My First and Last Date With Mara
By Ari Moskowitz
“I like to sleep with married guys,” Mara said on our first date. “They have a real appreciation for how fleeting this all is.”
She spread her hands apart to depict the span of life or the depth of the human condition, then said, “So, you like fiction?”
“Yes,” I said. “I love fiction.”
As if having common interests was all it took to build something. I had never been married.
“I think fiction is the highest form of truth,” she said. “I’ve been reading Kafka.” She lifted her arm to stab a bobby pin into her long black hair, her black dress folded under her long legs, her waxy calves, and her strappy shoes. She told me about the shoe designer, but I hadn’t heard of him.
Mara was different. She told me that she had her masters in English. She said that she was a reformed private school kid. She wanted to uplift all the poets in the Bay. She also wanted to start a literary journal. The poets I knew were broke. They drank cheap wine, and they wore their poverty like badges. I was struck by her.
“Do you think you’re a poet?” I asked.
“I’m too lazy to say that. I love words, though.”
I wondered how expensive her rings were. They looked like real gold.
She drummed her fingers on the table. I believe she thought Kafka was what I wanted to hear. Fiction writers are supposed to like Kafka. Why did she want to know if I liked Kafka?
I had been on too many dates to count, and I was exhausted with the people-carousel. I decided to read The Metamorphosis. I’d been saving it for a special occasion. I’ve always done that with stories and poems. I don’t want to read the most famous thing first. I want to build to it — delay gratification and all that. Save it as a topic for a second date.1
March
I try to forget Mara by picking up extra tour-guiding hours. It works until it doesn’t. There’s a girl on the tour who looks similar to Mara. She has wild hair that tumbles down her neck and rests perfect below her shoulders.
She’s fit — a black summer dress hugs her torso. She carries a coffee-stained Bolaño paperback. Not Kafka, but close enough for me to think of Mara.
She has a guy. He keeps touching her arm and squeezing her to him, as if to say, Look at this fish I caught. She’s mine. I wonder if he reads at all. I wonder why people find each other — or don’t. Why did Mara agree to go out with me in the first place?
April
My doctor prescribes Adderall. It will help me focus on my tours, he says. I’ve never had a prescription, but I’m open to it. The pills are bitter. I take a small orange pill every day. I finished The Metamorphosis in 15 minutes. I read The Trial and The Castle in less than a week.
Adderall wants to explain everything we’ve ever learned about the city. Adderall was here before me and will be here after I’m gone. Adderall is Adderall and Adderall is me. Together, we learn everything there is to learn about everything. I’m not sure where we’re going, but I know we’re going there quickly.
This is The Golden Gate Bridge.
It opened on May 28th, 1937.
When it was constructed, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world — spanning two miles approximately.
Cable cars were introduced in 1873 to help locals contend with the steep hills.
New tours are scheduled every day. I’m never late. I take my job very seriously. Although, I’m tired. Reading everything Kafka wrote keeps me up well past midnight. My tours are often early in the morning. I wonder if it’s worth it. I wonder if this will grab Mara’s interest. I’m turned on by a challenge. I post my tours on Instagram alongside Kafka quotes using fun fonts like comic sans to show my artistic side.
There are only two things.
Truth and lies.
“Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.” — Franz Kafka
Powell to Mason is the most scenic route.
Visit, in this order:
-
Fisherman’s Wharf
-
Ghirardelli Square
-
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Kafka had a relationship with Felice Bauer that was similar to online dating. They were engaged, but they lived in different cities. Him, Prague. Her, Berlin. They called it epistolary in those days, corresponding back and forth by letters. It was something I learned and savored, something that I could bring up on a second date with Mara, like a party trick if I were ever given the chance.2
Eric Zeigler, 3D Printed Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko 67P, 2016, 44" x 55".
Every block I walk, every corner I pass, every photograph I take, I see Mara. She is in the buildings, the sidewalks, and the water bottles the tourists drink from. She is the moon. On our second date, according to me —
(not a date, according to her)
— we talked about how the tides work. The magic of nature. How everything pulls on everything else, yet we all stay in balance until something throws off our equilibrium and then we readjust and find balance again.
I went home that night and read everything I could about gravity and tides. Being around her was something like an addiction. I felt like I was acting in a play. I worried that I was missing my lines — if I could respond the right way, whatever that was, she would continue to spend time with me. A few times, she hadn’t responded at all. I was aware of how much space there was between us. I felt my body. I felt the weight of sitting there across from her, separated by the Bay Bridge. Just the thought of her potentially thinking of me sent a charge through my entire being.
