Poems and Other Shit

I Got Tinder - Journal Entry 3

I did something I swore I'd never do. I got Tinder.

The third person who appeared was the guy I "double dated" with to the wedding. I swiped right, and sat in my bed, my thumb raised above my phone. It was 1am and I was restless, restless with sudden discomfort and upset at myself.

Only three profiles in, and Tinder was flaying itself with this offensive suggestion. I was looking for love on the site where guys who had girlfriends wasted time, a place full of cheap thrill seekers and testosterone, with men who use winking emojicons in their bio and don't know the difference between 'your' and you're.' When had I become so lonely, so hungry from validation, so desperate for attention?

Many years ago, I had met a boy my age on the internet. We're still friends, and I told him what I had done. He got defensive of me, reaching through my phone with his message, shaking me.

Tinder is a place for hook-ups. You know that, right?

I know that.

So you want to lose your V-card like that, do you?

I'm just curious.

We joked about it sometimes, him taking my 'V-card.' It was lively and fun. He knew things about me nobody else did, and I suppose I wanted that intimacy in real life. I knew that I did, with actual hands and body heat, and not empty messages typed with one hand. It was painful, sometimes, to read his clumsy spelling errors and lay in my bed alone, and sigh, because I felt empty. Why would he blame me for getting Tinder?

I told myself to delete my profile, to end this absurdity. My last online dating experiment had been a failure, why should Tinder be any better? I knew that it couldn't, and it wouldn't. Not while there were young men I knew with love interests already in their life, whom were looking for something else, something more, something better and cheaper and faster than relationships and deep conversations and holding hands for the whole world to see.

When did love stop being enough? When did passion degrade itself into one night stands? When did teenage girls blessed with fortune lives decide that they were still missing out?

Because, of course, I turned back to Tinder, and have been swiping left and right ever since.