Tinder and the No Good Very Bad Date

 

And this little masochist is lifting up her dress.

I put up a status about feeling like shit upon the Facebook. I didn’t go into detail.

I have a bad feeling that as this was happening to me it was going way worse for thousands of girls around the world and maybe I can get some good from this. Or at lease draw the poison out.

I said I joined Tinder. I did.

After a year or two of inside jokes and me not doing it.
*Say Tinder 3X and a cute boy appears.
*Sarah, you can’t go on Tinder, you will break the internet.
* Q: Is there a Tinder for cougars?
A: No that’s just regular Tinder

All of these were funny to me because they’re true.

That whole retrospective thing? Half-funny.

I have a date tonight with the very first man I right swiped on.

This will be date number 3. He is a literal giant and an arborist. He is funny, sweet, gorgeous and kind.

I call him the Lumberjack. He calls me Sweetcheeks.

I had other Tinder dates. 2 before and one in the middle. This is where it stops being funny ha-ha and starts being funny as in ‘okay universe I got it thanks’.

What happened is this. I temporarily forgot how my life works. And that OF COURSE the first one would be the best one.

I kept going.

And now for our regularly scheduled metaphor…
I felt like I’d been living in Africa, in one of the famine-stricken countries, mostly eating bowls of rice but on occasion getting fed really good snacks by UNICEF. Then suddenly someone put me on a plane and flew me to the nearest Mandarin Buffet.

So I loaded my table to the breaking point with everything I could carry and I just looked at it, overwhelmed. Tasting this or that. Spitting some out immediately (yet discreetly) into a napkin. But nothing topped that first bite I had. It was/is delicious.

I mentioned in my last post that I felt like I was doing something wrong, and I was.
I forgot about eating the elephant. One bite at a time.

I did that thing I promised I wouldn’t do.
I won the lottery and kept buying more lottery tickets.

Universe said “NO dummy, STAAAAAAP”.

I don’t need to hedge my bets. I like this guy. I want to see what happens.
I know where the Mandarin is, and if this one leaves and I get hungry again I can always go back.

I digress.

I’m stalling.

It’s time to talk about the bad date.

I haven’t told my therapist yet. I almost told the Friendly Giant.

I told my roommate last night by saying “I’m not sure if you still read what I write but I think I should tell you about my bad date before you read about it.”

There is yet another Tinder guy who I have struck up a conversational friendship with, I told him. We were discussing Catholicism and I realized I really needed a priest in a box.

And this little masochist is ready to confess.

I was late for the bad date. I got lost as I tend to do going up the mountain. I picked a pub close to where bad date was doing a radio interview to save him navigating downtown.

This was my first mistake. The pub was almost empty. I was on my own and out of my element.

I walked in flustered and stayed that way throughout dinner. He had the power position and kept it.

I felt like I was sitting across from Sigmund Freud when he was in a particularly vicious, misogynistic mood. Or like I was with a hyper-intelligent toddler asking why why why over and over. I felt ripped apart, like a vivisection with salad.

He sent a dick pic AT the dinner table. I already knew I wanted out, but this cinched it. Things went from being mildly entertaining to yuck with a hot fudge brownie on top.

I was scared of him. I see that clearly now. I didn’t then.

So unlike me, I’ve put a man up against a wall by his throat, while I was naked, in stilettos for behaving this way. I got grabbed on a patio once and stopped 2 inches short of breaking his nose. I don’t know where that girl went. I lost her in the move maybe.

The closest I can figure is I was sitting across from some kind of super predator, real life Christian Grey/American Pyscho, and I froze.

I agreed to continue the date as we walked outside to our cars. I would have said the sky was green with conviction just to open my car door and climb inside. All the while I was turning excuses over in my mind trying to find one that would be bulletproof.

We started driving, I was following him. I called to say my kid was locked out of the house and I had to go.

Here is where it gets weird. He said “pull over here so I can say goodbye”. Empty parking lot.

AND I FUCKING DID. I could’ve kept driving. I felt the stranger-danger, I was still in freeze mode when I should have been in full flight.

The point I am at in my novel, our heroine gets drugged and almost raped in a parking lot. Life is imitating art. And I am the idiot holding the pen. But in real life, no one came to save me.

Here is where I start blaming myself, my dress was short enough that he easily reached in a groped my vagina with me in the driver’s seat of my car. And I didn’t hit the gas and rip his arm off. I just sat still until I could get away.

I’m more disgusted with my behavior than his. I never said no. My mind was screaming it and my mouth stayed silent. I put myself into a bad situation. I felt like I regressed to high school and had that ‘just tune out until it’s over and then get far way and stay there.’

Roommate says I did the best I could given the circumstances. Tinder buddy said it wasn’t my fault.

But I still somehow feel like it’s my fault.

I’d already found a really nice guy and I went on another date because…I could? Lame.

Karma came down and bitch-slapped me for my stupidity.
I sat in my car crying because I was scared he had followed me so I drove way past my house.

Lessons learned. Learn with me girls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Tori Amos, Hey Jupiter