I texted her even when I had nothing interesting to say. I wanted her to respond, to notice me. When she waited a day or two, I felt the sharpness of longing.
Today, June 8, 20__ is Mara’s birthday. She’s a Gemini like my sister. I’m a Leo. Our love is written in the stars, I think. I don’t believe in love at first sight, but I want to believe in something. On nights when I can’t sleep, I take breaks from Kafka to learn about astrology from influencers.3
I imagine cults work like this. If you believe hard enough, you can will the truth. If I believe in Mara and me, then it will be so. I don’t know if it’s me or Adderall who believes this. I’m moving through so much information so quickly that the truth doesn’t matter as much as it used to. Even if we’re not together right now, we’ll begin a proper relationship once she stops caring for men who aren’t me. I text:
Happy birthday! (Balloon emojis)
She doesn’t text me back, which is okay. One of the things that attracts me to her is how she lives in the moment. Over the course of the day, my phone buzzes with new messages from work, from my mom, and from a health insurance company. I check my phone on my lunch break. And then I turn off my notifications, because I don’t want to check my phone every time it buzzes. Then I turn my notifications back on to prove I’m not addicted to my phone. I only check every 3rd notification, which seems reasonable. I hope there will be a text from Mara. There are no texts from Mara. It’s ok. Sometimes we need to pursue things just to feel something. To know that we are alive. Sometimes I think that she is posting stories as a way of secretly communicating with me. Of what, I’m not sure. She’s never told me exactly how she felt about her date.
(It wasn’t a date according to her.)4
October
I take less Adderall. I cut up a pumpkin and bake the seeds. I feel the sticky guts on my hands. I sit at my kitchen table eating pumpkin seeds and scraping pumpkin goo into a pile. I wonder how many seeds are in an average pumpkin, and if pumpkins came before people. Mara dresses as a punk rocker. She wears a purple wig and ripped stockings. She posts photos on Instagram. #thirsttrap
Even though I can see the magic trick, the filters, how I’m being manipulated by social media, I’m powerless. If you can’t spot the sucker, then you are the sucker. I order a pizza.
I stare at Instagram looking for clues about who she’s dating now. I see pictures, sure, but I also see all my wrong choices measured neatly against all the right choices of all the famous people I follow. When you stare at your feed long enough, sometimes it stares back.
There are two glasses of wine on the table. #vino. #grapesoflife. I stare at her hashtags so long the screen pixelates, my eyesight blurs. I fall asleep with my phone in my hand, my glasses still on my face. When I wake, I see an empty bottle of wine on my table next to some wilted flowers. I remember buying the daffodils and sunflowers; I remember their sweetness. I bought them because I wanted some life in my apartment. I imagined inviting Mara over for dinner. I wanted her to see the flowers, to see that I could find beauty in small things. I don’t remember who drank the wine.
December
Mara woke me with jazz riffs and Nina Simone. Lipstick stained wine glasses left on the kitchen table. Discarded white sponges, tinted beige with foundation, on the bathroom sink. Long black hairs clogged the bathtub. And those bobby pins were everywhere. I collected them in a tin box. She would always need new ways to pin her hair up. I stopped watching her stories. I didn’t want to seem desperate. I scrolled through all of her photos delicately. I read Kafka and I imagined how isolated he must have felt. How did he find time to write so many stories?
I’m worried that I’ll accidentally like one of her photos. I only scroll through photos she is tagged in. That way, if I accidentally click it, she won’t be alerted. What if there is a way for her to see how much time I’m spending on her page? The thought is terrifying, and I push it away as quickly as possible. I have nightmares about the world ending when I finally fall asleep on my couch with all the lights on.
There are some things I don’t miss about her. Like ________________. And that’s about it. I check Instagram more than I feel my own breath.
I wonder about distance and space and time and if there are new equations for the new ways that we conduct our lives. If all the hate and love has a place, and if we deny the things we feel, if that makes our experience any less true or real, and then I think about what we know and what we don’t know, and I’ve been reading too many books by Kafka and I want to find a way to kill my ego and maybe then I will live a more full life and my words will finally feel right when I speak them — It won’t be “I” anymore but rather a universal consciousness that flows from my mouth out and out and out.
April
Today, we swam together at Lake Anza. She emerged, smiling, water beaded on her chest. It was her idea to swim in the lake. She said that we spent too much time on devices. Better to return to our more primal natures. “Get out of your head, silly,” she said.
