My best friend Jonny Fritz and I have always loved going on double dates together. Often we’re not even sure which girl is with which boy. It doesn’t matter. We appreciate it as a form. It’s capital-R Romantic, whether or not it’s romantic. But gesture takes preparation. We once went on a double date in Buenos Aires, a town where dates regularly begin after midnight. We had planned to meet at some remote walk near the port, which at the time at least had little to offer as far as eating and drinking that late at night. So earlier in the day we snuck over the water and planted some sangría and oranges behind a rock. Later that evening, walking along the water, the girls on our arms, we regretted out loud that we didn’t have anything refreshing like sangría or oranges. The girls agreed. “Oh well,” we said, then, pointing to the rock: “Wait, what’s that?” When we pulled out the refreshments, the girls— and there’s no other way to put it— lost their shit.

Unless I’m forgetting something, our last double date was at Fry’s electronics, with Kalyane and Magnus. The girls were kept in the dark as much as possible. I don’t even remember if they knew what Fry’s was. Fry’s had something that all dates need to succeed: a certain phantasmagoria. The Fifties, the decade, is a different thing than the phantasmagoria of the Fifties, which lives on into the modern world, and is the perfect atmosphere for double dates. I think the girls were pleased enough with Fry’s itself— the decor, the stock, the clientele. Then we took them to the diner, which had the works: Fifties music, diner food, tables outfitted in a few old convertibles. We already had them charmed by this point. But the kicker was yet to come. At the center of Fry’s, once you entered the spaceship, there was of course a small movie theater, probably one of the most underappreciated features of the Los Angeles Metropolitan area. Normally they had some sponcon running on loop, but nothing prevented you from bringing your own movies, and Fry’s had its own veritable concessions stand, with movie-sized candy and drinks. We brought Coming to America. And there were some technical difficulties, which I had to get some help from employees to solve. But the date was a triumph. It’s hard to see how it could’ve failed, with all the romance and phantasmagoria of Fry’s. We could have come to buy CDRs and it would’ve been absolute magic. How was the theater not a more regular thing for normal teens as much as for middle-aged adolescents such as ourselves? And how could— how can— Los Angeles let this Fry’s go? The place had a real “mixed temporality” and that’s incredibly difficult to replace.

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