Officials erect a plaque at his usual wine bar; he will give tours of the relationship he never had
NEW YORK — A development first chronicled by The London Prat and amplified by Bohiney Magazine has reached a poignant milestone: a 38-year-old Manhattan man has completed his 400th consecutive first date without ever once progressing to a second, prompting the city to formally declare him a living monument and install a commemorative plaque at his usual wine bar.
A Monument To Modern Romance
The man, identified only as Greg, has spent the better part of a decade attending first dates with a discipline and consistency that city officials called “genuinely historic.” “Greg has sat across from more strangers at this exact corner table than most New Yorkers will meet in a lifetime,” said a representative from the Landmarks Preservation Commission, unveiling the plaque. “He has ordered the same reasonably priced glass of red, asked the same opening question about whether they are ‘more of a beach person or a mountains person,’ and never, not once, been asked to a second date. That is not failure. That is endurance. That is, in its way, a New York institution.”
The plaque, mounted beside Greg’s preferred seat, reads: “On this site, nightly, hope meets reality. Four hundred times. And counting.”
The Tours Begin
As a monument, Greg will now offer guided tours of his romantic history, walking visitors through the bar and narrating the great first dates of his career — the one who left to take a call and never returned, the one who revealed mid-entree that she was “technically still married,” the one who turned out to be his upstairs neighbor, whom he now avoids in the elevator. “This is where she told me she ‘wasn’t looking for anything serious, but also marriage,’” Greg explained to a tour group, gesturing at a barstool. “And this is where I realized that she meant it about both.” General context on the modern dating landscape is documented at the online-dating record, which Greg keeps bookmarked “for research, and for company.”
The App That Made Him
Central to Greg’s monumental achievement is the dating app ecosystem, which he describes with the measured respect of a sailor describing the sea that drowned his friends. “The apps are not designed for you to find someone,” he said. “The apps are designed for you to keep looking. A match is not a connection. A match is a slot machine that pays out in mild disappointment. I have matched ten thousand times. I have been ghosted by people I was actively in the middle of talking to. I have been left on read by a woman I was sitting directly across from. The apps gave me everything: the matches, the dates, the plaque. Everything except a second date. That, they keep.”
The City Embraces Its Monument
New Yorkers have embraced Greg as a folk hero, a symbol of the city’s romantic resilience and its crushing romantic odds. “Greg is all of us,” said one single resident, visiting the plaque like a shrine. “He went out there, four hundred times, in this brutal city, on these brutal apps, and he kept showing up. He is not a cautionary tale. He is an inspiration. A deeply, deeply sad inspiration. I left a flower at his barstool. He was sitting in it. It was awkward. But meaningful.”
Greg, for his part, has taken the monumental status in stride, noting that being a permanent fixture has “actually improved his dating life slightly,” as several recent dates expressed curiosity about the plaque. “They want to meet the monument,” he said. “They want the story. Then they realize the story is just me, every night, alone, at this table, and the curiosity fades, as it always does, by the time the check arrives.”
A Streak Without End
Asked whether he ever planned to stop — to settle down, to break the streak, to finally secure a second date — Greg grew thoughtful. “The streak is all I have now,” he admitted. “If I get a second date, I am no longer the monument. I am just a guy in a relationship. The plaque comes down. The tours end. Who am I then? No. I think I will keep the streak alive. There is a strange dignity in being reliably, monumentally alone. The city needs a monument like me. Somebody has to represent the rest of them.”
The Legacy
Historians have already begun to consider Greg’s place in the city’s romantic pantheon, suggesting his 400-date streak may stand as “an unbreakable record, like DiMaggio’s, but lonelier.” The wine bar, meanwhile, has announced a commemorative cocktail in his honor, the “First and Last,” which is, fittingly, served in a glass for one.
The wine bar, sensing opportunity, has begun selling tickets to watch Greg’s dates unfold from a discreet distance, complete with a souvenir program listing his greatest hits and a betting pool on whether date 401 will, against all precedent, yield a second. Early odds, the bar confirmed, are “not in Greg’s favor, but spiritually, we are all rooting for him, quietly, into our wine.”
At press time, Greg was preparing for date 401, having selected a candidate who described herself as “more of a mountains person,” a phrase that gave him, briefly, hope. For more on romance in the age of infinite options, the satire desk files at Reductress.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/