Tomorrow, Mara tells me she can’t stop reading The Metamorphosis. “Who do you think is more surreal,” she asks, “Kafka or Dali?”
“They’re different,” I say. One is not more than the other.
“I like Kafka better,” Mara says. And I wait for her to tell me why. But she just stands there staring at me. Through me? Why do we remember certain moments in life and forget all the rest? I will always think of that stare. Those deep eyes, looking, searching, and her mezcal voice. Saying definitively for future generations of people (if the world continues on), that Kafka is better than Dali. No reason. No reason.
“This is The Bay Area,” she says, an afterthought to her appreciation of Kafka. “There are no seasons, and I prefer it that way.”
“Kafka critiqued bureaucracy,” I add. Mara nods.
When she has nothing to say, she says nothing.
When I see space, I fill it. I like posting my thoughts on her page. She rarely posts on my page, but every time she does the world brightens. She’s never tagged me in any of her photos, and that hurts, but I’d rather die than let her know. She posts so often, she probably isn’t thinking too hard about it.
June
I continue giving bus tours. People listen. They pay to ride a double-decker bus.
The 1906 fires. The 1989 quake, which halted the World Series between the Athletics and the Giants. Candlestick Park. Bob’s Donuts. Gang violence in the Mission. The gentrification of Dolores Park. Bay to Breakers.
I’ve become a person who says things like, Where’s the time go?
I repeat the same speeches and the same talking points over and over. The life of a tour guide is one of repetition. What is the value in stating facts to tourists who will likely never return to San Francisco?
I wish I could change my story with Mara. Alter details like how we met, what I ordered to drink, and what note I sent with the flowers.
There’s Wikipedia and Alexa and Siri and all the disconnected female voices speaking to us from the cloud. But we created them. The sidewalks are what you walk on, but the sewers are just as necessary. I hear Mara everywhere.
Eric Zeigler, White Gloves, 2021, Archival Pigment Print, 20" x 15".
July
When you hit a baseball in its sweet spot, you know. Watch a baseball game and don’t watch the batter or the ball, but watch his body after he connects dead center. Watch him skip out of the box. Watch him trot down the line toward first base. Watch him round the bags. Watch him lightly tap home plate and embrace his teammates. I want to do that. I want to slap men high five.
Kafka worked full time at an insurance company. He wrote at night.
My therapist tells me to do something to get out of my head. He’s a short man and I suppose he’s a good listener. But really, how hard can it be to listen when you get paid $200/hour? His name is Dr. Gray. Every time we have a session — he calls them “chats” — I want to call him “David.” I don’t know anyone named David, but it seems less ambiguous than Dr. Gray. I ask him if I can rename him. He tells me he’d prefer to keep his name. It’s my story, I tell him.
“I think David Gray is already taken,” he says. I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t fight him on it.
“You love baseball,” says Dr. Gray. “Why not practice your swing?”
That seems like sound advice. I go to the batting cages on my days off.
August
I’m exhausted. I take Adderall. My dentist, Dr. White, (although he looks more like a Dr. Gray) tells me I might have a problem with grinding my jaw. “Do yoga,” he says. “Or learn to meditate. It worked for David Lynch.”
“I like Lost Highway,” I tell him.
“You’re like a lost highway,” he says with a smile.
I take more Adderall. I take more Adderall. I spend every spare moment I can on Instagram. Scrolling. Endlessly scrolling through endless photographs. Tourists invite me to parties. They take pictures with me. Post them on Instagram. #bestguideever. #besttourever. I reply with 100s and hearts for eyes. I’m too wired to communicate in anything deeper than emojis.
Days. Months. Years. Minutes. Hours. Centuries. September. December. July. May.
“Sounds like an existential crisis,” says my doctor. Their name is Dr. Kim.
“I know,” I say. “I’m not special.”
“We’re all unique,” they say. I’m not sure they’re sincere.
Mara told me on our first date that she had a thing for artists. I told her that we could be artists together. But I wonder now. Truthfully, I wondered then. And I bet if we spoke about the same things today, it wouldn’t sound right.
New words are added to Wikipedia every year, and when you change one thing, then everything else around it reshuffles, so that even if she meant what she said on the day she said it, it doesn’t mean the same thing today. I’m okay with that, but I wish some things were less amorphous. I wish there were ideas that would stay constant. I imagine we’re all stretching like Gumby, but I don’t know if I can infinitely stretch.
