Here's How John Green Helped Me Plan The Best Date Ever
When I was a teen, the most romantic moments in my life undoubtedly took place in books.
Because, you know, like many a YA heroine I was a green-eyed, brown-haired bookworm who was scared of boys, and -- since I do not dwell in the pages of "Divergent" or "Eleanor and Park" or "The Fault In Our Stars" -- I was basically that way until I was, like, 20, having not developed any magical abilities that drew the dreamy attention of my skater boi crush and, dun dun dunnnn, a consortium of evil adults bent on destroying the world.
Instead, I just spent a lot of time working on a now-aborted book about a girl named Mica and a boy named Rev titled "Unless First A Dream" (out the second week of Never on Not A Chance Press).
As I got older, however, and ceased seizing up and, ostrich-like, burying my face in a book in the presence of dudes, those text-spun romantic moments continued to be the inspiration for what I guess you could call my "dating style" -- dinner and a movie is not really my thing. Several consecutive nights of Netflix and takeout make me feel like an invalid. Bar-hopping is something you do when you actually hate the person you're currently making out with.
Characters never engage in such mundanity in YA novels -- they're always taking roadtrips to find their long-lost mothers. Or watching fireworks on a rooftop while kissing in the rain. Or something.
So, being more of a hit-up-the-Coney-Island-Freak-Show-then-wander-on-railroad-tracks kind of girl, I decided to plan the ultimate YA-inspired date last weekend with my dude person man-friend. Which is his real name and not me being awkward at all. And -- being a tall, floppy-haired musician who wears Converse -- dude is the perfect person to take on such an outing, as he is basically Adam Wilde from "If I Stay"... give or take 10 years and that period of time that he sucked in the sequel.
What follows is an account of what happened on our day of Fault In Our Starsing and Eleanor and Parking. Please feel free to steal any and all ideas if traditional dating and all of its trappings also make you want to break out in hives.
In Robyn Schneider's "The Beginning Of Everything," former jock Ezra Faulkner and manic pixie dream girl Cassidy Thorpe go geocaching, which I thought was a great start to our YA date. For those not in the know (like me, a few days ago), geocaching is kind of like a treasure hunt. You use GPS to find containers hidden in covert locations, which contain log books in which you can write your name. You can also add trinkets to the container to commemorate your victory.
After having some brunch -- during which dude man talked about death for some reason (YA date bonus points!) -- we fired up my newly downloaded Geocaching app and discovered that there were a few caches located within walking distance of my apartment. SPOILERS AHEAD FOR AVID GEOCACHERS. The first was located in a small park just teeming with children and families (or what seasoned 'cachers refer to as "muggles") and was attached to a loose brick in the side of a small bath house. We were the FIRST to find it, and wrote our names down proudly, feeling like utter champs.
The second was located in ANOTHER park under a bench. I will admit that we had some issues finding that one, and that a duo of elderly ladies in chilling the park basically told us where it was because they had seen some 'cachers lurking around earlier. We were still pretty pumped, though, and added a ticket stub from a Mets game we had hit up earlier to the tiny black box, which also contained a ticket stub from "Pitch Perfect 2."
After stopping to apply some sunscreen, dude and I traversed over a highway bridge to find cache #3, which was jammed into a tree surrounded by trash by some warehouses. A man came out of one of said warehouses to ask if we were lost -- maybe because we were standing in a pile of trash outside of a warehouse. This was maybe not the most romantic of moments.
As dude and I live in Brooklyn, we often have to take public transit to get around. This state of affairs afforded us the perfect opportunity to channel Rainbow Rowell's "Eleanor And Park," in which those two characters listen to music together on the school bus.
Dude chose to cue up Walk The Moon, because that band seemed particularly YA to him, and we shared headphones and listened to "Shut Up And Dance" on the 7 train to Manhattan. Although I do love Rainbow's books, this activity proved not to be our favorite as I am a music journalist and he is a musician and sharing headphones isn't the best way to actually listen to music. It was the thought, though.
In "Divergent," as you all know, Four and Tris have a very sexually charged moment on a ferris wheel in post-apocalyptic Chicago. The closest ferris wheel to dude and I was in the Toys "R" Us in Times Square, so our ride was not as sexually charged -- you know, seeing as though we were sitting in an "ET"-themed bucket across from a dad and a toddler.
We did have a wonderful time riding the 'wheel, though, as it was a ferris wheel and we are not dead inside. I also learned during this outing that dude REALLY likes toy stores, as he breathlessly told me about the wonders of drones and purchased a yo-yo that became our constant companion for the rest of the day. I may or may not be dating a manic pixie dream boy.
Oh, and we also visited my fear landscape: Toys "R" Us' public bathrooms.
It wouldn't be a romantic outing that is somehow related to YA novels without John Green, amirite? Like a veritable Fairy Godfather of Whimsy, John Green offered up this suggestion to my co-worker Crystal Bell when she told him during an interview about our date. She texted me said suggestion, and I got so excited I spelled things wrong and posted the above photo to Instagram. More on that later...
Naturally, we also had to cop some moments from TFIOS. Unfortunately, there are no Dutch restaurants in New York (that I could find), so we did the next best thing and hit up the Upper East Side for oysters and champagne. Sadly, my favorite author's assistant didn't pay for the whole meal, so we ate chips and guacamole for dinner while watching a gaggle of young Upper Eastsiders chat about how much they don't like Brooklyn.
Sated, we hit up Central Park next to sit on a bench like Hazel and Gus -- as well as to find another geocache because, guys, this has legitimately become a new obsession.
I won't spoil the end of this book for those not familiar, but before the waterworks start, lovebirds Violet Markey and Theodore Finch visit all manner of weird places in their town as part of a class project. Taking a page from their (tear-stained) book, I located a karaoke joint called Baby Grand, which is basically the smallest place of its ilk you have ever seen. It's, like, the size of a dining room table.
Being a karaoke place, Baby Grand added an extra layer to the experience, as all YA characters love music -- oldies in particular. Dude performed from Billy Joel and Sinatra and I busted out some Bowie and Nirvana, and I would like to say everyone got to their feet and sang along, and they did. Because we're actually pretty good at karaoke.
I have no photographic evidence of this -- as, you know, it's a hidden love note -- but we did scrawl something on the back of a slip of paper we got from a fortune-telling machine at Toys "R" Us and secret it away among the leaves as one day turned to the next. So thanks, John Green, for the suggestion.
And while we're at it, thanks Robyn, Rainbow, Veronica and Jennifer for helping me plan basically the best date ever.
