Not everyone can be Shakespeare. That’s why a photo-free dating app is holding a workshop for users to polish their love language, Dan Greene writes.
One recent week night, Bjerknes, who had a few days’ stubble and wore Buddy Holly glasses, teamed up with Katie English, a friend and copywriter who also works on Oh Hi, to co-host a free personals-writing workshop.
At Clem’s, a classic corner dive in Williamsburg, Bjerknes would offer participants dating advice while they waited for their turn to sit at the bar with English, who would translate their conversation into solicitous slivers of text. English, whose thick gray-brown hair swooped over her head, was game. “I’ve always just kind of loved to take anybody’s writing and punch it up, clean it up, make it simple,” she said. Up first: Kate, a bespectacled fortysomething publicist with a short bob, from Cobble Hill. As a divorced mother, she was looking for something casual, consistent, and not too energy-intensive. English dutifully typed notes. It was important that her suitor be patient in wine shops, Kate said, and that he find at least half the things she said cute. “And thinks it’s cool that I rarely brush my hair,” she added. “As someone with curly hair,” English said, “I don’t think you’re supposed to.” Kate sipped her cocktail. “I feel so pretentious,” she said. “Is this supposed to be about me or them?” “Both,” English told her. She looked up from her screen and asked for a headline. “ ‘Curly divorcée seeking silver fox’?” Kate suggested. “But I think that’s too much about hair.” At a nearby table, Laura, a therapist in a blue denim jacket, who wore her hair in an updo, told Bjerknes that she was newly single. “Tragically?” he asked. She laughed. “Sort of,” she said. Her Hinge forays had been largely fruitless. “I do, like, five thousand hobbies,” she said—boxing, guitar lessons, sign-language class. But meet-cutes had been elusive. “People aren’t super open to that,” she lamented. “I guess they could just want to learn a skill.” She brought a can of Narragansett and a publishing-house tote to the bar and sat beside English. “I want someone who’s earnest about dating and doesn’t treat it like Candy Crush, and also is not a nihilist,” she said. “I’m an appropriately hopeful person, so I need another appropriately hopeful person.” They discussed the need for brows both high and low: the Criterion Collection, but also Bravo binges. Social causes were important, too. The war in Gaza and celebrity conservatorship: both nos. English tapped her keyboard and read aloud, “Looking for pro-Palestine, free-Britney hottie.” Laura frantically tapped her arm. “That’s it!” she said. Next came a neat-haired, lightly goateed attorney in search of a companion for late dinners—“like, Spain-late,” he said—and dancing. After his turn, English let out a sigh, exhausted by all the extemporaneous scribing. “I feel like a rapper,” she said. Up walked a thirty-one-year-old government worker in a green Hawaiian shirt and a dark hoodie. “Feel good?” English asked. “I’ve never felt good in my life,” he told her. Writing gives him awful anxiety, he explained. Dating apps had been their own disaster; he said he once had an account hacked and found himself transformed into a woman from Arkansas. He told English he was looking for a “certified yapper” who shared his love of sweets and boba. A hammer thrower, as in the spin-and-fling track-and-field event, would be nice, too. He tried self-description. “Wanna be with someone who looks sad all the time but makes jokes?” he offered. “People say I look like Eeyore.” He backed off that idea, and several others. Citing casual cultural interests risked being exposed as a poseur. Mentioning his love of thighs could overpromise on his libido. “Super-specific will bring in super-specific responses,” English said. The government worker looked contemplative. “My perfect date, there’s no flies around,” he began. “We both turn into spirits, and we merge into each other. We possess the people on ‘S.N.L.’ and we force everyone in the audience to listen to our bad improv.” English lit up. “Now you’re painting something very clear!” she said. “You told me to,” he said. ♦
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