I’d find some comfort in knowing that the universe does have an endpoint. A place where it stops. If infinity didn’t terrify me.
“Or let’s start a tech company,” Mara said. “San Francisco shreds artists like wrapping paper.”
“Great plan,” I said. I tried to sound sincere. I didn’t believe we could start a tech company, but it seemed easier than being an artist.
We drank gin until the bar closed and we were drunk, so drunk that she started crying and I didn’t understand why. I asked her, “Why are you crying?” She shook her head, wiped her tears, and said, “No reason.”
We walked back to her house. We kissed for a while. There were so many books in her bedroom. I was happy to be near someone who valued dead people’s words. She cried and I held her. I knew I couldn’t keep her. I told her that I wished we could live long enough to read all the books ever written, although I really meant just the best ones.
You can’t hold onto people, but when you’re of a certain age or it’s a certain time in your life, you try.
Mara told me on our last date that she had a thing for artists. “Good, I said. I have a thing for poets.”
“What do you like about poets?” She asked, a bobby pin in her mouth.
“I don’t know — I don’t know. I want to escape. And sometimes, I think I see a way out. And then it’s over. We are here. San Francisco is our home. People like us live here. Someone has to do things like they’ve always been done.”
“You’re never going to make enough money,” she said, buttoning and unbuttoning the sleeves of her designer blouse. “My mom married a lawyer,” she stabbed a bobby pin into her scalp, her designer shoe slung off her toes. “That’s how she made it work.”
She had already marked me as a footnote in her story.5
San Francisco shreds artists like wrapping paper.
Coda
I imagine a life where I work for a tech company with an open floor plan, unlimited cold brew, and sensitivity training emails asking us to confirm which pronouns we prefer.
I imagine me and Mara on Instagram in a house over the hills or hiking Mount Tam, immortalized, shucking oysters in Point Reyes or driving to wine country because there’s another reality that exists just below the surface of this reality. A life in which I never guided tours. A life where our first date wasn’t our last date. I’ve imagined so many second dates.
I imagine Mara, on a different coast, married to a man who could just as easily have been me. And then I fall asleep because I’ve finally stopped taking Adderall. I’ve stopped grinding my teeth. Everything is slower, and I have more time to reflect. Mara taught me that — to look at reflections. “Be aware,” she told me. “All you need to do is learn to listen. It takes practice.”
I imagine someone is on a tour right now, taking pictures, posting them for their friends, admiring how colorful it all is, the impeccable resolution, the familiar pixels.
I imagine I get a copywriting contract for a tech company.
I imagine I can earn enough money to date a woman like Mara, to still have time to write at night. I look out the window past my desk at a ferry transporting tourists from Fisherman’s Wharf to Sausalito and back again.
Eric Zeigler, Ladder, 2022, Archival Pigment Print, 20" x 15".
Footnotes:
1. According to Mara, we never went on another date again. I think we went on a few more dates, but I’ve been accused of exaggeration.
2. “Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words.” — Kafka, in a 1912 letter to Felice Bauer
3. When they are together, Geminis shine a spotlight on Leo, making them feel like a star. The only problem is that they also shine their light on others, which makes Leos feel betrayed. Leos are fiercely loyal. Geminis are curious about everyone in the room, but are attracted to Leo's star qualities. Both signs are superficial.
4. According to Mara, we were just talking, which kind of hurts in retrospect, because we did sleep together three different times over the course of six months, but still, I think sharing a bed equals more than talking, but maybe not.
Ari Moskowitz performs his stories at many Bay Area readings including Red Light Lit, The Racket, and Quiet Lightning. He has his MFA in creative writing from SFSU and a BA in English from Wesleyan University. He's a former editor-in-chief of Fourteen Hills. His writing has appeared in American Literary Review, The Pinch, and Transfer Magazine. His stories have placed in contests with Glimmer Train and New Millenium writing awards. He has been supported by residencies at VCCA and Tomales Bay.
Eric Zeigler is an artist, designer, and researcher whose current work involves photography and the unconventional transformation of images. He received an MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and exhibits his work nationally and internationally. He also writes about human tool use and its connection to contemporary design and non-Anthropocentric ecological viewpoints. Eric is an Assistant Professor of Art in the Department of Art at the University of Toledo.
5. You wake up together and you drink some strong coffee and you go for a walk and you look at trees and you tell each other that it’s special to live in a place like Berkeley and you think about how maybe one day you’ll live in Berkeley together and you wonder why things look different during the day than at night.