A STORY by RACHEL A.G. GILMAN
Blonde Daddy
Rachel’s first date with Frosty was a trip to the Union Square farmer’s market shortly before the first pandemic Christmas. He showed up wearing the standard Brooklyn boy uniform: suede jacket featuring shearling trim with skinny jeans cuffed above Blundstone boots. Rachel, though, was more intrigued by his oddities: a tuft of naturally white-blonde hair (the hue people sometimes took on in the midst of a quarter-life crisis) and big, blue eyes that bounced behind the thick lenses of his glasses.
They found a plant for Frosty’s new apartment and picked up a package of Rachel’s favorite apple cider doughnuts before sitting down at a coffee shop. Rachel liked hearing of Frosty’s newly-quit job that involved the peculiarities of Connecticut politics; how his mother coped with her recent move to the suburbs by wearing black turtlenecks to town meetings, standing out amongst a sea of Patagonia fleeces. Frosty seemed to like things about Rachel, too, such as their shared fondness for George Saunders. But the moment that sealed the deal for Rachel—the one she mentioned to her friends—was when Frosty paid for their drinks and clumsily bumped his hand into the COVID plexiglass around the cash register. That was when Rachel knew she wanted to see him again; why she was glad that evening when he sent her a photo of his settled new ficus and confirmed he felt the same.
Four days later, Frosty arrived at Rachel’s apartment for date two. They made miso soup, cutting up ginger and scallions whilst comparing sad girl pandemic albums. His was Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Rachel was more of a Punisher girl. But they agreed that listening to The Weeknd felt like getting badly kissed at a party you’d prefer to leave.
Rachel noticed Frosty frequently zooming in on his phone to read the recipe. She asked him why and learned that the rapid, back-and-forth movements of his eyes were not—as she’d assumed—from nervousness but rather albinism. Same went for his pale skin and hair.
‘I nearly lost my left eye in college,’ Frosty said.
A cyst he’d named Petunia had tried to dislodge his retina. He’d undergone vitrectomy surgery, which corrected the issue and left him spending the last six months of senior year with his head down, typing his thesis on his iPhone.
The story oozed into the cracks of Rachel’s heart so much that she didn’t even mind Frosty underestimating the heat on her stovetop and burning olive oil into the bottom of her good soup pot. She simply opened the window to prevent smoke inhalation while wanting to kiss the blush of embarrassment off his face.
Later that evening, Frosty finally asked if he could do the same to her.
His initial attempt was a little hungry, a commonality Rachel had found amongst most pandemic petting sessions. But the second, third, and fourth were wonderful. Rachel liked putting her fingers in Frosty’s hair as his moved up her thighs. She liked taking his earlobe between her lips and whispering how Shakespeare was responsible for sexualizing the body part, making him laugh. She liked leaning against his homey-scented chest as he admitted he didn’t do hook-ups, that he would prefer to see where things between them went.
He helped with the dishes, kissing her twice at the door as he left then texting her once he was home; a Spotify link to a Swamp Dogg album: Love, Loss and Auto-Tune.
Really, Rachel likes every part of Frosty. But the only thing her body seems able to do with ecstasy is filter it through madness before spitting out anxiety.
‘Does he read?’ her friend Allison asks.
‘He finished Ocean Vuong with his book club,’ Rachel says. ‘Now he’s on The Bell Jar.’
Allison snorts. ‘When you write this one, call him Blonde Daddy,’ she says. ‘You know, because of his hair, and the poems?’
‘God, no,’ Rachel says. Writing about Frosty will mean things have gone wrong.
They arrange their next date—the Rubin Museum then Miss Lily’s—but the week in between drives Rachel up the wall. She can’t stop Googling third date expectations, giving no heed to the idea that not everyone lives their lives to the standards set in Cosmopolitan.
When Frosty tells her that he gets mugged one evening on his way back from the bodega, Rachel responds quickly, but worries perhaps too quickly, or too sweetly, or too short. Should she have added those two, pink heart emojis? There is, unfortunately, no article covering what to do if someone you’ve had two dates with and are really starting to crush on has their wallet stolen when picking up milk. There aren’t even very many concerning her other problem: handling general sexual inexperience thanks to a global shutdown.
‘He’s going to stand me up,’ Rachel tells Allison on the phone as she walks from her apartment to the Rubin. ‘I can feel it.’
‘That’s just the moon,’ Allison replies. ‘It’s been your problem all week.’
‘Is that why I told him all of his planning made it obvious he was a Virgo?’
