Nautilus

She’ll Text Me, She’ll Text Me Not

A few years ago there was a woman in my life—let’s call her Tanya—and we had hooked up one night in Los Angeles. We’d both attended a birthday party, and when things were winding down, she offered to drop me off at home. We had been chatting and flirting a little the whole night, so I asked her to come in for a drink. At the time, I was subletting a pretty nice house up in the Hollywood Hills. It was kind of like that house De Niro had in Heat, but a little more my vibe than the vibe of a really skilled robber who takes down armored cars. I made us both a nice cocktail and we took turns throwing on records while we chatted and laughed. Eventually we started making out, and it was pretty awesome. I remember drunkenly saying something really dumb when she was leaving, like, “Tanya, you’re a very charming lady ...” She said, “Aziz, you’re a pretty charming guy, too.” The encounter seemed promising, as everyone in the room had agreed: We were both charming people.

I wanted to see Tanya again and was faced with a simple conundrum that plagues us all: How and when do I communicate next? Do I call? Do I text? Do I send a Facebook message? Do I send up a smoke signal? How does one do that?

THE STRESS OF MODERN ROMANCE: “The madness I was descending into wouldn’t have even existed 20 or even 10 years ago,” writes Aziz Ansari.

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