PRISM international

You’ve all been emailing us asking “please, please, how do we date casually?” We finally have the answer, after a fashion. Here’s M.L. Henderson’s “How To Date Casually,” 2nd runner up for Prism International’s 2025 Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction, as chosen by judge Christina Cooke. There’s a lot to love about this piece; see for yourself.

Sophie Crocker

Executive Editor, Promotions

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How To Date Casually by M.L. Henderson

Put on the corduroy mini-skirt, the purple one, even though it’s February. Wear those tall socks that reach the middle of your thighs. That’ll combat the cold while still showing a couple inches of soft skin. You love that thigh-highs are back in style. It’s an “Anything goes,” period for fashion and you reap those benefits. 

You haven’t bleached your roots in a while, even though you have three-quarters of a bag of powdered lightener from Sally’s Beauty waiting in the cabinet at home. Along with a bottle of volume 30 developer, the big bottle, right next to it. You’ve got all the fixings, too. The hair paintbrush and the plastic Chinese takeout box you use as a mixing bowl.

But you don’t need any of it. 

Dark roots with platinum blonde hair are in. And so are you, bitch.

It’s your third first date this month. You love to date. 

The part of you that loves dating casually is your big throbbing ego. It feels good to be good at it.  And it’s nice to always be busy. So busy that your dates think you’re mysterious and unavailable, which translates to them that you have goals and ambitions, and that you are independent.

It’s wild what people come up with. You’re actually swiping on Tinder, opening the floodgates and letting the compliments pour in. 

You love it because dating is something you can do that a lot of people can’t or at least can’t do well. It may be your only talent and you’re fine with that. Most people are brimming with anxiety before first dates and seconds and thirds, even if they really like the person. Especially if they really like the person. 

For the first date, you always pick the place, because you know leaving it up to them means they’ll either hem and haw about it until you don’t even want to go anymore OR they’ll choose somewhere awful and you won’t be able to say anything about it, because you already told them, “I don’t mind either way!” like an asshole.

So you choose a brewery with cement floors and low ceilings and gritty regulars. You go there a lot. You pick it, because it’s a taproom which means no restaurant, no pub fare, not even peanuts. The date can last one beer or ten, if you want it to.

You’ve been honing your beer-chugging skills—just in case of an emergency. Maybe the kind where someone more exciting calls and wants to meet up. Or the kind where you show up for a date only to realize it’s your second-grade teacher, but you didn’t know until you saw him in person and then you put it together that he knew exactly who you were from the moment he swiped right, and then, you gotta get out of there, fast.

Overline your lips. Finish with a lip-plumping gloss.

Text Johnny and say you’re right around the corner when you’ve just pulled out of your driveway. 

He writes back no problem, I’m at a table when you walk in to your right. 

When you get there you make sure you can get a good look at him before you sit down. You make sure he is not your second grade teacher. He isn’t. You are only half relieved.

On to the next matter of business. How do you say hi? This may seem unimportant, but you know it sets the mood for the rest of the date. You go for the gentle one-armed hug. You always have a bag on the ditch of your elbow, so they don’t think you’re about to embrace. The awkward part starts when they get there first, and they’re sitting down. What then?

This is your favorite master-of-first-dates move: you walk up to the table with a bit of pace in your step, to act as if you rushed there, even though you said OMW when you were eating your pre-dinner snack or shaving your pubes. 

When you see him, you give him a smile, but not too big, then a gentle arm squeeze and sit down. They will never forget you.

Your ego swells, veins pulsing. 

He’s happy to see you. You can tell he thinks you’re hot. You think about how you want to keep him. But then, again, you want to keep all of them, because you remember the most important mantra when it comes to dating casually: Always have a line-up. 

Have a line-up, have a few on the bench, have a few in the parking lot, have one waiting in your bed. That way, you can ride that first-couple-of-dates high ’til the wheels fall off. 

Plus, you know if you keep them all, no one can touch you and by that you mean no one can piss you off. You won’t care if they don’t call. You won’t care if they’re sleeping with other people. You won’t have time to notice. 

Leave your body. Think about how the only part of casual dating that you haven’t mastered yet, is knowing when you’re done dating that someone.

Think about how the part of you that actually likes dating, only exists for a narrow window of time. 

It exists before your dates’ red flags show themselves and by show themselves, you mean when they start to wave gallantly in the wind, because normally, you wear blinders. Peripheral vision? You’ve never heard of it.

Return to your body. Realize he’s trying to ask you if being bisexual means you’ll want a boyfriend and a girlfriend at all times. You tell him bi doesn’t mean two, it just means more than one, and that you could see yourself potentially involved with every gender. He asks you how many there are.

