I’m back at the Meet-Cute Café. I call it that because of how many meet-cutes—charming accidents like the ones that bring the main characters of romantic comedies face to face—happen here. Strangers spill each other’s coffees then lock eyes and realize, “We are about to engage in a whirlwind courtship with a perfect three-act structure.” In other coffee shops that might happen, what, once a decade? In here it happens multiple times a morning. And a lot of the coffees have dairy in them. The floors are disgusting.

What makes the spills so frequent, the meets so cute? Is it the cheap, lopsided mugs? I’ve had plenty of time to ponder these questions. I’ve been coming here for two years and nothing has happened for me.

Morning after morning, I buy a coffee and a croissant for three dollars total. (The Meet-Cute Café somehow still has ’90s prices: there must be SOME magical realism at work.) I type on my laptop like I’m doing right now, cast my eyes around in hopes they’ll catch someone else’s, give up, pack up, and go. At a certain point the eye-casting became less about trying to meet a future love interest and more about trying to figure out what everybody else in here has that I don’t.

Like, I check all the boxes: I have a funny best friend who’s SO ready to riff on the ups and downs of my new relationship, if only I would get one. I have an apartment too big for me to realistically afford. I’m movie-star attractive but I wear a believably broken-in jacket! Besides, I’ve seen way less attractive people than me pair off in here! People with glasses!

I even have a golden retriever named Bogart. Like, WHAT? Would hate to have someone on a first date ask me how he got that name and respond with a charming story that only later, at an emotional turning point, will I reveal the tragic other half of, COUGH, Casablanca, COUGH, dead fiancé liked!

Instead I am a fifth-year senior of this place. I’ve witnessed wave after wave of hetero meet-cutes, same-sex meet-cutes, even polyamorous meet-cutes involving Rube Goldberg sequences of water glasses and espresso cups falling like dominoes, causing entire future polycules to look up and simultaneously realize they’re gazing into the eyes of the fourteen pieces of their life they’ve been missing.

I’ll be honest, those hurt my feelings the most. They feel greedy.

Coming here every day is genuinely affecting my quality of life. I don’t even have a job that makes sense to do remotely from a coffee shop. I’m a bus driver. It’s a problem that I’m not driving a bus right now.

Writing this all out is good for me, actually. I’m becoming disenchanted with the Meet-Cute Café in real time.

Maybe today is the day I meet the person I was really meant to meet: myself. Maybe I’m about to cut to a montage of self-love (but not that kind): me blissfully pedaling through Central Park on a bicycle built for one. Me ambling through a flea market, showing myself a record I would like. Me bedding myself down for some self-love that IS that kind.

Maybe once I fall in love with me, then and only then will I be ready to meet my soulmate. Like they say on RuPaul’s Drag Race: If I can’t love myself, how the hell am I supposed to love somebody else? Can I get an amen up in this Word document?

They say it’s exactly when you stop looking for love that you find it. I am trying to be conscious of this but not so conscious that it becomes its own version of “looking for love” and circles back around to not working.

Either way: I’m OUTTA HERE.

Wait!

You’ll never believe what happened when I reached down to the power outlet just now to unplug my laptop…

I shocked myself.