‘No, you said that because it was hilarious.’
Rachel’s phone buzzes. ‘He texted.’ She looks at the screen. ‘The subway was running late.’ Shortly after, a white-blonde head is coming down the sidewalk. ‘Wait, I see him.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Allison says. ‘Text me later. Blame the moon!’
Rachel ends her call and tries to smile at Frosty then remembers he can’t see it behind her mask. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘It was a friend. She’s freaking out. Something about the moon . . .’
Frosty blinks.
‘Let’s just go inside.’
He collects their pre-paid tickets as Rachel uses the free hand sanitizer, which leaves a sticky film on her fingers. They walk further in and start up a long, winding staircase.
‘How was your week?’ he asks. ‘You went to see the holiday decorations, right?’
Rachel nods. It’s horrifyingly hard to get a word out with her lungs battling a combination of exercise and unease. ‘It was fine,’ she manages. ‘Yours?’
Frosty tells her he spent the morning posting flyers with the DSA and volunteering with his brother at a community garden. Then he mentions graduate school applications and looking for a part-time museum job, plus recently experimenting with shrooms. As they reach the last set of stairs, where Rachel has almost caught her breath, he stops.
‘I think I have to use the bathroom.’
Rachel turns. The bathroom is down the stairs. She tries to laugh it off.
Finally, they make their way to the photography exhibit featuring black and white shots from 1990s Bangladesh. Frosty has appropriate, intelligent comments as they move through each room and Rachel tries to emulate Meg Ryan in that scene from When Harry Met Sally where she and Billy Crystal go to the Met, though it’s a bit difficult to be cute around depictions of countrywide starvation.
It’s a little easier in the gift shop, where for some reason they’re selling Jack Kerouac novels. ‘I never liked him,’ Frosty says, pointing at On the Road.
Rachel shakes her head. ‘Me neither.’
‘Like, we get it. You’re on a road trip. It’s not that big of a deal.’
Rachel laughs, taking her first big breath as Frosty offers her the folded crane that came free with his purchase. Carefully, she places the paper bird in her purse.
Her nerves are almost calm by the time they reach Miss Lily’s, the Caribbean-themed oasis on the other side of Manhattan. They’re carded before ordering cocktails then exchange IDs. Frosty is an inch shorter than he claimed on his dating profile, which makes Rachel wonder what the perceivable difference is for men between 5’8” and 5’9”, and what men believe the perceivable difference is for women swiping on them. Then, they perform the most outward display of public intimacy during a global pandemic: tasting each other’s drinks.
But things go downhill somewhere between rum punch one and two. Rachel starts rambling and describing Veselka, the Ukrainian place down the street where her friends in undergrad went to cry; where she once got dumped. An appetizer arrives but they haven’t ordered entrees.
‘I haven’t planned the evening any further,’ Frosty admits. ‘I guess we should probably eat dinner.’ He pauses. ‘We could try Veselka.’
Rachel doesn’t want to ask Frosty what this suggestion means, so she nods, popping a deep-fried cod ball into her mouth.
It’s been a bit since Rachel was last at Veselka but, as she remembered, it isn’t exactly a date spot; not unless your chosen aphrodisiacs are the smell of boiled vegetables and gaudy decorations of the variety you might find in your great aunt’s house, the one who when you were twelve asked you loudly in front of your entire extended family whether or not you had gotten your first period.
Rachel and Frosty secure a table outside before he dips indoors to use the restroom. She pulls up the menu on her phone.
‘Just you?’ the waiter says, setting down a rolled napkin of silverware.
‘What?’ Rachel says. ‘No.’ She points to Frosty’s backpack in the chair. ‘I’m here with someone. He’s in the bathroom.’
The waiter fills a glass of tap water, putting up a finger. ‘One?’ he asks again.
Rachel frowns. ‘No.’ She holds up her index and middle fingers the way Winston Churchill famously did, though she is entirely aware of the gesture’s connotations. ‘Two.’
The waiter walks away and Frosty returns, right as the rum punch in Rachel’s stomach decides it wants an encore appearance.
‘I’ll be right back,’ she says.
Luckily, the cocktail makes it into the toilet and not her sweater. Rachel flushes, closes the lid, and takes a seat.
This is not going well, she texts Allison. We’re at the sad Ukrainian place.
Allison doesn’t respond, so Rachel rinses her mouth out at the sink and splashes a little water on her eyes. She considers giving herself a pep talk, too, but the only thing she can think to say is that people on the Internet these days seem to think ladies with stomach issues are hot, so maybe this is a good thing.
