it’s impolite to remind them of this fact and they’d probably just forget anyway.
I asked him to join me at Fulton Hall, a sporty “bistro” nearby, because, I thought, ‘Whatever.’
Perched on a barstool under a glowing TV screen, I listened while he spun me a tragic story about his relationship with his girlfriend. They shared an apartment and custody of a cute little dog, but he was miserable, he said, and so was she.
As he talked, he chomped on one of those flagrantly overpriced gastropub hamburgers laced with dijonaise and sealed between “Martin’s sesame seed buns.”
He and his girlfriend never laughed together anymore, he said. They never had sex. Blah blah blah.
“Sounds like you should break up,” I said loftily. His eyes brightened. At his request, we split an Uber to our respective homes, and I went on living my trash-strewn life, which consisted mainly of sending follow-up emails to arts publications begging for the $600 they owed me.
Days later, my Reply Guy texted me to tell me he’d broken up with his girlfriend. The clear implication was that I was supposed to be thrilled.
I felt pity, as his crush on me was clearly blinding him to the fact that I found him deeply boring. I felt embarrassed because it seemed like, simply by existing, I had prompted the end of his relationship with this poor woman, though clearly I’d done her a favor.
Shortly afterwards, I landed my first real staff position. A couple weeks into the job, my Reply Guy’s ex-girlfriend got hired, too. She was hurting from a recent breakup, she told me. It had been sudden, she said. I was mortified.
I thought I’d escaped the mess I associated only with myself, and couldn’t handle its manifestation in others; in the professional life that was my passionate obsession. This was supposed to be my new beginning, and already I had to keep secrets.
I waited years to tell my coworker about the part I played in her breakup, and when I did, she just laughed. He was beyond old news.
I’ve come to find that I torture myself when I interfere with other people’s stories. I loathe to even feel like I’m mildly bothering someone. These are feelings that Reply Guys never feel.
They believe that whatever they have to say, no matter how banal, is something you need to hear. I’m jealous, in a way. Maybe, for all his delusions, a Reply Guy is more confident in the validity of his simply existing than I ever will be.
Reply guy here! (Not the one that dumped the girlfriend)
A few musings: what’s the deal with gastropub hamburgers? I feel like as a man you have to work up a powerful hunger to deserve a hamburger. How often does that lead you to a gastropub? But I digress.
When I reply to people I usually hope they find me boring, but I still hope for them throw me a like every once in a while. I think what I really want is for someone who gets tons of attention to say, yknow, he’s not the one for me, but that guy’s alright, sometimes.