Last night in the East End, just two days before Valentine's, Cidercade turned into a color-coded close-up of the state of Houston's love life.
Green, yellow and red wristbands flashed under the glowing screens of Galaga and Street Fighter, signaling single, "it's complicated" or taken in an arcade so large it rivals our city's sprawl. Matching heart-shaped balloons floated overhead and blanketed the arcade floor as hundreds of heart-ached Houstonians (about 250, the bar manager told me), looking for love, or maybe a story to tell, drifted between noisy pinball machines and skeeball lanes, scanning each other's brightly colored wrists before even looking each other in the eye.
It's easy to feel disconnected from each other (and from the idea that someone out there is actually looking for the same thing you are) in a metropolis that stretches wide enough to keep people isolated in their own little corners. And inside Cidercade, that discontent ran through nearly every conversation I had, the frustration bubbling up with each sip of overpriced fermented apple juice.
Here are some of the Houstonians brave enough to put words to it.
Nick, the disillusioned single
Nicholas Yee, 42, wore a green wristband.
A doctor, martial artist and self-described "badass," Yee is clearly confident and seemingly established. But he's also incredibly frustrated with trying to find a match in Houston. Dating apps, he said, are flooded with inflated expectations shaped by social media algorithms.
"Meeting a decent person is difficult," he said. He believes people are chasing what looks good on Instagram instead of what's real. ("Someone who's 6 feet and pretends to make $500,000 a year," he said.)
"I know what I have to offer," Yee said. "I'm fine being alone for a while, but it'd be nice to find someone."
The 20-somethings
When some of the young women looking for love last night described their dating experiences, the tone shifted to caution.
Samantha Herera, 23, said her recent return to dating in Houston has been marked by cheating and another spectacular case of deception. A man who had been messaging her looked nothing like his photos when he picked her up.
"I ended up getting catfished so bad," she said. "And after that, I didn't think I wanted to date anymore, but I don't know. I'm still kind of giving it a try anyway."
Kara Solis, from Pasadena and also sporting a singles wristband, said dating apps like Hinge, Tinder and Bumble have drained the fun out of meeting new people.
"Not a lot of people actually get together anymore," she said. "Either it's online or it's just hookups. And, honestly, it just kind of sucks."
DanThy Nguyen, 23, of the northwest Houston area, said she's been trying to put herself out there, as well, both on dating apps and at events like this. It has been rough, she said, especially when you meet someone for the first time and "you don't really know what the vibes are."
"I feel like we're living in kind of a society where we're a little bit more closed off these days," she said. Still, she believes Houston offers something worth sticking around for.
"You meet so many cool people from so many different backgrounds," Nguyen added. "That's the beauty of Houston."
Taken, but also not exactly
Not everyone there fit neatly into green, yellow or red.
Baytown native Chris Palomarez, 49, and 44-year-old Dickinson resident Saylor Fontenot wore red wristbands, though they joked about wearing green ones for fun because they're not officially official.
They first met 15 years ago because — and this part is fun — she dated his best friend. Then they lost touch as they both got married and their lives unfolded, and recently, after they both separated from their spouses, they reconnected on Facebook.
"We picked up right where we left off," Palomarez said.
But he admitted that, after a divorce and years off the market, dating is a pain: "You've got to start all over every time."
Naomi Negron, 27, who moved to Houston from Pennsylvania two years ago, said she and her partner are proof that online dating can work. She met her boyfriend on OKCupid, and they've been together a year and a half.
Before that, though, she found the dating scene complicated.
"Houston is the biggest small town you'll ever be in, so somehow a lot of people know each other," she said. (I can confirm that trying to find love in such a city inevitably leads to some pretty awkward run-ins.)
And too often, she added, the problem is a lack of emotional availability.
Which brings me to those singles who didn't want to narrate their love lives (or, perhaps, their lack of them).
Houston's quiet singles
A few singles in green wristbands lingered alone in empty booths, picking at slices of pizza while the sharp clanking of couples playing air hockey swallowed the room around them.
One man played a Fast & Furious racing game by himself, eyes fixed on the screen as if the crowd around him didn't exist. A woman leaned against a Big Buck Hunter machine, declining, quite gently, my request to talk. (I must emphasize that they weren't rude. They just weren't interested in turning whatever they were feeling into copy, understandably so.)
That, more than anything, felt true to the night.
Even with hundreds of people packed into the massive arcade, beneath heart-shaped balloons and under the guidance of a color-coded system meant to simplify the lost art of going up to someone at a bar and asking them on a date, some people kept to themselves.
Houston works the same. It's big, noisy as hell and filled with some of the most interesting people you'll meet anywhere in the world.
And still, one can stand in the middle of it and feel so alone.
