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In A New York Minute

Did you ever see the movie Sleepless in Seattle? Well, there’s a bit in it towards the end where Meg Ryan is sitting in a fancy restaurant at the top of a skyscraper close to the Empire State Building in Manhattan. And it’s Valentine’s night. Anyway, she’s having dinner with the guy she’s engaged to, but has come to realize he just isn’t the man she’s meant to end up with at all.

Instead, she’s spent the whole movie with this mental fixation about her soulmate-to-be, who is actually, tonight, just a few streets away at the top of the Empire State, waiting for her. Course, this being a Nora Ephron movie, the only slight catch is that she hasn’t actually met the soulmate guy as of yet; she’s only ever heard his voice on the radio via one of those confessional call-in shows, which actually sounds quite stalker-ish when you come to think about it. But that turns out to be a minor detail because when Meg Ryan eventually dumps the nice-but-dull fiancé and legs it over to the Empire State, she finds that he’s none other than … *spoiler alert* … Tom Hanks. Cue swelling orchestra finale and cut to the credits.

So that’ll give you a rough idea of how I was planning on tonight working out.

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How the date should have gone …

Well for starters, Jake might have actually have had the decency to look a bit like his profile picture. i.e., a thirty-something, on-his-merry-way-to-being uber-wealthy Johnny Corporate type. Wait till you see, he’ll turn up wearing a suit, I thought and will have to constantly fend off texts and emails about multi-million-dollar deals on his mobile – sorry, cellphone. (I’m a bit new to Manhattan, so you’ll forgive the odd European reference slipping in.)

Then of course, being the perfect gentleman, Jake would eventually switch the bloody thing off so he and I could really get to know one another properly. In my little fantasy, I figured that after an hour or so of animated chat, we’d would discover we had even more in common that we thought we had online, so he’d eventually suggest we maybe head on somewhere for a bite to eat.

Of course, part two of my dream-date daydream involved him whisking me off to a fabulously bijou little restaurant, totally non-touristy, the kind of place you only ever saw Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna hanging out in. Like the Monkey Bar, which I was always reading about in Vanity Fair, thinking it the epicenter of New York City gorgeous glamour. We’d have cocktails there and gaily regale each other with stories about life at the coalface of online dating. We’d giggle an unseemly amount at each other’s gags and start accidentally touching each other, so much so that other unfortunate punters on crap dates would throw envious eye darts my way and think, ‘see her over there? Now that is one lucky bitch.’

Naturally this would lead onto Jake suggesting dinner and absolutely insisting on paying the bill, with none of your let’s-each just-pay-for-what-we-ordered-and-by-the-way-I-didn’t-have-a-starter carry on. And after that he’d politely escort me to a cab, before kissing me lightly yet teasingly on the lips, movie-style. And of course he’d take my number, saying he’d call – then, shock horror, actually stick to his word and do it.

Oh, and one last addendum to my fantasy date? We’d have arranged to meet somewhere glamorous and chic, in the corner café at Bloomingdales for instance, or the Magnolia café in SoHo.

Not here.

Most definitely not here. Not in coffee shop/convenience store on the corner of 92nd West St and Battery Park. Mind you, I’m only a newcomer to Manhattan and the whole East/West thing still has me completely confuddled. But my sister Rachel, who I’m staying with and who’s been living here for years assures me that this is most definitely not somewhere you want to meet on a first date, albeit a quick coffee date.

‘He wants to meet you on 92nd West St and Battery Park?’ she said in disbelief when I told her. ‘What’s this guy planning anyway – to mug you? Worse luck is that I can’t even go with you to hang out somewhere close by, I’ll be stuck in meetings all day. So please just take my advice Amy and run while you still can, or else at the very least, cancel and rearrange for a weekend when I can come along to keep an eye on you. And, if you do insist on going, then keep your cell phone on at all times, with cab fare handy in your back pocket. Trust me, you might need it!’

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How the date actually panned out.