You were wrong Cat Stevens, the last cut is the deepest

Given the dismal returns from my old fall back internet dating site, e-harmony, I downloaded the mobile app, Tinder. It is a quick and free download from playstore. Upon logging in, the app first seeks out your location via gps and then seeks out all men within 10 miles of said location. Then pops up what essentially appear to be “collector cards” of men. These “cards” include their pictures, their first name, and their age. Underneath of their pictures is two buttons, one X and one little heart picture. After seeing their picture, their name, and their age, you then decide if you like them or not and press the heart if you do and press the X if you do not. If you “like” someone who also has seen your “collector card” and has “liked” you in return, then you have a match. Only then can you begin conversing via the Tinder messaging system.

Needless to say, this provided me hours of endless fun the first evening much to the neglect of my school work. It is literally a game of “hot or not” and various personal parameters emerge as you forage through these stacks of men or, as some republican leaders might say, “binders of men”. First, you immediately press the X (the “Nope” button) if they: a)do not have a face shot as their first picture but rather have a picture of their dog or cat; b)have pictures of them with a bunch of other women; c) if they only have a pictures of themselves with other people and you actually scroll through all their pictures and you still don’t know which guy is the guy; d) if there are only selfies both in the mirror and ones where they are laying in bed; and e) obvious other aesthetics are not up to standard. The last parameter, e, is where the real reflective magic happen. You do not realise how superficial you are until you start having to pick through, literally, hundreds of men. I found myself muttering to myself as I shopped for men, saying “nope, mouth too small, nope forehead too big, nope too many sporty adventure pictures, etc.”

Anyway, I found myself securing 3 dates for the rest of the week. However, one of these young suitors could not meet on any of my other free nights so I cancelled the first date with one of the other men because I had a sense I’d like this other guy more. Too many options, really. So I go out on my first online date with a young man we’ll call “hummer-guy”. Before going out I shower and begin a massive hair removal escapade; legs and toes shaved, eyebrows plucked and shaped, and I check for stray old-man nose hairs. I smile at myself in the mirror and affirm out loud but with a tentative tone, “good for you for putting yourself out back out there!”

Hummer-guy and I met up at a nice cosy little pub on Broadway. We had a couple drinks and had a really lovely time. He was a bit ruggedly attractive, tall enough, fit enough, chatty enough, and energetic enough. He was warm and “touchy” as he talked with me and I welcomed this. He paid for our drinks and we walked arm in arm to his vehicle, yes, his little hummer. Ugh. Prior to seeing his monstrous vehicle, he did forewarn me and asked me not to judge him based on his vehicle because he is aware of how “douchey” it could be perceived to be. I obliged and climbed into it. We went for giant authentic poutines and soda pops on Granville street where we shoved poutines in our faces, talked, and laughed, and his warm and innocent affections continued. He drove me home. We planned to meet up in a few days later on Sunday evening for a pizza and wine night at his place. It ended with a small little lip kiss which was so nice and welcome.

Two things, I have never gone on a second date with someone I met online before nor have I ever kissed any of them. I felt that he and I clicked and that I would definitely like to spend more time with him. I was excited to see him again. I repeat, this has never happened to me before with someone I met on the internet.

After a long day of work-shopping at UBC the following Sunday I take the bus from the university to his apartment, his swank industrial loft in an artsy-hipster neighbourhood that was impeccably clean and renovated, like a real adult. We just chill, eat pizza, drink wine, watch baby animal documentaries, etc. He had even gone so far as to pick up some Miss Vicki’s Salt and Vinegar chips for me…yes folks, that is what is talked about on first dates, chips. I won’t go into details but it was a lovely lovely 2^nd date. It reminded me of why having a man-friend can be so nice, least importantly that he again paid for everything! The pragmatist in me started to think that dating is a really nice way for a young lady to have a social life and not have to pay for any of it!

A day or two later, I came to realise that this was the first time I had connected romantically with a man since my ex almost two years ago. This is a rare event for me to ever want to see a man for a repeat “performance”. I had felt extremely comfortable with hummer-guy, able to be myself, feeling drawn to him, to want to kiss him and to want to be affectionate.

The following week, I decided that I wasn’t going to just sit and wait for him to call me. I have sacrificed potential in the past, I think, because my pride would not allow me to pursue someone I wanted. We texted back and forth all week, I casually invited him over the following Friday. He said he already had dinner plans. I said what about Sunday, he said he was watching the Hockey game. Saturday morning I receive a text asking if I am free that night. I respond and say sure but I have a class on Sunday morning so nothing too late and rowdy. He does not respond. In fact I haven’t heard from him since. Weird right?? I was in a yoga class the following week and it dawned on me that perhaps he had up and died. Like the Sex and the City episode where the guy never calls Miranda back and she calls him to ream him out only to find his mother on the other line telling her he died earlier that week. Miranda responds “Carrie, they’re dying on us now!”.

As is the case with most women, no matter how confident or independent, I immediately think about everything I might have done wrong for him to decide he did not want to see me again. What is wrong with me? What did I do? Was it my enthusiasm for Miss Viki’s? My dorky wool socks? My love of baby animals? What??? Was I too opinionated? Was I too honest about my non-conventional true feelings about the meaning of Remembrance Day?? The only dating advice my mom ever gave me was “remember to just try to be a little more feminine”. I recall responding to her by asking “what in the fuck are you talking about? What is this the 1950s? Have you met me?”. She had meant that I needed to be less explicit with my opinions. My mom has been right more often than not and I do think she actually might be on to something. However, as I am in the midst of re-reading Jane Austen’s works, I am highly grateful to not live in a world where we are required by decorum to keep our uppity lady-traps shut.

So a week goes by, and I have not tried to contact him anymore as all traces of his phone number have been erased from my phone as a mechanism to save myself from myself and avoid any inebriated texting-mishaps. I tell myself comforting facts about him to make me like him less like “pffttttffww… he drove a hummer anyway!”… or “he works in oil and gas anyway!”… or “he really actually likes hipsters!”.. I go out one night with a good friend of mine and he tells me that, for the last month, his I-phone has registered my phone number as an I-phone and has been defaulting his texts to me as I-messages. Because my phone is indeed not an I-phone, I have received none of his messages. He had even invited me to his family’s house for thanksgiving. I never received that text. I just assumed him, and MANY of my other friends, had been really sucky at responding to texts I was sending. There were a number of other friends who had also told me that they had sent me texts that I had never received. I wake up the following morning and think… could it be? Had hummer-guy been trying to respond but I never received his texts? So I looked him up on facebook and sent a very non-threatening query as to whether he had tried to respond but received no response from me due to the shitty technology of the I-phone and that his replying to the facebook message was totally optional. I still have not heard from him soooooooo…. Cut my losses.  It is interesting that when a rejection happens, no matter how small, it tends to pick at the healed wounds and exacerbate the response. Luckily it is a short-lived response.

Ultimately, there have been so many men that I never called again. I suppose I view this as a bit of a karmic retribution for my heartlessness when it comes to men. In my early 20s they never called me again, since my late 20s I stopped calling them again if I didn’t actually want to see them again and many have complained to me about never calling them again. I always justified it by saying “so many men have never ever called me again and I never complained so these little pussies need to suck it up and get over it.” Ha! Even as I write those thoughts and that justification… truly a bit of karmic retribution. But good for you for putting yourself out there, Adrienne. Slow-clap.

Next stop: Programmer-guy and disconnect between texting and real life person.