Pretty sure I could have read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest in the same amount of time it took to read this massive missed connection from a Columbia student. I guess they don't teach brevity in writing courses on the Upper East Side these days. Columbia University’s Bwog student-run blog recently posted this tediously-long screed sent as a campus missed connection from a guy who met two different women named "Kristine" at the bar. A helpless romantic, our coconut-water sipping Romeo ends up falling in love with the Kristine who looks just like Emma Watson and knows DFW and J.D. Salinger (look buddy, we've all read "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "Consider the Lobster".... and I went to a freakin' state school). Spoiler alert: Someone gets stood up in the end. 

via Bwog:

Dear Bwog,

I need your guys’ help in trying to find the girl I fell in love with (last night at 1020)

Yes, I’m serious. Yes, I said love. I also know that you laughed at the (last night at 1020) bit in the subject, but I can tell you with all my heart, that doesn’t matter. You can’t control where it happens.

I swear to God, all of this happened.

All I know about her is that her name is Kristine.

If you want to see why you should help me let me tell you the story:

I met her at the start of the night, around let’s say twelve. I think it’s more romantic if we say it was midnight. By some almost alchemical serendipity a booth had completely opened up and no one was filling it, so I pounced. I looked frantically around for someone to ask to sit so I wouldn’t be kicked out. The two people immediately to my left (I was facing the back of the bar) were facing the bar so I said excuse me loudly and they both turned around. I asked them if they’d sit with me to help me keep from losing the booth. They obliged me with what I genuinely think seemed to be a genuine, empathetic obligingness. I have a very acute sense of awareness about this, since I’m always worried that a girl might be thinking I’m creeping and wishing I’d leave. It’s my one real fear apart from like, you know, death etc..

But like I said they both seemed to really want to be sitting there, and we started talking. They noticed I was drinking a coconut water (hard to miss in it’s bright, baby-blue bottle). I told them I wasn’t drinking. I told them that I wasn’t here with friends. I told them I’d come here for the same reason I go to the gym. I came here because I’d been stowed away in my room the other fourteen hours of the day, addicted to the internet like everybody else, and not getting nearly enough sunlight or, of course, actual in-person socialization. That’s why I’d come to 1020. To sit ”around” people for an hour or two. I don’t know why this is considered as weird as it is, but let’s be real, it still is (considered weird). People think people at bars alone are drunkards or else creeps and rapists. It’s not fair to people who just want to people watch for an hour to feel less alone. But anyway, like, I digress.

So like I said I told them the truth , that I was here alone and I really appreciated them helping me save the booth, and they really did seem to smile genuinely at that, and that felt good. We talked about the usual things for a while. The one on the right was named Kristine, and so was the one on the left. This felt somehow serendipitous to me, as I am particularly bad with names. We talked about this, which led to a talk about social conventions and neuroses thereof, which led to a talk about J.D. Salinger and David Foster Wallace for fuck’s sake (sorry). She speaks French.

Pretty soon after that we’d gotten into a conversation about modern celebrity worship and general cultural decay etc. When Kristine (on the right) says of Kristine(on the left), “People always say she looks like Emma Watson.”

Now let me tell you a quick little aside here, because it’s important. When I was about eleven my father brought home a book for me from a business trip to England. He said all the kids there loved it. Within five pages I knew why. Ever since, I’ve been a Potterhead. Not in a like, unhealthy way or anything, I just really love the books. Fastforwarding a bit because this is a long story, I’ve had an imaginary little celebrity crush on Hermione Granger since I was around 12.

So when Kristine (on the right) said that about, I was looking down. When she said it I looked up at Kristine (on the left). Something happened right then that’s never happened in my life before. It was like the way a tiny pebble dropped into perfectly still water will make these beautifully subtle little ripples. It was like that, from her forehead out across her face, and then almost just sort of generally around her facial/headular area, almost like a (yes) an aural glow; A, dare I say it, a halo. It’s just as simple as that. In under half a second she went from being a beautiful girl to the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I genuinely mean that. For the 18 hours since I last saw her face I have been wracking my brain for a girl whose face I loved more. I haven’t been able to do that. She has this gorgeous, like, alabaster skin that looks as soft/gently-touchable as a bar of soap. I immediately transposed an image of Audrey Hepburn’s face onto Emma Watson’s and created a minds-eye’s average. Kristine’s face was a perfect match.

Go read the whole missed connection here. It's way too long and rambling for us to post in its entirety. Still, it's entertaining. Hope he finds her! Hope it wasn't just Emma Watson hanging out on the Upper West Side away from Brown for the weekend, doling out fake names to suitors. For those of you who manage to slug through the whole thing, post your TL;DNRs in the comments.

[H/T: Ivy Gate]