Part I: My First Tinder

She rolled over and said “I gotta go, my bus leaves in an hour.” I struggled for several seconds to remember her name, before cringing and blurting out “OK babe” (a word I promised to never use in my life) and helping her find her underwear. Thus ended my first tinder experience. Babe (which is what I guess we will call her) was the first person I messaged when I got tinder. She sent me unsolicited nude photos of herself that night and we had sex the following morning.

Babe was also my first one night stand. I was 29.

It’s not that I had been avoiding the concept all these years, or that I believe it to be misogynistic, I just simply never understood why you wouldn’t want to fuck someone a second time. Having established you were both interested in sex with the other, without putting in too much effort, why not go again?

“But what about people that irritate you, why would you want to see them again?” You might ask. Well the truth is everyone irritates me, and I have never come across someone that irritated me so much I wouldn’t want sex No matter how frustrating a person is, or how much they love Nazi figurines, if they are willing to have sex with me without talking about their world view I see no reason to abdicate.

Babe was my first one-night stand simply because she didn’t live in the same state as me.

Part II: Tinder Hedonism 

Because of Babe, I expected my first month of tinder to resemble:

This was not the case. This program was not designed for people like me. I do not like to begin my sexual encounters by texting a stranger “Hi” followed by a winking emoticon. However there is no way to come up with something original or clever to say, since Tinder doesn’t really do profiles it just matches you by stuff you “liked” on Facebook (a program most of us have had since our early 20s at least) “I see you too like Outkast, well ‘Hey, ya’” is, in my opinion, a much better come-on than the lack of responses seemed to indicate.

Having nothing to say to people who found me physically attractive wasn’t my only problem.

Being someone who finds it rude to “Tinder” while out with friends meant my browsing was done during my morning post-whiskey poop. While, I am sure some woman drunk and horny at 1am might have thought my pretentious black & white photo was sexy, they sure as hell are not going to reply to “Hi ;)” during their 9am hangover.

It seemed Tinder was not for me. I had all but lost hope, suspecting that Babe was an aberration, not the norm. I either needed to embrace the new social divisions where people like me were the minority, or change.

Part III: Enter Jennifer (name changed)

Thankfully there was Jennifer:

Jennifer was a bartender­­ —thus continuing this trend I seem to be on of sleeping my way out of being able to drink in Boston area bars—  and appeared eager to meet a fellow Vonnegut fan. Unlike Babe, she wanted to go out. Given my previous logic I picked a bar that was close.

I arrived first and saw her enter from across the room, and as I waved her down I couldn’t escape the feeling that she was out of my league, and questioning what she was doing on Tinder.* In fact, I was so focused on this thought I missed the first half of her introduction. When I finally started to pay attention she was mid-sentence. Not wanting to be rude I patiently listened to see if I could I catch the drift.

“…that was before she told us she was a gambling addict, and he told us about his past struggle with heroin.” She finished.
“So you’re a social worker?” I asked, hoping I had been in the ballpark.
“I was talking about my parents.” She responded, a little annoyed that I had missed the intro.

Let’s put this in context:
1.) The date has been happening for three minutes.
2.) She had already told me that her mom is a gambling addict and that her father struggles with heroin addiction.
3.) I did not solicit this information.
4.) THERE WAS A FIRST PART TO HER STORY I HAD MISSED!

Suddenly it became abundantly clear why she was both on Tinder and agreed to go on a date with me. The evening went slowly, as more and more horrid information about her life was unceremoniously and without prodding or request forced down my throat. I was ordering less whiskey in the hopes that this would entice her to drink less and therefore share less. This was not the case. Within the first hour she had lapped me several times.

Part IV: The reprieve?

By sheer coincidence a friend of mine also happened to be at the bar that night with her date. Having spotted her out of the corner of my eye, I desperately waved her over like a castaway signaling a passing ship.

On their way over I thought I noticed a change in my date’s demeanor. She seemed annoyed. Her expression even seemed to turn to outright malice when my friend hugged me, but it changed so fast I thought I was mistaken. It wasn’t until a half hour later when my friend got up to bathroom I realized I was not.

“Is that one of the whores you fuck?!” she said into my ear rather loudly.
“No, she’s just a friend.” I said, scouting for the nearest emergency exit in case my response was not adequate.

As the night progressed, so did the mood swings. I had to keep reassuring her that we were all having a good time.** We were hostages, and the only way out was to play along. Finally we settled up our bill, I apologized to my friend, and I headed for the door. Determined to walk away from this nightmare as fast as possible I said, “I’m going home. It was nice to meet you.”

“Do you want a lift?” she said, before following it up with “You should come home with me!”
“Wait, you drove?!” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“You’re drunk, let me drive you home.”  I muttered, irritated.

Part V: The Next Morning

I would like to say the story ended there; That I drove her home, wished her a good night, and walked away.  But due to circumstances, some of which beyond my control, I ended up spending the night. I woke up to the sound of her hurling in the bathroom (an activity she claims she does several times every morning after imbibing any amount of alcohol) and a throbbing headache. For a moment I thought about asking her for a ride home, but upon realizing that then she would know where I lived, I opted to walk instead.

As I stepped out of my second one night stand, I would love to tell you all that I had learned my lesson, but realistically all that was going through my head was, “I should check Tinder.”

*Women don’t need tinder. This is not an observation on the differences in the sexual appetite between men and women. I am sure many women want to have promiscuous casual sex as much was men do. The difference is if a woman wants to have casual sex with a stranger, she doesn’t need the hassle of an app to find a partner.

**I genuinely feel bad about this. I don’t like lying to my date. I didn’t want to tell her that the date was “going well” or that I’d “see her again.” But I also loathe confrontation, and she scared me. In all honesty her account of this evening would probably include a boorish man she did everything to try to entertain, before just giving up and trying to at least get some sex.