He found me on the internet
My Trip with Todor, Part 2
Hello Wonderful Readers,
I hope you had a lovely holiday. Despite having Covid and then the flu and watching the neighborhood my mother grew up in being razed by a wildfire, I am keeping my promise to you. I’m here to tell you the story of how Todor and I met. Before I do that, I have one very exciting announcement.
Upcoming Topic on Misseducated Podcast: Open Relationships
Next week, I will be interviewing an anonymous girl about the successful open relationship she’s been in with her partner for the last four years. They do all kinds of fun things together, like go to play parties. While open relationships are common, I know very few couples that have done it successfully. She’s graciously agreed to be interviewed by me for the Misseducated podcast. So, if you have a question for her, please feel free to comment below if you are a paid subscriber, or you can respond to this email or text me. My interview with her should be great, but whatever questions you send me will make it even better.
Thank you so much!
I hope you enjoy the romance to come 😉.
Love,
Tash
💌 ✍️
He found me on the internet.
It’s Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024. At about 7:50 pm, I hold my breath as the Uber turns the corner and glides down the dark, vacant, mansion-lined streets of the Juarez neighborhood of Mexico City. I glance at the William Morris postcard in my hands. It has my scribble on it.
“Dear Todor,
Happy Birthday. I have no idea how old you are, but I hope you have a great time in Mexico City and that the peyote experience in Oaxaca serves the purpose you desire. Thank you so much for supporting my work. May this year be filled with exploration, curiosity, and discovery.
Love,
Tash.”
I awkwardly chuckle to myself as I place the card in my red leather purse. I am on my way to meet up with a man who I don’t know. And it’s his birthday.
You see, he, Todor, found me on the internet. He read my article about a peyote ceremony I did and DMed me on Instagram to ask for the shaman’s contact details (and he subscribed to this very blog while in the process. Hi Todor!). I gave him the shaman’s number without much thought. That article gets quite a bit of traffic, so I get contacted about it often. But Todor is different. He is the first one of my random readers on the internet to request my presence in person.
First, he asked me for coffee. I quickly told him I was only free for about half an hour in case I had to make a getaway. Then he asked me to join him for drinks with his friends at Soho House, a very swanky private club. It’s where I’m headed now.
I am wearing my black turtleneck dress, dark purple corduroy blazer, and black platform boots. I usually avoid wearing these boots in Mexico City for fear that I’ll be taller than everyone. But Todor told me that he is from Europe, so I choose to take the risk.
On the way to Soho House, I try not to think of all the men I have dressed up for this year. All the shitty dates, the pot smokers, the nice men who turned out to be cheaters, and the boring ones who were perfectly lovely, but I couldn’t force attraction to. Tonight, I decided to be shamelessly sexy, send it, and hedge my bets. I also am wearing my dark purple-red lipstick and plenty of makeup. I am showing up for these Wednesday night cocktails looking and feeling my best. Plus, I have a reputation to maintain as a writer living my best life in Mexico City. And my goal is to give this guy Todor, whoever he is, the best birthday possible. Still, before my Uber arrives, I text my friend, Sandra. I invite her to meet me later in case I need to abandon ship completely.
The Uber pulls up to a giant beige stone wall with ornate black ironwork on top. The double doors are closed, and a security personnel stands out front. The Uber stops. I gather up my belongings. I sway out of the car onto the street. I feel so tall in my boots. I feign confidence as I smoosh my lips together to make sure my lipstick is spread evenly.
“Bienvenida, señorita,” the kind, bald security guard says to me as he opens the gate. I give him a nod of appreciation that I hope doesn’t seem like entitlement as I slip inside.
Now, as my reader, I need to let you in on a little secret: I’m a member of Soho House. I’m not proud of this because the Soho House in Mexico City is very elitist. I’ve debated with myself. Maybe I should stop being an elitist prick. Maybe it’s all part of my brand. Maybe I just have to accept that I am a vanilla, gentrifying gringa. Still, I do get to take you, my readers, with me behind closed doors. So, that’s why we’re here: for your benefit and for the details of my first meeting with Todor in person.
I scan my Member ID in reception. I pace along the stone walkway. It’s so dark, and the lamplight is so dim. I can hardly see anything. The thumping music is deafening, but at least it’s the groovy beats of A Long Time by Mayer Hawthorne, one of my favorite songs.
I take a lap around the restaurant area and can’t seem to find him, though I have no idea what he looks like. His Instagram profile is private. At last, beside the turquoise brilliance of the swimming pool, I find Todor and his friends. I stride boldly towards the table because the last time I cared what a group of absolute strangers thought about me was…let me check…never.
Todor is sitting next to the pool. His friends are all in Mexico City on their way to a wedding in Queretaro. He stands up to greet me.
