The Ridiculousness of Online Dating

She was standing in the kitchen when I got home, leaning against the doorframe, phone in her hand. Her shaggy black coat was still on, her backpack hanging over both shoulders. 

Her keys were hung over her pinky on the hand holding the phone. Her other hand was sliding back and forth across the screen, first to the right, then to the left, then to the left again, then right, left, left, left. With each left hand slide the motion became bigger, more dramatic, until her arm made a full circle like Pete Townsend doing a windmill strum. With each circle she whispered a little, “no... no...no....”

“How long have you been standing there?” I asked her.

She jumped, startled at the interruption. When she looked up at me she failed to focus, as if she was looking at someone over my shoulder.

“I’m... what?” She asked.

“I said, how long have you been standing there?” I smiled at her so she’d know I was friendly and not harassing her.

“Um, just a little while. I just got home.” She cracked her own little smile and some of her focus came back.

“What were you doing?” I moved closer, looked down over her arm so I could see her phone. 

She pulled the phone away reflexively, pulled it toward her body so I couldn’t see. “Nothing really. I was just reading texts.”

“That didn’t look like texts, “ I moved to help her off with hot backpack and coat. Her coat was damp from the mist outside and I saw that her hair was wet, tiny dew drops caught in the uncombed black tangle. She had to pass the phone from hand to hand as she slipped her arms out, the keys jangling. Her right arm got caught half way through and she flapped her elbow like a chicken, bent sideways at the waist to get it free.

I moved to the living room and tossed her backpack on the couch, draped her coat over the arm. She follwed me in. She was wearing her usual white t-shirt and indigo jeans that she wore every day to her job at the grocery store.

“I guess I don’t have anything to be ashamed of,” she said sighing. “I was on Tinder.”

“How’s that working out?” I asked, moving back into the kitchen. 

She sat on the couch, pushing her pack up over the arm, pushing it and her coat onto the floor. They landed with a loud thud.

“It’s not,” she said. “I can’t tell if the whole idea is really lame or if I’m just too lame to make it work.”

I got two beers out of the fridge, Carona Lights, and popped the tops with the bottle opener nailed to the cabinet. The tops bounced into the stainless sink and clattered loudly. I held the bottles in one hand and retrieved the tops with the other and popped them into the garbage on my way back to the living room.

I picked up her coat with my free hand and tossed it over the empty chair. I left the pack where it lay.

“What’s the problem?” I said. “You find someone you like, exchange information and hook up.”

“That’s just it, I’m not using it to hook up. I want to find someone fun to hang out with. Lots of people use it for dating, not just hooking up. But I can’t seem to get it to work,” as she said this she stared at her phone which she’d put on the coffee table along with her keys. She looked sad.

I handed her a beer, she smiled thanks and I said, “Are you finding people who are interesting?” I sat down on the couch next to her.

“Some. Not as many as I’d hoped. The ones who are interesting either just don’t respond at all or are so tied up in the idea of a, “long term relationship,” or marriage as a goal that they don’t talk about anything else.”

“So you’ve got both extremes, have sex now and never talk again or commit your lives to each other before you’ve even met.”

“Exactly. None of which I want. There are folks on there who talk about other things but it’s like if you don’t say the magic passwords they don’t have time for you.” She took a long sip of her Corona and leaned back into the couch. “I guess it is the experience I expected, I was just hoping for an easy solution, you know. That technology might actually make it easier.”

“Did you know that they predicted Tinder back in 1976?”

“Yeah?” She set the beer Dow on the table and reached down to unlace her ankle boots. She kicked them under the coffee table and massaged the arches of her feet for a moment before draping her legs over mine. She was wearing pink ankle socks, which I thought was an odd choice with the rest of her outfit, but as they were hidden in her boots I guessed it didn’t matter. She reached behind and grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch and tossed it over both of us.

“Yeah, there was this movie called Logan’s Run...” I shifted my butt on the couch to get more comfortable with the added weight of her legs, leaning into the couch, then remembered and leaned forward to retrieve the remote controls from the table.

“Yeah, I know that movie,” she was leaning on the arm of the couch, head in hand. She drank another swig of her beer.