Returning to the table, she sees Frosty had perogies delivered.
‘I got the goat cheese ones,’ he says. ‘You like those best, right?’
Rachel nods and takes a bite. The soft, hot cheese sticks to the roof of her mouth. She should accept this as a sign from the universe to not say anything, but she doesn’t.
‘I kind of need to know what’s going to happen after dinner,’ Rachel says. ‘I don’t want to sleep with someone I’ll never talk to again.’
Frosty sits up. ‘Do you take me for that kind of guy?’
‘No, no!’ Rachel reaches out, squeezing his thigh like a stress ball. ‘I’m just . . . I’m trying to explain to you what’s going on in my head.’
‘It sounds like you don’t want to be physical without an emotional connection.’
‘I . . . don’t know if that’s it.’ It is, given that Rachel has never had a boy spend the night in her bed, but the way he says it makes it sound a little as if she is saying she can’t hook up unless a leprechaun has blessed the mattress beforehand.
‘I’ve been in love twice,’ Frosty blurts out. ‘I don’t feel that here.’
Of all the articles Rachel has read concerning third dates, this conversation was nowhere to be found: how to handle the opposite of love bombing. What she should say is that love is not really relevant right now, that love could not be further from her mind.
What she says instead is, ‘I’ve only been in love once,’ then, ‘Well . . . at least, I think.’
Frosty tips 25% when the woefully misinformed waiter brings their bill. He says he will walk her home, say goodnight, and leave. It’s the first plan he’s proposed that Rachel dislikes.
As they reach the corner of 27th and Third, the last crosswalk before her apartment, they wait for the light to change and Frosty falls quiet. Then he leans his head on Rachel’s shoulder. It causes something in her to illuminate like the Christmas lights they’ve passed, even more so as she reaches out to gently muss his white hair. Its oily coating lingers on her palm until they are standing outside her building.
‘Do you want to come up?’ she asks. ‘It’s still early, and, you know, it’s not like we can’t do anything.’ This is the less pathetic version of the truth; that even though the evening isn’t perfect, Rachel doesn’t want it to end because she isn’t ready to lose the—perhaps false—Christmas light feeling quite yet.
‘We could watch this ‘90s New York dog documentary a friend sent me,’ Frosty suggests. ‘It’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen.’
Rachel nods, though hopes that she, too, is not on that list.
They slip their coats off in her kitchen where Frosty kisses Rachel softly. He then queues the documentary on her laptop. Immediately, Rachel realizes it’s the exact kind of absurdism she loves. It’s as if Petco were trying to make a commercial in the style of the first season of Sex and the City. She’s fascinated by the super single doctor who winds up toys for her pooch that her mother brought back from Disney World (a resignation to never having grandchildren) and the wannabe actor who uses his rescue pup to entice women for sex. She most especially loves the moment the two run into each other rollerblading in Central Park. From a distance it could be a scene out of a Nancy Meyers film but up close it’s just horrendous.
After the film finishes, it’s fairly late, and the 4 train to Crown Heights is only bound to become more unreliable. But Frosty doesn’t make a move to leave. Instead, he cues up more YouTube videos. Things soon start to get sexy.
To the soundtrack of Marcel the Shell and Kazoo Kid, Rachel starts undoing the buttons on his shirt. She forgets to tell him as she comes (extremely quickly) while he rubs her through her tights, but he doesn’t miss her subsequent foot cramp trying to move on top of him in bed. She manages to undress him but he struggles with the hooks of her bra.
‘Need a hand?’ she asks.
Frosty groans. ‘Don’t hurt my pride.’
Eventually, he strips her. Well, mostly. He removes her underwear but leaves on her skirt. Rachel almost convinces herself she is saving the moment as she takes her time: her fingers tracing the slight white stubble on his jawbone, her tongue grazing his Adam’s apple then finding the soft, hollow spot at the base of his neck to please between her lips.
‘This feels so good,’ Frosty says. ‘Having a real bed again. My frame broke recently. It’s killing my back.’
Rachel freezes. His pleasure isn’t from her at all. It’s from the quality of her furniture.
This thought populates her brain as she starts stroking his penis. She’d forgotten the texture, how it sort of resembles the upper cartilage of her ear she sometimes rubs while contemplating a piercing. She’s also forgotten about a dick’s ability to get hot, and hard, and leaky. As she continues stroking, she notices Frosty’s breathing sounds the way hers did walking up the stairs.
