COLUMNS
Talk Show 18 with Chris Bohjalian, Joshua Henkin, Perrin Ireland, Aryn Kyle, Kelly McMasters
/ Jaime Clarke
09.30.08
––Did the date go as planned?
Bohjalian: Technically, that wasn’t our first date, of course. That would occur the next night, a Saturday. We went to dinner at a restaurant in Amherst, a swank place called Plumbley’s that’s now long gone. The night before we had been pretty caustic with one another; later she would tell me that she had expected me to stand her up on our first real date. She worried that I had asked her out, in fact, simply so I could stand her up.
Henkin: It went as I’d planned it, in that once Mom and Dad were deposited at their hotel, Laura invited me to hang out at her dorm. But I have a terrible sense of direction, and a couple of hours later, when I departed, I was left to wander aimlessly around Harvard Yard, not sure how to find my way back to my dorm. In fairness, it was only October, but when I asked someone how to get to Canaday and the person wanted to know whom I was visiting, I was forced to say I live in Canaday, and for a second I thought the person would call the police.
Ireland: I expected to be murdered on the dark walk home beneath shadowy palms, which is why I asked my older sister to follow 15 paces behind, but gargantuan DDT-resistant mosquitoes posed the only threat. The kiss (Big Sister hiding in the hibiscus-dripping bushes with their protruding yellow pistils) was unexpected, and led me to write I love him that night in my baby blue plastic diary with the raised figure of a sophisticated teenage girl on the cover.
Kyle: Pretty much. We held hands during the movie, and that was hot. Literally. Our palms were sweaty and Randy let go of my hand a few times to wipe his own on his pants. I don’t remember that the movie was anything exceptional, but it hadn’t actually been our first choice. We had wanted to see something that was rated R, but blew our chances by trying to get the Twelve and Under Discount.
McMasters: If by planned you mean showing up at the elementary school gym and slow-dancing to every song and him falling madly in love with me and us fast-forwarding to our wedding day then…well, no, it didn’t go as I’d planned. I can’t remember being in costume but we must have been, which is never a good thing for a first date—that was our initial mistake. The next mistake was having his mother drive us to the dance. We both sat in the backseat of her chipping gold sedan (my mother remembers the car as green) not touching. Then when we got to the dance we immediately split up and stayed on opposite sides of the room for the whole night—boys on one and girls on the other, of course.
Bohjalian: Technically, that wasn’t our first date, of course. That would occur the next night, a Saturday. We went to dinner at a restaurant in Amherst, a swank place called Plumbley’s that’s now long gone. The night before we had been pretty caustic with one another; later she would tell me that she had expected me to stand her up on our first real date. She worried that I had asked her out, in fact, simply so I could stand her up.
Henkin: It went as I’d planned it, in that once Mom and Dad were deposited at their hotel, Laura invited me to hang out at her dorm. But I have a terrible sense of direction, and a couple of hours later, when I departed, I was left to wander aimlessly around Harvard Yard, not sure how to find my way back to my dorm. In fairness, it was only October, but when I asked someone how to get to Canaday and the person wanted to know whom I was visiting, I was forced to say I live in Canaday, and for a second I thought the person would call the police.
Ireland: I expected to be murdered on the dark walk home beneath shadowy palms, which is why I asked my older sister to follow 15 paces behind, but gargantuan DDT-resistant mosquitoes posed the only threat. The kiss (Big Sister hiding in the hibiscus-dripping bushes with their protruding yellow pistils) was unexpected, and led me to write I love him that night in my baby blue plastic diary with the raised figure of a sophisticated teenage girl on the cover.
Kyle: Pretty much. We held hands during the movie, and that was hot. Literally. Our palms were sweaty and Randy let go of my hand a few times to wipe his own on his pants. I don’t remember that the movie was anything exceptional, but it hadn’t actually been our first choice. We had wanted to see something that was rated R, but blew our chances by trying to get the Twelve and Under Discount.
McMasters: If by planned you mean showing up at the elementary school gym and slow-dancing to every song and him falling madly in love with me and us fast-forwarding to our wedding day then…well, no, it didn’t go as I’d planned. I can’t remember being in costume but we must have been, which is never a good thing for a first date—that was our initial mistake. The next mistake was having his mother drive us to the dance. We both sat in the backseat of her chipping gold sedan (my mother remembers the car as green) not touching. Then when we got to the dance we immediately split up and stayed on opposite sides of the room for the whole night—boys on one and girls on the other, of course.