Marlene considers herself a person who goes on a lot of dates. When she was young, her mother insisted that she dated a man, a wealthy man. So, she arranged her some dates with rich men. At first she kind of understood why her mother was doing it, she didn’t want the life of her daughter to be like her’s, but she wasn’t thinking about her daughter’s opinion, just her’s. So Marlene spent half of her life dating men she didn’t even like just to please her mom.
The start of the dates always were the same, they introduced themselves and sat in a restaurant or danced at a disco while awkwardly trying to get to know each other, and before going back home they kissed on the cheeks. When she was getting in her 30’s she started to get scared of her mom because she didn’t like any boy she met, she probably had dated like thirteen men and each one was worse than the last one.
She once went on a date with a man obsessed with dancing, he dragged her into the dancefloor and started saying things like “for the shimmy, for the shimmy” while dancing in a weird way, they didn’t last long.
She dated for five months a guy that though he was living in the 80’s and was a rockstar, he had long black hair and an insane obsession with his best friend. But when her mother discovered that he was disowned, she immediately told Marlene to break up with him. That may have been the only relationship that Marlene enjoyed. A couple of months later, she started dating the best friend, but it was fucking awkward because her ex was always there, so she broke up with him and told him to date his best friend because it was so obvious that even she could see it.
She also dated a man with a posh accent that was always working on his business, he had a tailor shop, he was always disappearing and leaving the house at stormy hours, she got tired and broke up, her mother wasn’t happy at all but was what she had to do.
People at college that had heard her story laughed at her and called her a slut and a money whore, but for Marlene it was worth it if she was still able to live her love story, but the millions of those men wouldn’t make worth spending a lifetime with them.
Marlene knew who she was from a very early age, and when she was on a date with this guy called Fabian at a disco she saw her, dark skin, brown hair with dreadlocks, green eyes and the sexiest body she has ever seen, it was like if Chris Hemsworth and Zoë Kravitz had a daughter, she was in front of Aphrodite herself. She couldn’t hold back herself from moving towards her and introducing herself leaving Fabian behind, but who cared, he had drank so much that he wouldn’t remember her tomorrow. Marlene approached her slowly and surreptitiously took a drink for the bar and sat next to her, and to make her presence known she “accidentally” hit her softly with her elbow, and when she turned around everything flowed naturally, as if they had already met, as if they were destined to meet in every universe.
Marlene got Dorcas' number and they talked for hours everyday, they had meetings more than two times a week, they would go to a cafe or a library, they would make a picnic at the meadow or just lay on the sofa. Two months and a half later they started dating, her love felt like tulips blooming in spring, her kisses were like presents in winter, her hugs pictured the leaves falling in autumn and her smile gave her the satisfaction that a cold lake in summer gives you. And finally, for the first time in her life, Marlene felt that this was what she was meant to do and she couldn’t care less about what her mother would say about it.