         You slam your beer and say you have to go. You hug him goodbye. You notice that he’s shaking and it makes you wet. You decide maybe you will go out with him again.

After all, it’s only the beginning. Why harp on it? Why even take it seriously? Those I’ve-never-met-a-queer-person comments will only be temporary, right? And the potential problems and potential pain that could hypothetically follow those comments could be fleeting, right? 

Drive home with both eyes open.

Think about your date tomorrow with Ty and wonder what you’ll do. You’ve gone out with him a few times already. Consider cancelling on him and then change your mind, because, so what if he sells drugs as a full-time job and everyone knows it?

Go out to dinner with Ty. Go back to his place after to find that someone smashed through his double-paned window with a baseball bat as if it were a battering ram while you were out to dinner, and then stole his whole bank account, which he had softly and carefully folded, secured with rubber bands, and placed in a sock inside one of those plastic dressers you get for a dorm room. At least you weren’t there when it happened, right? At least you got to see a big, bad drug dealer bawl his eyes out while you swept up the glass. Hold him until he falls asleep.

A few days later, you start missing your ex-girlfriend, Elise. Think about why you broke up in the first place and decide it wasn’t that big of a deal. So, what if she questions your queerness on a regular basis? And so what if she asked you if you see yourself marrying a man or a woman when you haven’t thought about who you’ll marry since you were 12? And so what if she tried to get you to call your parents and come out to them and tell them that you’re gender fluid and explain what gender fluid means all while you were trying to enjoy a nice craft beer and check out polaroids of patrons mooning the camera on the bar wall? 

Text her and ask if she wants to hangout in a low stakes kind of way. Go to her place, the little shed on her boss’s farm. Drive past a clawfoot tub in the middle of a field. Park and go inside. Sit on her futon. Smoke weed with her while she cooks dinner even though you hate being stoned. Have a nice time at first, until she asks you who you’ve been seeing lately. Try to breathe correctly and struggle, because even though you’re baked as hell, you still know what’s coming, which is the question of whether you like men or women more and you’ll answer like you have before, and tell her the truth, the actual truth, that you don’t know and you have no preference, but she won’t believe you. Again. She’s convinced you like men more, because she’s the gay police or some shit.  

Go home. Look around. Acknowledge you hate casual dating.

Your plants are dead. You’re late to work every day. You realize you do have other talents besides dating, talents that you care about and don’t want to throw away for cheap attention. 

Realize your peace has been burnt to the ground and you only noticed when your eyes filled with ash. 

Your best friend, Noah, calls. They’re the one who’s been watching your shit show all along and has just decided to pipe up now because they can’t handle being around the fires you start anymore, either. 

You meet up with them at the laundromat. While you watch your t-shirts and thongs spin in the suds, they ask about your end game, and you don’t know the answer. And  then you think ya know maybe I do want a serious relationship, you’ve just been picking the wrong people.

You delete your dating apps because you can’t be trusted, clearly.

You wait for someone to ask you out, the old fashioned way or whatever. A couple months go by. Someone finally does ask you out. He’s a pharmacist, named Craig.  

You get to know him. You circle back in your head to decide if he’s good for you. You think, okay, he’s older, has a steady job, and his only ex is the girl he lost his virginity to ten years ago during his undergrad. He’ll never leave you for someone else, you think.  This is a good idea.

It’s nice for a while. You like the same things; you go hiking together and try new restaurants. The only flaw you know about so far is he doesn’t want to have anal sex, which you’re not super into anyways, but the fact that he doesn’t want to rubs you the wrong way. But you let it slide because he’s sweet and you have fun together. 

Until you’re in the car on the way to his lake house. And the U.S. is in the middle of one of the most intense political and social conflicts of the last 20 years and he mentions how he’s sick of hearing about it when you bring it up and your stomach drops because you know that being a bystander is the same as taking the wrong side and at least the drug dealer and the gay investigator had the same values as you.  

You think of his soft cushy life, and it disgusts you. And you remember the other day when he told you he was at work and Rite Aid was so busy that he had his first panic attack and stole an Ativan. You wince. His first panic attack. 

And you’re not sure what to do because you still like him at least as much as you liked the other people you were seeing. And he’s a safer bet, right? He won’t leave. 

But then he does leave you, for a person that looks just like you, and oh no! You realize you’re not as special as you thought, bitch. 

And you think about him for months to come and one day, out of the blue, you text him and ask if he’s still with his boo thang. He doesn’t reply.  But his new girlfriend does, from her high horse and she’ll yell down to you and ask you why you texted him and you’ll say, Because this is my phone and I can do whatever I want with it. Then you block her.

