First/Last Date: flash fiction by writer Emily Hoang
The dating world in the age of apps and scrolling can be rough.
How do we present ourselves on the app in a way that is enticing but is also true to who we are? How do we then communicate our authentic selves in person with a complete stranger we’ve only met on the rectangle devices that we cart around everywhere? How do we open ourselves to intimacy in a manageable way after experiencing heartbreak?
I am so excited because this week I am featuring a flash fiction piece called First/Last Date written by my friend Emily Hoang.
Emily and I were in the fiction program together in grad school, and along with our shared love of the band Odesza and all the San Francisco adventures we got to have outside of class, we also got to spend a lot of time reading and responding to each other’s work.
I love the way that so much of Emily’s work incorporates food. In her stories, food is never just about food — she always uses food to highlight the tensions and intimacies of her characters and to get right into the root of the human experience.
First/Last Date is no different. In this piece, we get to be inside of the head of a narrator as she goes on a first date at a restaurant.
As someone who is taking small steps into the dating world after healing from heartbreak, and also as someone who struggles with being my authentic self in various social situations, this piece really resonated with me, and I hope it does for you too.
You can read and listen to the full piece and check out Emily’s answers to some questions I asked her down below.
First/Last Date by Emily Hoang
He looks exactly like his picture, that is to say—ordinary. His head symmetrical. His hair just settled in from a cut. His ears on the verge of being too big. He is waiting for you outside, leaning by the entrance of your restaurant of choice, Pete’s Diner.1 You both give each other an awkward hug, then he opens the door for you. You get a booth that overlooks the parking lot with the restaurant’s neon sign, a bright sigil for cupid to cast his spell. You take it as a good sign when he leads the conversation, asking the right follow-up questions and avoiding any talk of work.2 But it’s all just small talk. The restaurant is an eclectic place, with decorations from all over world3, disjointed from its menu that is supposedly Asian-fusion. He is especially enchanted by a wall stacked with masks. Which one would you wear? he asks. You take a long moment to decide. All the masks have similar expressions with slightly different exaggerations. You pick one off the right. It is a depiction of a devil, with a long nose, overarched eyebrows, and a sinister grin. When the food arrives, your conversation shifts to the taste and rating of the place’s overall ambience. He gives a slightly more generous score. You’re used to exploring fusion restaurants, blurring the line between authenticity and not. Toward the end of the meal, the waitress asks about dessert. He agrees to take a look at the menu, but your mind4 was already made before the waitress came over. He glances over. You say you don’t want anything. When the waitress comes back, you are surprised to hear him order their crème brûlée. It is a noble attempt to prolong your time together because how could you leave now without looking rude? Or without pretending to offer to pay for your portion of the meal? So, for another five minutes, you both talk about your favorite desserts until the waitress comes out with a ramekin of custard and two spoons. You want some? he asks. When you decline, he pulls the dish closer to his side5 of the table. You fill the silences with funny stories. He laughs, and you do too, out of embarrassment. When the check comes, he grabs it first. You offer to split it, but he says to get the next meal. You both exit the restaurant and say goodbye with a pause brimming with the promise of another date6. Until next time. As he walks to his car, the neon lights flash his shadow in and out, walking further and further away until all that’s left is the essence of a warmth you thought once lost.
A misleading name for an Asian fusion restaurant you and X used to frequently go. How long does it take to stop associating a place with a person?
Work was a surprising link for you and X, partly because of how different your fields were. You both had a mutual admiration for the amount of precision performed in your respective fields, X in medicine and you with art.
One of the shared places you both wanted to visit was Italy. On the first date, X made some Italian dish. Later, when you tried looking for the recipe, you found out it wasn’t even a real dish. The name, meaningless.
You both were on the same page, or so you thought, until X changed their mind. X wanted more, from their present life and from a partner. And why couldn’t X have a happily ever after. When did the ending you both imagined become so split?
X was a hot, new surgeon with money and pride after paying off all their student loans and needed a partner in the same track. Taking a risk on an artist was foolish.
You’re not sure the date. But you knew the time because it was right before sunset. You and X met at a burger joint on campus that sat between his dorm and your old one. You try to pretend like you both are still in a relationship, straining to keep your voice from breaking, which it did only an hour ago. When the meal is done, X waves before skating down a slope, the bright orange hues juxtaposing his clothes. In all black, he’s a shadow fading out of view from a sun setting to welcome back the darkness. All you can do, is say hello.
1. What inspired this story?
The form of this piece definitely came to me first. When I found out you were going to have communication as one of your themes, I thought about forms that could show the limits of communication and centered the plot around that. I love exploring the boundaries of form and have always wanted to write a piece that included footnotes. I started thinking about how past experiences haunt us and tried to encapsulate that tension between past and present in this piece.