“Well, there’s a scene where the lead guy is in his apartment and he’s ready to relax. He grabs a remote control and points it at this booth in the corner. This psychedelic mist appears and conceals into this guy, dressed all sexy. Our man shakes his head and turns the knob on the remote, you know, swipes left, and the guy disappears and the psychedelic mist returns and there’s this beautiful woman. He hits the remote, swipes right, and reaches out to her to bring her into the room. Just like Tinder.” At this I pointed my own remote at the TV and dialed in Netflix.

“Yeah, but its not really like that. It pretends to be like that, but really it is more like a job interview. You have to pick your pictures which is most important because that’s your first impression. A lot of people don’t bother with more than one, but I skip most of those people because when has one picture really shown what you really look like? And if you’re not going to take the time to present yourself, what’s the point? Then there’s the whole profile part. Again, lots of people don’t even bother, and I skip them because either they are just looking for a hookup or they couldn’t take the time to thoughtfully describe themselves. Either way, I’m not wasting my time.”

“So how many are those?” I scanned through the Netflix menu to find the episode of The Office where we had left off. We were getting through it finally, our day long binge a couple of weeks ago having gotten us into Season 5. The Baby Shower was next up.

“That’s like half who are to lazy or horny to provide anything meaningful. Maybe more. That doesn’t count the ones who are right away too unappealing to consider. That leaves just a few. Of those almost all of them have almost exactly the same photos and the same profiles. Unimaginative selfies without taking the time to try to look your best, and the same descriptions about how you like to laugh at yourself, people think you are funny, you love being active in the outdoors, and you love your cat. Almost no one writes anything interesting or creative or even just heartfelt. It is like reading resume after resume with all the same bullet points.” She took a longer sip of beer now in three big swallows. “And when I look at it, my profile isn’t really that different. I don’t really love any of the photos I have on there. None of them really represent the real me I want to show, and together they are just a big mess. The profile I put on there I tried to make a little different, a little more creative to stand out, you know, but basically it is still the same as everyone else’s. I wonder if I compromised too much and if it just comes across as weird and if that’s why I’m not getting much of a response.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t come across as weird. You’re one of the most creative, interesting people I know. Tell you what, tomorrow I’ll take a look at it with you, tell you what I think. And I’ll take some new pictures of you, you can get spiffed up and we can show them the real you.” I rubbed her ankle at the gap between her indigo pant leg and pink ankle sock. Her leg was smooth where her socks rubbed against her skin.

“Would you? That would mean so much. It is so weird trying to do this all by yourself.” She brightened and a kind of relief replaced the sadness she’d held before.

“Of course. I’d be honored,” I bowed as best I could sitting in the couch with her legs in my lap.

She turned toward the TV and I pressed play. It was a good episode, fun watching Michael Scott’s ambivalence toward the baby, his ambivalence toward Holly disappearing with that embrace. Funny how touching such a silly show can be.

When the episode was over she got up and went to the bathroom. I stayed put, finished my beer and set up the next episode. I heard her in the kitchen, heard the beer caps fall into the sink and saw she brought fresh beers when she came in. She handed me one, finished her first one off and took a swig from the new one. When she sat down on the couch she turned around to lean up against me, her head against my shoulder, her hand on my stomach on top of the blanket.

I turned on the next episode. Crime Aid. “Paaamooolaaaa!” So sad with Pam in New York. This one was funny, but lagged a little during the whole auction scene. Pretty soon she was snoring on my shoulder. Little nasal snorts on each inhale.

The episode ended and I just sat there for a while. The temptation was to just stay as long as it took and let her sleep till she woke on her own. I then realized that my arm was falling asleep, too, and the discomfort was becoming urgent.

When it finally became too much I reached across and gently pet her thick black hair at the back of her head. She had so much of it you’d think it would be coarser, but it was soft like a baby’s plush toy.

When she didn’t wake I rubbed a little harder till finally she inhaled with a snort and slowly tilted her head till it was level, her eyes still not open.

“What happened? Did I fall asleep?” It was clear she was trying to open her eyes and not succeeding.

“Yes you fell asleep. Now get up and go to bed,” I poked her in the arm.

“Ow! Now there’s no call for that. I’m going, I’m going.” She grabbed her beer and took thee giant swigs. When she put it down it was still half full.

She got up to her knees on the couch and leaned over me and planted a big wet sleepy kiss on my forehead. “Thanks for being my wingman.”

“Allright,” I said, “get off with you.” We both smiled and she left to her room. When I heard her door shut I got up, folded the blanket, collected the beer bottles, and went to bed.