“Hey, Todor?” I ask. He seems a bit surprised that I actually showed up. He quickly gets to his feet.
“Yes. Tash, right?” he says. (I am sorry that he is reading this and probably thinks I’m getting this wrong. Yet, as my writing teacher has quoted me many times, a story told twice is fiction. And this is how I remember the sequence of events.)
“Happy Birthday,” I say, gently retrieving the postcard from my purse, “This is for you.”
“That’s very sweet,” he says. His face lights up when he smiles.
I get a good look at him up close. He has brown hair of a reasonable length. His height, his eyes, and his patient listening speak to me. He never interrupts me. He’s wearing a purple metrosexual jumper with pink and yellow flowers on it. Something tells me he bought it at Urban Outfitters or Topshop.
It’s amazing that my human brain does the tiny, silent attractiveness calculation in less than a second. One glance at him, and my brain jumps to sizing him up, churning like clockwork through the angle of this person’s cheekbones and hair and the position of his eyelids relative to his nose and his eyebrows, or whatever it’s doing. I get the answer less than half a second later. The inner clock of my intuition strikes.
“Yes.”
The rest of the night is whatever. I sit between his friends and have polite conversations, as a young lady from London is trained to do. Still, I feel a sense of relief. Todor reminds me how uncomplicated and instantaneous pure attraction can be.
Our conversation moves from the poolside to a dinner table. Todor sits at the head of the table, and I sit next to him. I learn that many of these friends are his coworkers, which was either a good sign because it means that they also like him as a person or it’s a bad sign because he might have very few friends outside work. Still, I like the fact that his friends are Londoners. In many ways, we have lived culturally parallel lives. I wonder if I find Todor a lot more attractive because he has been living in London, the city I grew up in, for over ten years, and is a native English speaker. Even though I love speaking Spanish, it is a relief to date in my mother tongue.
We chat late with his friends until they get too jetlagged and leave. Todor is kind enough to order me my favorite dish on the Soho House menu, a giant half-baked chocolate chip cookie pan, which he says is to celebrate my 1st Author Birthday. I published my first novel exactly a year ago.
As his friends leave, Sandra arrives. As we laugh together over the next round of drinks, I get the hint that Todor is into me. I catch his eye, or I giggle, as he pays close attention to what I say. He vows to remember little details about me and our conversation. This is his trademark, he tells me. Still, I don’t dwell on it. I choose to let this man’s actions speak louder than his words.
I let time go, let the clock run out, wondering what will happen when all our friends have retired for the evening. Todor tells us about the crazy shit that went down when he worked at Joe and the Juice, a very expensive London juice shop chain with a highly particular clientele.
“I’ve never told that story to anyone before,” he says at one point. He adds, “The truth is, I very rarely open up and let people in.”
It feels odd when he says this to me. Had he and Sandra and I not just been opening up and sharing more over rounds of cocktails? If he is opening himself up to me now, I wonder if he will ever close himself off to me also.
At around 11:30 pm, Sandra decides to call it a night. Todor kindly pays the bill.
“It was great to meet you,” I say, hugging him. My head fits snuggly in his chest. He is a good height for me. I want to stay and talk more with him, but I need to get home. I hug him a little too long, hoping to make my intentions clear. He seems to linger there. He lets me hug him, too.
“You too,” he says. “Maybe we could meet up again?”
“Sure,” I say, as Sandra thanks him goodbye.
As I walk out of Soho House with Sandra to catch her Uber, I feel a light ache in my chest. It tugs me backward. I look at my watch. It is almost midnight. I am 29 years old. I have so much work I want to do the next day. I know that if I turn around to see Todor now, my chances of sleeping are slim to none. Surely, I should be a good, grown-up girl and go to bed?
I follow Sandra out onto the street, frowning. My doubts are on the tip of my tongue.
“D-Do you think I should stay?” I ask her.
“If you want to,” she says. She shrugs. In a way, it confirms to me that he is safe. I mean, of course, he is safe. But I need a tad of nonchalance from Sandra to confirm that after three hours of conversation, I am completely wrong to believe that Todor is a decent man of a decent character.
“I mean, he seemed to be into me, right?” I say.
“Oh yeah, totally. I’m sure he won’t complain,” she chuckles.
“Right. Uh, c-cool,” I say, suddenly trying to reorient myself back inside. I am not sure what I am going to say to Todor when I find him in Soho House again. But I am sure my words won’t matter as much as the fact that I reappear. On his birthday, nonetheless.
“Bye,” I wave to Sandra.
“See you, babe,” she says.
I go to find Todor. The security guard lets me back in through the gates of Soho House.
Tune in next week to hear what happens when I surprise Todor by returning to Soho House.
Love,
Tash
💌 ✍️