Then you’ll lie on the beach with a cigarette in your mouth in a Care Bear onesie, alone, because it’s Halloween and you can’t stand to be around your friends any longer, because you’re too sad to socialize, because you’re not over a pharmacist.

And then it’s suddenly summer again and you go to a sexy party in Provincetown, and you’re so turned off you don’t even make out with Emma who totally comes on to you in the pool. You’re lying on a large obnoxious swan pool float.

 She’s in the water holding onto the edge of your swan and she’s completely naked and looking up at you with her glassy eyes and perfect tits, half submerged but still right there. Everyone’s almost naked, besides you. You’re in basketball shorts and a sports bra. 

But you can’t kiss her because you have this gross and earth-shattering revelation that you make people feel the same way you’re feeling right now and probably have many, many times. 

You wish she would choke you with her bikini top strings, if only she was wearing one. Because that’s what you deserve.

She’s holding your hand but you don’t hold hers back. Your fingers are as limp as a dead fish. She asks if she can join you, on your float,  but you tell her that you don’t think there’s room.

You can tell she’s growing tired of pursuing you without reciprocation, but she’s not giving up yet. She lays her head on your swan. Her smooth wet hair touches your arm. 

Giggles and squeals from the nearby hot tub brush past your ears, and you think about when you first started dating.  It was when you first realized you weren’t half bad-looking. When the remarks in the school cafeteria turned from “got enough chips, fatass?” to people calling you anorexic. Freshman year of high school. You didn’t think you were perfect but you could wear crop tops now. You’d walk by teachers in the hallway. “I can’t believe her mother lets her wear that,” they’d say loud enough for you to hear. 

Then there was Leon Nowak with the pretty girlfriend and he didn’t wonder what your mother thought. 

When you were a freshman and he was repeating senior year, you had an art class with him, but people that were liked by everyone and always had something charming to say still made you nervous. Everyone liked Leon. People were always laughing around him. You weren’t sure if he was funny, you never heard him tell any jokes but you knew it was easier to be amusing when you were attractive. He was tall and you could see his chest through his shirt. His shoulder-length blonde hair was straight and he always wore it tucked behind his ears. You could tell it was silky just by looking at it. 

So, one day you walked in and he’d already been sitting on the big table that held  paint and charcoal underneath in its cupboards. He’s sitting there with his legs spread and sleeves pushed up, facing the double doors going into the art room. You were looking mostly at the floor as you walked through those doors, as you normally did, a habit you learned before you grew six inches in a year and your acne cleared.

On that day he spoke to you anyway, loud enough that everyone could hear. They were all behind you filling up their stained plastic trays with gobs of oil paint and filling up old yogurt cups the teacher had brought in with water, to wet their brushes.  His voice was so full you couldn’t ignore it. “Your hair looks good like that, it’s different from how you normally wear it, isn’t it?” he said.

Curling wands had just become a thing. You bought one with a Wal-Mart gift card. It was $14.99. You still have it. 

You looked up and even though you saw there was no one else in his line of vision you still asked, “Are you talking to me?” 

“Yeah, I am,” he said. You thought it was even more bizarre that he didn’t laugh at you for asking. 

You blacked out when he asked you for your number. You slept together once. School was canceled and your parents weren’t home. The night before you had been up late texting him and he kept begging for you.

After that you walked with your head up and you looked people in the eyes and you got with whoever you wanted because everyone is so, so easy and you knew it and no one else did.

You and Leon had a good run, enough to get what you both wanted out of it, you thought. When you get older you tell people the story once in a while, when you’re  home for Thanksgiving and you’re at the only bar in town, because everyone will remember Leon. You say he left her for you and you still wouldn’t be with him. You don’t remember if that’s really the truth or not. 

All you remember for sure was that being with Leon was insignificant. It was empty. It was like you both rode the Superman at Six Flags or drank til you were dizzy. It didn’t make you sad, it just made your stomach hurt, but only for a little while.  You thought it was like that carnival game where there’s shallow barrels and you’re supposed to toss softballs into them, and if you make the ball  in, you win. But only if it sticks and they never do.

If ending things with Leon had a sound it would be the noise softballs make, bouncing out of barrels, at the village park in July. It would be the sound of that game everyone plays, where no one wins the prize. 

“I’m gonna get a drink,” Emma says and releases your swan.

She glides to the small pool ladder, lifts her knees to her chest to place her feet on the bottom rung, grips the ladder with both hands, and ascends in one smooth motion.

You hear the water crash down around her.