First Dates with Every Duolingo Character

...except Junior, for obvious reasons.

Zari

Dresses cute. Gives you a brief but surprisingly powerful hug in greeting. Has clearly come armed with conversation starters – the first thing she says when you sit down at the bar is, “So, what was the best thing that happened to you today?”

Her nervousness is endearing and puts you at ease. She just started a crocheting class and jabbers excitedly about it for 10 (mostly entertaining) minutes.

But eventually, her anxiety is off-putting – she asks you the “best thing” question twice more during the date. As she talks, she methodically tears three of those foamy bar coasters into tiny, perfect squares, the whole time looking beseechingly to you, as if to continually ask if she’s doing okay at this, this first-date-conversation thing.

As you say goodbye, she in a moment of awkwardness/indecision kisses you on the outer corner of your mouth – neither cheek nor lips. This would probably delight you, coming from someone you were more into, but in this case, it’s another reason to sigh internally.

When she texts the next day, you politely tell her you don’t feel a connection. You feel stabs of guilt for two weeks after.

—

Oscar

The hostess shows you to the table, where he is already sitting. You take inventory: he’s punctual (1 point in favor) but has this way-too-heavy mustache (3 points against).

Then he speaks: “Pleasure to meet you.”

His voice. His sonorous baritone. It stirs things in you. It’s rich the way garden soil is rich after a warm rain. It sends ripples through the air, outward and outward, big circles that wash over you and the other patrons. You look around the restaurant, wondering if others within earshot are also vibrating with lust.

He speaks again: “So, what will you have?” 

You feel weak. Your spine goes rubbery and your belly goes liquidy.

You press your luck.

“It’s dim in here and my eyesight isn’t great. Could you, uh, read the menu to me?”

You shameless minx.

He looks at you quizzically but then accedes. 

Thus begins the hottest summer of your life: a succession of booty calls and increasingly daring intimate acts – in bar bathrooms, behind a tree along a well-traveled bike trail, once on a Ferris wheel.

Eventually, you fade from each other’s lives, seemingly mutually.

—

Lily

You meet up for afternoon drinks. She looks you up and down. She waits a beat before saying, flatly: “Nice dress.”

“Thanks.” You mentally scan her compliment for sarcasm. You find none, but you remain suspicious.

She has purple hair. She wears a floral Betsy Johnson dress – you imagine her pulling it out of a $5 secondhand bin – which she has dip-dyed black from the hips down.

She orders a French 75. You follow suit and, after two, you are starting to wobble on your barstool. She seems both amused and annoyed by this, or maybe you’re imagining it. You are so nervous throughout the date that you keep wondering if you might have a panic attack. 

She fascinates you. She scares you. She’s cold as ice. She’s hot as shit. Her clothes are ugly as sin. Her clothes are stylish as hell. She’s not that unique. She’s all you can think about. 

You exercise superhuman restraint and don’t text for 24 hours. Precisely 24 hours and one minute after the date, you ask what she’s up to.

She takes four days to respond: “Doing my thing. You?”

Over the next few weeks, she proves to have the uncanny ability to text at the exact moment that you’re giving up on things. 

“She’s not. into. you,” your friends say. They shout it in bars, write it in all-caps texts. “She’s bad news. What’s so great about her?”

You have precisely zero good answers.

You somehow wrangle another coffee date with her. She looks at her phone for most of it. As you are saying goodbye, she comes in for a hug. Then she nips your earlobe with her teeth and – even more surprisingly – lets out a small giggle.

You watch, dumbfounded, as she stalks away. You never see her again. You think about her daily for a full month.

—

Duo

You meet him on Bumble. You have an unremarkable stroll through a nearby park one cloudy spring afternoon. He’s nice enough.

When you agree to a second date, he takes it as the go-ahead to be, quite simply, an unbelievable perv. 

He texts you half a dozen times a day. You block his number.

—

Bea

You have never vibed so well with someone immediately, and yet there’s not quite a spark. 

Long story short, she’s now your best friend. You have a years-long text thread, 50% of which is memes you both deem so-stupid-they’re-life-threateningly-hilarious (and 50% of those are minions memes, Bea’s favorite). You have held each other’s hands, literally and figuratively, through pregnancy scares, heartbreaks, family drama, and once, the results of a breast biopsy (which turned out to be negative).

You love her fiercely.

–

Lucy

This lady is trying so hard. Tells you at her favorite neighborhood dive bar about doing “hard-as-shit drugs back in the Clinton administration,” back when she and her punk band were “freaking out the squares.” Says all this while gesturing broadly with a cigarette.

