ATL Courtship Connection: Duds, Fireworks, and Harry Potter

Some Courtship Connection dates are more exciting than others. We haven’t had any drinks thrown or boots knocked on the first date yet. But this is New York, and it’s bound to happen eventually.

This column brings you the tales of two couples. One couple had the best of times, and the other had the worst of times. Let’s start with the tragic date. I set up these two top law school grads at top firms, because they named constitutional law and constitutional theory, respectively, as their favorite law school classes, and they had named Supreme Court justices on the opposite sides of the political spectrum as their favorites. I thought that would lead to some sparks. I was wrong.

They met at Scratcher’s in the East Village on a Tuesday night. He said:

I showed up, she was cute, but we just didn’t really click. I don’t have anything bad to say about her, but it kind of felt from the very beginning that we were on different pages. We come from very different backgrounds and had very different political beliefs. Not sure what the idea was in putting a Scalia guy with a Ginsburg girl? When we called it a night, I think we both felt there wasn’t anything there.

The idea was fiery disagreement! Instead, it just resulted in nothing in common and nothing to discuss. She said:

As amusing as the the pairing of an southern evangelical Christian and a liberal from the mid-Atlantic must have seemed to you at the time, it produced rather luke-warm results. We realized pretty quickly that we came from wildly different backgrounds and perspectives and were several years apart in age. It wasn’t unpleasant or awkward, but we just didn’t have anything to talk about.

They both listed themselves as the 26-30 age range. It sounds like she found him immature though.

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Before you start thinking I’m a terrible matchmaker, read on. The other couple — a Biglawyer and a law school student — got along quite well indeed. We have our second incident of a kiss on a Courtship Connection date…

He’s a grad of a top school working at a top firm. She’s still working toward getting her degree. I paired these two based on their humorous responses to my question about what they would be doing if they weren’t lawyers. She said she’d be “in less soul-crushing debt,” and he said he’d be “watching a much smaller television.” Also, I looked them using my patented digital stalking techniques (and Facebook), and they were both hot.

They met at The Room (her recommendation) in the West Village on a Tuesday night. He said:

It was a perfect spot for a blind date — dark and relatively empty. When I arrived, she was already sitting at the bar waiting for me. She was easy enough to find, since it was a weekday evening and the bar was relatively empty. My first thought was great pick, Kash. She was very pretty and looked great in the outfit you described as “black and white dress with black boots.” However, I was a little surprised that instead of finding an associate typing away on her blackberry, my date had in her hands what appeared to be a thick stack of papers that could only be a law school outline. Would a law student really go out an an ATL blind date during the week right before finals? The answer? Yes. I know that when I was in law school, I wouldn’t have gone out during the week before finals. So, I definitely appreciated the effort — especially after I had been so flaky trying to schedule the date.

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The studious student said:

You may be improving at this! He arrived on time, always a plus in my book. We didn’t have to rely on talking about the law for long as we quickly discovered we went to the same school for undergrad and stuck around for a while after graduating. After confirming he was a liberal, I decided to stick around past the first drink.

He said:

My date and I quickly discovered we went to the same undergraduate school and had both spent extended time living in Washington, DC. We even had a couple of mutual acquaintances. As former Washingtonians, we had to talk politics (our views mostly lined up) and we both lamented the cost of going to law school and the difficult job market for recent graduates.

My favorite part of the date was hearing my date’s lament for Harry Potter’s loss of his owl Hedwig in the final book of the series, the Deathly Hallows. I always thought the saddest part of the Harry Potter books was the loss of Dumbledore, but for her it was the loss of Hedwig. His loss had never struck me before, but I was compelled by her explanation of the literary pointlessness of his death. Hedwig never hurt anybody and his death served no literary purpose. I guess the owl didn’t have to die — she convinced me.

Sounds like a magical first date…

She said:

Conversation flowed well and led to ordering a few more rounds. After we’d been there for a few hours, we decided to wrap it up. He picked up the check, which I would normally protest, but things had gone well. Also, he has a job and I subsist on loan money. We split a cab back to our places, but when we got to his neighborhood decided another drink at 1am on a Tuesday was a good idea. He was bit more aggressively flirty at this bar, perhaps due to drinking since 9. He went in for a kiss, I went along, why not! As it was approaching two I think we realized our respective obligations the next day called for a final wrap up. We kissed again before I left and he asked if he could see me again. I said to call me after finals.

Biglawyer is no Golden Snitch and did not include the kiss in his write-up, but he did say it was a fun night:

On the whole, it was a very enjoyable night. Thanks ATL.

And finally, because I know you’re all wondering, the issue of whether certain races are predisposed to certain character traits was not discussed.

Yes, that kind of discussion would probably have led to the wrong kind of sparks.

Congratulations, you two. I hope more comes of this. JK Rowling has provided myriad plot devices for dissection on future dates.

Earlier: ATL Courtship Connections