The week of Valentine’s Day, JoAnna had accompanied her friend Lily to Date Lab’s annual happy hour at Busboys and Poets near U Street. Lily had volunteered to take part in some live matchmaking by verbally filling out one of our questionnaires on stage. But at the last minute, Lily felt too shy to answer questions like “What is your dream date?” in front of a room full of strangers. So JoAnna volunteered to take her place and ended up holding a microphone, pitching a television-version of her dating life to the crowd.

In the audience was David Myers, who was also not supposed to be on this date. The 28-year-old New Yorker and government contractor is a Date Lab veteran — the kind we wouldn’t normally send out twice because his last date went pretty well. Last year, we paired him with a “girl next door” from Pittsburgh. The night ended with a kiss and yielded a second date, but not a third.

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This time, David took the initiative after seeing JoAnna at the Date Lab event. After she answered questions, Date Lab editors had invited people in the audience to email them if they wanted to be set up with her. “She said her type was, I think, loud and dweebish hipsters with beards? And I’m three of those things,” David marveled to me later. “Actually, I’m not sure if she said that verbatim, or if it’s what I wanted to hear.” (David lacks a beard, but he spends weekends bartending at a craft cider brewery, which is probably the most dweebish-hip way to pass time.) He said of JoAnna: “She seemed pretty cool. She has a cat. I’m into that.” He shot off an email to us, saying he was interested in her. A few weeks later, we sent them to Ted’s Bulletin on 14th Street NW.

David, however, didn’t realize he had signed up for a second Date Lab article (as opposed to a mere setup) until it was kind of too late. JoAnna knew she had signed up for an article, but felt a bit queasy that her date might know more about her than she would about him. “I was thinking, my name had a pretty unique spelling. ... He could look up my name and probably find me. ... I work at NASA, my name is on all the press releases,” she recalled. “And then I remembered, ‘Wait. Guys don’t do that because they’re not worried about getting murdered.’ ” But her relief was short-lived: When she arrived at Ted’s Bulletin, it was clear that David already knew her name, her job and the name of her cat — not a murder-level problem but enough to “put me on my back foot,” she said.

When Date Lab’s photographer asked the couple to strike poses, JoAnna said they “leaned into the awkwardness and took some silly pictures.”

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“At one point I think I was being pulled by her scarf?” recalled David.

JoAnna then channeled her discomfort into “getting even sillier,” culminating in a string of jokes about, ahem, male anatomy. The lewd banter comforted her. “He seemed very feminist,” she reflected. Blue humor on a first date is a high-wire act, but David’s agility with the loaded topic impressed JoAnna: “Sometimes guys turn the conversation to sex and it’s deeply uncomfortable, but this was just natural!”

When I interviewed David, he didn’t mention the dirty jokes. The high-wire conversation he had enjoyed was when JoAnna, who is an artist and illustrator, told him about her favorite comic book store (Fantom Comics in Dupont Circle). David has been reading “Saga,” a series he described as a “weird alien fantasy melodrama” with a “kind of progressive story.” JoAnna is also a fan, and says she enjoys “fun adventures where women are the lead.”

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Progressive, weird, female-friendly — what more could you want from a comic book? Or, for that matter, from a heterosexual date?

JoAnna said later she was “for sure” interested in a second date. “I’ll give it another shot. I don’t think that I felt a capital-s spark, but I also don’t want to write it off so soon.” But then she was too distracted by work to pursue it for a while. “When we exchanged numbers, I knew she was going to be busy for the next couple of weeks,” David said, and planned to contact her after that.

As far as romantic plans go, waiting a month to text someone would seem like a plan designed to fail. And they never did get back in touch. But they were never supposed to be on that date, anyway.

Rate the date

JoAnna: 4 [out of 5].

David: “I feel like the rating should be binary, yes or no.” He rates this date “yes,” but when pushed, settled on 4.

Update