My dating career in Vancouver started with a dare and ended one week later with a love letter.

I now sport a simple but shiny silver band around my ring finger that is a token of hope in a city where falling in love is less than easy. I met my husband at work, like my grandmother who met my blue-eyed Ukrainian grandfather in a pudding factory: a safe and effective way to meet a mate. I’ve dated, I’ve flirted and I’ve had many a one-night stand in other places around the world. But only once in the six years that I lived single in Vancouver had I gone on a date and pursued romance with a stranger.

It began one day during that wonderful time of year in Vancouver when the rain clears for more than two days at a time and full pink cherry blossoms are revealed all over the city. I was on the patio of one of my favourite restaurants on Commercial Drive when I spotted him. He was gloomy, handsome, a little sickly looking and definitely between a hangover and being drunk again.

I told my girlfriend that I thought he was ridiculously attractive. She didn’t agree with my observation and challenged me (in her usual direct manner) to ask him on a date.

“What?” I said to distract her from my increasingly hot cheeks.

“Ask him out!” She goaded. “Go on, why not?”

I slouched further into my plastic chair. She was in one of those contagiously daring moods. Half a beer in her and not yet aware of the wild potentiality of spring afternoons on sunny patios. She turned to face the man who was sitting with friends at the other end of the patio.

“My friend wants to ask you out!” She yelled. I put my head in my hands. She didn’t buckle. She didn’t laugh. It was the perfect play. An alternate title for this piece could be “How to be a Coward and Pick Up Men Using Your Friends.”

He said, “Oh, yeah.” Raising an eyebrow.

He wrote something on a piece of paper, walked over to our table and handed it to my smirking friend while he looked me in the eye. Then he turned and walked into the restaurant to pay his bill. He was nonchalant and it made him so much more desirable. My friend read the paper and smirked with satisfaction, handing it to me.

It read “Andy” and a number. He walked back out to where his friends were waiting and didn’t look at me again. They however did, smiling and checking me out as they left.

He’s incredible! I thought. When I called the number the next day I got his voicemail and laid it all out. I explained that I was slightly embarrassed by my juvenile pickup, but I was still interested to meet him. If he wanted, he could call and I would show him a good time. He called me back that day and his voice alarmed me. I didn’t expect to hear from him. He asked where we should meet and I gave him the central location of Grandview Park on Commercial Drive.

Walking to the park that evening, I got the feeling someone was following me. When I arrived at the cenotaph in the middle of the park, I sensed someone was close behind me and I turned abruptly. The sunken-eyed man standing but a nose hair away announced he was Andy. The interaction was slightly weird and I liked that.

I had a bottle of wine and told him that we should drink it in the park. He said that was a good idea. We talked about dating in Vancouver and he explained that he got asked out a surprising amount, as he didn’t think he was that good-looking. I liked the self-deprecation.

We drank and talked in the park all night — told our life stories. I bummed half his cigarettes and chain-smoked them. He told me he was on the rebound from a relationship he thought was “it” and I gave him plenty of ear and empathy. I was falling in love. He was great. Smart. Had an interesting, meaningful career. He was weird, but not mentally ill like several of my ex-boyfriends.

I walked him home and he invited me up. I looked at him with my kindest eyes and said, “No, I think I’ll pass.” He hugged me and told me I was wonderful. Special. And he was right.  But he didn’t call again.

I became what one might call obsessed. My best friend Kali served at a restaurant on the Drive and she served him breakfast regularly. She kept me up on all the gossip of his life by eavesdropping and told me at great length all the details about his best friend, for whom I believe she had her own secret obsession.

A week later I was out at a bar, scanning for Andy, attached still, wishing he would appear. When I spotted his best friend, Kali confirmed his identity.  I asked her if she would dare me to get his attention. She said no, but I did it anyway. I slammed my back into him, pretending I was drunk.

He turned around and said, “Sorry, man, I didn’t see you.”

“No worries! Next time I bump into you, you can punch me in the face,”  I said, with a little more anger than I intended and kind of spit in his face a little.

He looked at me strangely and went back to his pool game.

Later that night, as I got more bizarre and inebriated, I walked up to him, kissed him on the mouth and called him by his name, telling him that I knew he was a good man and that he should be proud.

He stood there dumbfounded, looking even more disturbed than before. His thoughts might have sounded something like, “Why is Andy’s date harassing me? Maybe I should stay near the bouncer; yeah that’s a good idea.”

That night I wrote a love letter to Andy on my old Underwood portable typewriter, a machine made for lovers. It was the letter to end my dating career and punctuate the fate of my love life. While I live in a city that is cold and wet, where alcohol is expensive and hard to get, and no matter how pretty or smart you are, you need guts to meet a man, I  found the deepest most satisfying love that I could ask for. I sealed the letter in a red envelope and typed his name ever so carefully on the outside and never sent it. It read as follows:

To the man I don’t know,

I met you recently. I won’t say where because I don’t want to reveal my identity. I listened to you talk, some of it I heard. I smiled at you. Not at your intelligence, but at your dark child face. It was tonight that I realized I want you. I was lying in bed, my mind astray and your face passed by several times before I realized I was thinking about you — really thinking about you, wondering if in the short moments I’ve seen you I might know you already.

You’ve been lost somewhere in the length of my life and I am remembering my future with you. If love is not in the future, then I am doomed. So now you’re present in the fabric of my sheets. This letter is my chance to release you  from your fictional self and show me who you really are. Or am I coming on too strong? I meant to say am I there with you in your cheap apartment somewhere in this cold-hearted city too?

For fun. A secret.