She stops. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Yeah.’ He sits up. ‘You’ve asked me that a couple of times now.’
‘Have I?’ Rachel has been too busy staring at the posters of Stephen Colbert above her desk to notice much of anything else.
‘It’s a very sweet impulse,’ Frosty says. ‘But, it’s not necessary.’
Rachel nods. He’s getting soft. She returns to work.
This pattern goes on for hours: the touching, the kissing, the hardening, the softening. It’s like Frosty is some sort of foreign appliance for which Rachel has decided not to read the manual but instead to test out every button until something makes breakfast. Eventually, Frosty starts pushing her buttons. He tries her back, her butt, and her kneecap before realizing the way to really undo Rachel is through her neck.
He nearly knocks her off the bed when pushing her hair away from her shoulder. He breaks up the kisses with the quiet question, ‘Do you want me to make you come again?’
Rachel does. ‘But,’ she adds as he starts moving his mouth down her chest, ‘Do you know my surname?’
Frosty pauses. ‘Uh . . . Gilman?’
He’s correct, though that’s not the answer Rachel wanted. She thought the first time she had someone under her sheets that he might care about her, or at least care enough to be certain of her legal identity in case she got murdered later.
Nevertheless, she wraps her legs around his waist. She mutters in an airy, softcore porn voice she didn’t know she had that she’s about to come.
With determined annunciation, as if ordering a sandwich from a crowded deli counter, Frosty replies. ‘I am going to, as well.’
After, Frosty moves away. Both of their faces seem surprised.
Rachel looks down, her hand glistening and sticky with a substance not her own. Her eyes pivot further south, to a thick, cream-colored mark not on the bed, but her upper leg.
‘My skirt . . . ’
Frosty winces. ‘You know . . . I don’t know how to say this . . .’
‘Just say it.’
‘You come faster than any other girl I’ve ever hooked up with.’
Rachel swallows as everything on her starts to itch. ‘I need to take my contacts out.’ She rolls out of bed and looks at the illuminated digital clock face on the cable box. It’s nearly two in the morning. ‘I guess you should probably spend the night.’
Frosty nods. ‘I’ll have to wake up early.’
Rachel ignores this as she steps into the bathroom. She looks up in the mirror and pauses at her reflection. Her bangs have formed corkscrew curls in the middle of her forehead and the cystic acne that’s lived in the lower right corner of her mouth for months is as big, red, and swollen as ever, but at least now it matches her freshly kissed lips. The color even peppers the breasts that she usually hates and the stomach she would give anything to give away. Strangely—and more significantly, sober—Rachel starts to smile at everything, even the crystalized stain on her skirt. She feels comfortable, alive, bordering even on pretty. The knowledge that it took a man looking at her (a legally blind one, no less) does mangle some of the endorphins but she tries to enjoy the others.
After Frosty showers and returns to bed, he braids Rachel’s cold feet with his and rests his heavy glasses on her nightstand. Rachel closes her eyes and tries to relax against the will of her ripening anxiety. It’s dawning on her that she has no idea what she’s doing, that he’s barely more than a stranger. Uncomfortable heat radiates and sweat prickles everywhere. She almost wants to wake Frosty and ask if he can feel it, too, and then—
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Four hours have already passed.
Rachel reaches over to silence Frosty’s phone and notices text messages from his older brother alongside notifications from the dating app where they met, each box a hot metal rod piercing her body. He’s still asleep with an outline of morning wood. Part of her wants to do something to make up for her terrible performance the night before, to feel what Frosty experienced in easily bringing about her orgasms. She has never been good at (generally loses her mind over) being bad at things.
Soon enough, Frosty opens his eyes and starts swinging his legs over the bed’s edge, already on his way out. Rachel watches as he fumbles into his clothes, kissing her on the lips as he puts on his jeans. It’s the sort of thing that from a distance looks pretty good but up close isn’t; where his ‘see you soon’ feels more like a final, fond farewell.
Rachel thinks about this as the day passes. She goes for a walk and tries to work out the knot in her hair that Frosty made last night. Passing a fancy stationery shop, she half-wonders if they sell apology cards along the lines of ‘Sorry for edging you into oblivion’ before realizing she is probably the only person daft enough to need that.
Before bed, Frosty texts her a link to another sad girl album he thinks she would enjoy.
