Things I Believe With Perfect Trust And Perfect Faith Drake Did Over The Last Three Years To Become Worthy Of Serena Williams

by Mallory Ortberg · August 25, 2015

serena

  • Went to the gym daily to bulk up in order to become strong and worthy of her, using “for Serena” as his concentration mantra in between reps
  • Played Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” on repeat during Tabata workouts to keep his focus pure
  • Casually looked up tennis scoring names on his phone just before starting conversation with her, clenching his fist and muttering to himself, “It’s love, fifteen, thirty, forty, game, you can do this, Aubrey”
  • Played carnival games regularly in order to experience the feeling of constantly winning so he’d have something to talk about with her, and also a lot of stuffed animals to give her
  • Bought out the April 2015 edition of Vogue at every newsstand in Manhattan, then tried to display them all on his coffee table, which broke under their combined weight, and when she came over later that afternoon and said “What happened to your coffee table?” he said “It’s kind of a long story” and didn’t tell her what happened because he’d just wanted her to see it, he didn’t want to have to explain it after it didn’t work out
  • Bought her the entire series run of Sailor Moon (subs and dubs) for her birthday. “What on earth…?” she said, laughing, and he said, too quickly, “Because Sailor Moon’s name, her alter ego, I mean her human name, it’s Serena, and you’re Serena, and you kind of remind me of – she’s always saving the world but she’s also just a regular person, and she never has time to finish breakfast…” and then he noticed the Patek Phillipe that someone else got her and felt like an idiot and she said “I love it. No, I love it. Can we watch it together?” and then he felt better. “It’s not anything fancy or expensive, I know, but –” and she said, “Drake? I love it.” in a tone that always meant the conversation was over, but he wasn’t in trouble
  • Let Jehovah’s Witnesses come in whenever they knock on his door, just to be polite, and even kept the edition of Watchtower one of them left behind on his nightstand for a few weeks. He didn’t do much beyond flip through it a couple of times – there are limits  – but he doesn’t let his friends make jokes about the religion in front of him, and they know better than to try
  • Kept the 2007 episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender that Serena did voice work for on his DVR for years, even though his DVR is kind of out of date now, and skips at weird moments
  • Hired a French tutor, and kept a little notepad of phonetically-written-out French phrases in his pocket whenever he went to Wimbledon. “Félicitations pour votre victoire. Félicitations pour votre victoire. Félicitations pour votre victoire.“

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38 Comments

  2. flying_ghoti +83

    Uh, Drake, come on, “Day of Black Sun” is a two-parter, it’s just weird if you only have the first one on your DVR.

  3. 2for1cheesecake +205

    “Félicitations pour votre victoire.” OF COURSE he uses the formal “vous” with her, and always will.

  4. jonahblues +180

    – Set up a series of Google alerts for “Greatest Athletes of All Time” listicles so that he could log in under a pseudonym and vehemently argue that Serena should be ranked higher. He would then show Serena his own comments whenever she was feeling down, saying things like “Look! SerenaFan86 thinks you’re better than Willie Mays!”

  7. Kitkat +27

    I totally didn’t start crying when I got to the one about Sailor Moon. Nope. No crying at all here.

  8. Sulagna Misra +62

    Hehe, of course Drake uses the formal pronoun to talk to Serena. THIS IS SO GOOD AND THIS PAIRING IS SO GOOD. They are another American royal couple and I can’t wait for them to shine.

      1. LeastBittern +64

        Would you mind if we said “North American”? Like, they are the perfect flowers of our continent?

    2. champagneghost +17

      i was going to be that person and mention that he’s Canadian but I mean I guess by this point we pretty much have adopted him as one of our own.

  10. grumblyqueer +28

    Wait, Serena did voice work on Avatar?
    I have never suddenly needed something I didn’t know existed so badly before.

    1. beakbreath +25

      According to her wikipedia page, it is her favorite show, and I believe with perfect trust and faith that she is Toph IRL.

      1. LeastBittern +12

        I was going to posit Lin, but I think… we can just agree she is a Bei Fong, through and through.

    2. flying_ghoti +29

      She guested as the guard who was nice to Iroh and was thus spared his righteous non-bending wrath! I may have dropped everything to look that up immediately on seeing the post.

        1. flying_ghoti +8

          Oh, he very much is, but wasn’t on the day of Black Sun. On that day he was just a badass.

    1. sluts4ever +4

      So cute. Hate the beard though; Drake has a pretty face and he should let it shine. Besides, it might scratch up Serena’s perfect complexion.

  12. Perdita McLeod +79

    I don’t know, even with all this evidence I’m not convinced that Drake IS worthy of Our Serena. I am not sure any mortal man is worthy, with the exception of perhaps Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. But a girl’s gotta get some, and there is only one The Rock, so I’m OK with her dating down.

    1. BessieMaeMucho +21

      I had a very similar conversation with my BFF after seeing Nicki Minaj (another Drake pal! Drake, you have awesome taste in women!) and Meek Mill in concert, and being underwhelmed by the latter. There really IS only one The Rock. <sigh>

    2. rkfire +20

      OMG Dwayne Johnson x Serena Williams, how have I never thought of that before?!?! That would be amazing and now it is headcanon for me.

  13. Froodie +9

    Why do you need French for Wimbledon? Is Drake being adorable and mixing it up with the French Open? Oh Drake, you sweet sweet man.

  14. NotThatAmy +13

    I want to believe Drake’s had a sort-of crush on Serena ever since he was a teen watching her as a young player working for a place in pro-tennis outside of Venus’s shadow.

  16. Hieu

    OMG Dwayne Johnson x Serena Williams, how have I never thought of that before?!?! That would be amazing and now it is headcanon for me.