The bar waitress asks her to put it out. You are mortified. Lucy chuckles out a stream of smoke — “pffft!” — and turns to you.

“You’re ok with this fascist?” she asks you, gesturing to the waitress with her still-lit cigarette.

You let out an involuntary bark of laughter.

“Whatever,” she says, and leaves.

—

Falstaff

Such bad body odor, you can’t concentrate on anything else.

—

Vikram

Charming, funny, humble, gorgeous. You are sure it’s love.

He ghosts you. It stings.

You later see his photo in the New York Times Vows section with his bride, an heiress with a last name like Worthington or Whitney, who “works in philanthropy.”

Makes sense, you say to yourself.

—

Eddie

An internet troll in real life. You meet at a cafe in his neighborhood. He is wearing a trucker hat, and you briefly wonder if you’ve wandered into 2006. He has a forearm tattoo of that Hunter S. Thompson Gonzo fist logo thingy, and you briefly wonder if you’ve wandered into hell.

He speaks with a thick, almost syrupy southern accent. Fifteen minutes into the date, he starts laughing uproariously and says — accent gone — “ah, just joshin’. You have a really good poker face!”

You stammer out a baffled thank you.

He proceeds to tell you generally unbelievable details about his childhood – that he grew up on a “raisin farm,” that his mother sewed all his clothes and put him in gingham jumpers until he was 10. You consider questioning him, but figure the faux pas of finding out he’s somehow not joking would be too mortifying.

But then, of course: “Nah, I’m just kidding about all that as well.” He pauses. Wow, you really are nice! You were just going along with all of that!”

You look at him blankly.

You make out with him at his place anyway, for reasons that will never become clear to you. You will take years to stop hating yourself for this, and leave this detail out of all future tellings of this story, except to your therapist, with whom you will use this tale as an object lesson in why you need help with self-esteem.

—

Lin

You meet at a taco place. You sit together at the bar. You order drinks.

Things begin badly. The conversation is leaden, full of siblings’ names and parents’ occupations. She’s cute. Your knee joggles up and down. You cannot calm down.

She, meanwhile, is quiet, barely makes eye contact — she’s clearly less than interested.

You ask: “So…do you want dinner, or?”

She looks momentarily startled. “Yes. Let’s order dinner,” she says.

At some point one of you mentions Bible camp. Conversation leaps to life. You have a lively 3 hours of tacos and conversations about religious trauma and purity culture and the lyrics to particularly cringeworthy Newsboys songs.

And after that, there are more dates, more tacos, picnics, meetings-of-each-other’s-parents. You have one date that’s entirely you both getting lightly high and doing your Bernie Sanders impression at each other for two hours. There are fights about exes and friends’ weddings and politics. There are years of giggly bedtimes that feel like slumber parties and so many, so many inside jokes. 

You later learn that, all those years earlier at the taco place, she was in fact deeply nervous herself. And when you asked if she wanted to order dinner, she became convinced you weren’t into the date. You realize that you came within a hair’s breadth of walking out of this wonderful person’s life, and it chills you every time you think of it.

At your wedding reception, while the guests are jumping up and down, screaming along to “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” you and Lin will embrace.

“Remember the taco place?” you will say into her ear.

“We didn’t think we liked each other,” she says, tipsy. “I mean, we didn’t think…you know…think the other liked us.” She laughs – literally, a “heeheehee” – a strange, almost unbelievable laugh you have always adored.

You will both pull back, look at each other.

“I’m glad you stayed.”

“I’m glad you stayed.”

It’s a beautiful life you will have together.

---

LINKS! LINKS! LINKS!

Trump rally content a-go-go. I am realizing that one of my beats is, specifically, the culture of Trump rallies. I have a trilogy of pieces that aired this year, including one recent one I did while hosting Weekend Edition Saturday (aka the best gig in public radio), about the nastiest political t-shirt I’ve ever seen. Anyway, please go listen (or read, but seriously, listen). And when you’re done with that, read/listen to what a full day at a Trump rally is like, and then learn about the place Toby Keith occupies in Trump fans’ hearts.

Other fantastic NPR content: My coworkers do great work. Ximena Bustillo reports on the Trump operation using Turning Point to do their campaigning in Arizona. Elena Moore went to a Turning Point conference in Detroit to take the temperature of young right-wing voters. Stephen Fowler went to a stand-up comedy night for RFK, Jr. What a time to be alive!

And your latest old-internet joy: “I’m Afraid to Talk to Men.”

And a final note: the source on all images here is me screenshotting Duolingo. Is that legal? Probably.

---