The next morning, he texts again as she is running late for work, absent-mindedly putting on the clothes still sitting on her armchair from Saturday. Her eyes scan the message as she grabs her umbrella. It should be snowing but instead, it’s a thunderstorm.
I don’t think we should see each other again in the way that we have been, Frosty says.
Rachel locks the phone and her apartment door, realizing in the elevator she will now have to spend the day smelling like a guy she won’t see again.
‘Hey,’ her supervisor says as she stumbles in. ‘How are you?’
‘Well,’ Rachel replies. ‘I sort of just got dumped.’
His voice cracks. ‘Well . . . you look great.’
‘Really?’ Rachel moves her coat to the side and extends her leg so the stained skirt is on display. ‘Do I?’ She wants to make sure he knows the crusty mark is exactly what he thinks it is.
Her supervisor opens his mouth and closes it. Then he opens up his drawer and pulls out a small bottle of Brooklyn-made whiskey with a card. ‘Merry Christmas.’
That evening, Rachel answers Frosty’s text in the form of a voice note that by the time she sends it she isn’t even sure she means. He responds by emphasizing that it isn’t that he never wants to hang out. He never thought he’d meet someone like her on a dating app, whatever fucking condolence that’s supposed to be. It’s just that he doesn’t want to date her, that he thinks they should remain strictly platonic. I hope I’ve been clear that I’m really in a weird place. It’s as if he has no idea Rachel is basically the mayor of Weird Place Town, that she can show him all the good restaurants; definitely better places than Veselka. He suggests reconnecting in January.
Rachel goes home for the holidays. She takes up freelance erotica editing. By chance, there’s a story of an albino man who gives a woman the best orgasm of her life. The universe’s twisted sense of humor doesn’t amuse her.
She watches Frosty the Snowman and complains that the plot is ridiculous, everyone accepting the idea that Frosty might hopefully return.
She buys a t-shirt that says Don’t cry over boys without bedframes but never wears it upon the realization that it’s classist.
Eventually, it’s into the new year.
‘This just isn’t what I wanted,’ Rachel says to Allison.
No texts have been exchanged with Frosty but she has seen him update his Hinge profile to include his fumbling into the coffee shop register plexiglass as his worst date fail. He’s got new happy pictures, too. Rachel, by contrast, still has the stained sheets on her bed and the paper crane on her bulletin board. She’s living in a finite version of the past.
‘I get it,’ Allison says. ‘But, he also told you on a third date he wasn’t in love, right after talking about shrooms. Plus, he still likes all of his ex’s posts on Twitter. The girl with your same green eyes and strawberry blonde bangs.’
The ex is a new development, but the other things Rachel had ignored because they didn’t serve the reality she was desperate to occupy. It always works for her stories but less so in her life. Rachel is both thankful and frustrated that Allison will not indulge it. Eventually, Rachel doesn’t let herself either.
One day at work once the weather is warmer, Rachel takes a break from her new responsibility updating metadata for Jack Kerouac’s backlist and walks to The Strand bookstore, hoping that breathing in a title or two she prefers will inspire her to finish the project. Her eyes wander to her favorite section, new releases, and to a purple felted jacket: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. A book by George Saunders.
Picking it up, Rachel skims the cover. She kind of wants to text Frosty and ask if he knows, if he’d want to buy a copy and read it, then maybe convene over coffee and share their thoughts. She thinks she is now actually in a place where she could do friendship, if the offer is still somewhere on the metaphorical table, buried under the last few months of paperwork. Flipping through the book’s fresh, stiff pages, part of Rachel muses if that’s all she needed in the first place: someone to share common interests with, to help her feel a little less lost.
But Rachel doesn’t text him. She can’t. That’s just not how these things work. In real life, the snowman doesn’t return. He melts. Same with the dating app missed connection. It’s too hard to become friends if you meet with the intention of fucking.
All Rachel can do is try not to be sad or frustrated because it’s not ultimately worth it. Or, by the logic of the Christmastime story, she could attempt to rebuild him out of snow cones and a thick pair of glasses, hoping a catchy song and dance number combined with a little magic might bring him back. But that would be ridiculous. Where would she find enough snow in springtime in lower Manhattan?
Rachel instead closes the book and gets in line to pay before making her way home. Inside, she takes off her coat and sits down to read. She doesn’t mind the cold.
Rachel A.G. Gilman (she/her) is the host of the Wine and Pine reading series. Currently based in New York, she spends her days in the offices of Feminist Press and her nights writing love (and lust) stories of all sorts. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and an MSt from the University of Oxford. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.