2. One of the many things I loved about this piece was the way it captures the complexities of the dating world: the weirdness of meeting someone for the first time after only talking to them online, going to restaurants that you’ve gone to with past dates, the significance of each person’s food choices and the restaurant itself, memories of past significant others and dates popping up, the question of who pays, not knowing of what comes next, and the ways that the intersectionality of our identities can impact all of these things. What do you think are some of the unique challenges that folks face in the modern dating world?
Thank you, that means so much. Technology has definitely made it a challenge to date. Creating an online profile was so hard for me. Choosing the right pictures, trying to write short, witty responses to prompts, and even considering the order of these things—all that matters—and thank god for friends who can help. How much of your profile reflects your authentic self? On top of this, trying to sus out people online is a whole other challenge. How much of their selves is reflected in their profile and in your chat? The only way to really know is by meeting up with them in person, which can be such a vulnerable space. In my piece, you don’t really know anything about the narrator until she starts expressing her thoughts and within the footnotes, all of which would have been inaccessible to the other person. Dating has always been a challenge, and it’s even more complicated with technology. Hopefully this doesn’t sound too cynical. There have been success stories, so there’s hope!
3. As this narrator shows us, one of the challenges that comes with dating is this potential of heartbreak. We can fall for someone, and then they can choose to leave – which then can put us in a place of having to pursue intimacy even with those memories, the grief and hurt, and the fear of it happening all over again. How can we navigate the dating world after experiencing heartbreak?
I love this question. Picking up all the pieces and putting yourself out there again takes time, and you have to really mentally prepare yourself to go back into the dating world again. In the piece, there are a lot of things that remind the narrator of her past relationship, and it creeps into this first date. I don’t think those reminders ever go away, but its effects on us lessen over time.
Heartbreak can be one of the most painful experiences. For me, I need time to grieve and time to find myself again outside the relationship. This usually means listening to sad songs on repeat and crying my heart out first, then going back to all the hobbies and things I find enjoyable, like going to my favorite coffee shops and bookstore, staying physically active (kickboxing and running have done wonders in helping my mood), and hanging out with friends and family to feel love in other spaces. I’ve been blessed with an amazing support system that’s helped me through heartbreak so many times. I frequently did these things when I was single and still have a routine now, but through heartbreak, it’s even more important to hold on to the things we find enjoyable.
The potential of heartbreak is always close, but whether this first date works out or not, the narrator feels hopeful. What matters is that she put herself out there. Whether it’s to be in a relationship or to meet new people, I think we’re just trying to find connections to feel a little less alone in the world.
4. Something that this piece made me think about is how with relationships and even just on dates, each person changes as a result of being together/interacting (for the better or worse), and maybe there's some sense of our "before" selves that can potentially be lost or altered during the conversation itself or in the aftermath of the relationship. How do you think we can balance the process of forming connection with being able to bringour authentic selves into different spaces?
This is such a great question, and I’m still trying to navigate this. There are so many layers of myself that got peeled back during the dating process, which I tried showing in this piece through two extremes. A first date and a past relationship. We don’t really know too much about this narrator but can see that part of dating is performing. During the first date, she feels like she can’t leave because of how she’ll look if she doesn’t offer to pay for her portion of the meal. In her previous relationship, she had to stifle her grief to appear ok enough to meet with X. In the first, she’s performing based on certain dating expectations around who pays for the first date. In the latter, she performs to hold a certain image of herself and as a way to protect herself.
It takes time being your authentic self around your partner(s). I definitely agree with the point about how our authentic self is always changing based on the interactions we have. There has to be a lot of communication involved. I think our authentic selves naturally come out when we feel safe in the relationship to do so. Hopefully with the right partner(s), we can learn how to bring our authentic selves out in the relationship together.
Meet Emily
Emily Hoang is a Chinese Vietnamese American writer from San Francisco and attained an MFA from USF. Her work can be found in Ice Queen Magazine, GASHER, among others. When she's not working on her short story collection or novel, you can find her roaming around the city looking for good eats.
You can find more of her work at: https://emily-hoang.com
I am so honored to have the opportunity to have been able to share Emily’s work on here. A big part of why I’ve created this newsletter is to help us all feel a little less alone in the world when it comes to sexuality, and I think seeing and hearing stories that resonate with our own life experiences in some way can go a long way in relieving the shame we might feel about this part of ourselves.
A big thank you all for reading! If you liked this piece, please click the ❤️(it helps more readers find the work), leave a comment, or even share it/restack it on Notes.
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