been in my local scene about four years now and i have finally worked out why dating in it feels strange.
there are about thirty of us who actually turn up to things regularly. of those thirty, i would say most have at some point been involved with at least one other. some of them several. there are two people who have both dated the same three people, which is not gossip, it is just visible, because we all sit at the same long table once a month.
so every new possibility comes with a history attached. she went out with him for a year. he and she ended badly and neither has said what happened. i have twice found myself getting on well with somebody and then realising halfway through the evening that the person opposite me is somebody else’s recent ex and that there is a whole thing i am not being told.
i am not judging anybody, to be clear. it is a small scene, this is what happens, and i am part of the same web.
what i cannot work out is how to date inside it well. do you ask? do you not ask? how do people here manage the overlap without it turning the whole room into a soap opera.
