New York has taken me on its fair share of terrible dates with terrible men. Three dates in, kisses have tasted like sandpaper. Three months into a friendship, I’ve gotten violently drunk and hooked up with someone I don’t remember even liking, and conveniently blacked out in their bed after. A good looking, ivy league educated political activist has used my body and time recklessly in his loft apartment over the course of a freezing winter. One banking analyst has responded to my ‘I’d like to see you again’ with a pursed smile on the street, and I’ve never felt so small on the way home. My first crush in the city came over to my apartment and we shared a meal and a kiss and then I never heard from him again.
Some dates have been really good : Many margaritas in Midtown, a walk through Grand Central smiling up at the ceiling, a quick subway ride downtown, a first kiss in the middle of a snowstorm on the Brooklyn bridge. The time a boy held my hand outside Washington Square Park and led me to the picnic he was setting up, spring cherry blossoms and my heart bursting in the same way at the sweetness of it all. A harmless walk to the halal cart with someone I fancied has led to me skipping down the street on the way home. Once, in an Italian restaurant, our respective pasta dishes went cold so the server came over to ask if we had any complaints about the food, and we laughed - we’d become so engrossed in conversation that dinner sat there, forgotten.
It was Valentine’s Day a few weeks ago, so I’ve been, against my will, thinking about love. I’m thinking about flirting and crushes and marriage and boyfriends and heartbreak. But mostly, I’m thinking about chemistry.
When I say chemistry, I’m referring to the subtle crackle of electricity between two people. I’m talking about the unexpected tug of sexual tension. I’m talking about how you can meet someone and just know, on some molecular level, that you will remember them longer than you will perhaps, know one another. Chemistry is the way it’s so easy to unarm me with banter and sarcasm when you meet me for the first time. It’s the gushing phone call to my best friend as soon as I close the door to my apartment behind my back.
I know within ten minutes of meeting someone if we have good chemistry. I’ve been on my fair share of first dates, so I’ve mastered more of a sixty minute pretence now and a drafted, polite text the morning after. Thank you for a lovely evening. I want to be upfront - it was really nice meeting you. I hope you find what you’re looking for. I’m looking for something else and think we should go our separate ways. I wish you the best. I press send and archive the conversation. I don’t think about it too much. We just didn’t have it.
Still, chemistry is so unfairly mysterious and evasive. I guess when I make eye contact with a stranger or someone gets that first involuntary chuckle out of me, I know it might be there. I order another drink and run off to the bathroom to catch my breath and put on more lip gloss, my telltale nervous reflex. It’s what comes before intimacy, setting the corners of the room and my brain on fire before a first kiss.
Recently, I finished watching a korean drama called Hometown Cha Cha Cha. I found myself awake at odd hours of the night, skipping from episode to episode, addicted to something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I just really couldn’t get myself to stop, tuning out on the subway between work and home, in my rushed 11 minute lunch break at my desk, wherever I found a free minute. When it ended, it hit me : the protagonist moves to a small town from Seoul and meets a local. She finds him annoying! And also hot! They bicker like children! They get into arguments! They end up in inconceivable, awkward situations. Any shmuck would see that they’ve got it, spread across the length of sixteen one hour long episodes : good old chemistry. It’s so addictive and adorable that I wanted more as soon as I was done. Their chemistry crackled on and through the screen, and it was silly and hilarious and wholesome.
And I know, I know, it’s just a TV show and it’s not real life, but I’ve got proof. I’ve met a handful of people in the real world purely out of coincidence and been instantly smitten with them. I’ve felt what the characters felt in real life. Haven’t you? You can’t convince me chemistry isn’t real just because you can’t touch it.
Chemistry is, by all means, necessary for a relationship to begin and endure, but it’s not enough to hold it together over the years. That takes other, more important things, like mutual respect and deep loyalty and really good communication. But chemistry’s got to be there, or most likely, there won’t be a relationship.
Several months ago I met someone on vacation and felt it stir my heart awake from its grave again. An omnipresent crackle in the air between us. Eye contact that lingered after the sentences had left our mouths. Eye contact directed at my mouth while words spilled out. We never kissed, or even spoke again. But I left that interaction feeling like all the hairs on my body were standing upright. I felt the weight of it, and in those rarest, loveliest of occurrences, I watched his face and knew, for certain, he felt it too.
The truth is deep under my tough cynical intimidating big eyed black cat aura, there’s a sensitive romantic silly optimistic fool. I won’t give that away across the table easily, but it’s what’s always stirring me from under my skin when I speak to an amiable stranger. I love the soft laughter after you meet someone you really like, and you won’t say it but your brain is screaming at you. You’ve just realized you really like them, and you’re fucked. You’re capital S screwed. You will break all your rules and run headfirst into the burning building, you will risk embarrassment and heartbreak and social ostracization for the invisible hold this person has on you. Chemistry at the steering wheel, derailing everything, but it’s so rare to come by that you can’t help but go along to find out the ending of this story, can you?
Please write a book!! I missed buying your previous ones :/
Hi Neha - I love your writing (you have no idea how much peace & joy it gives me). If you ever decide to convert these into a book then I would love to publish and sponsor. Please do reach out to me at chhavisinghal.team@gmail.com.