Dating in the South: SATCC- Tinder & Ash

Happy Valentine’s Day folks! In special recognition of this lovely day for us singletons, I thought I’d bring you the second installment of my friend Blair’s column a little sooner than I had planned. Please welcome, courtesy of The Broad Collective and my lovely friend Blair, Sex and the Classic City- Tinder & Ash

 

Sex And The Classic City is a reoccurring series on the site; exploring one single girl’s (mis)adventures in dating around Athens. The author and the names mentioned have been changed to protect the innocent. Everything you are about to read is 100% true. You can read Misadventure Number One here.

I’ve looked better.

It’s difficult to retain any semblance of chic when your hair is a drippy wet mess, what used to be one of your favorite dresses is now hanging off your body in tatters and you only have one shoe on. Courtney Love can’t even pull this look off and homegirl has had WAY more practice. Seems like the only reasonable thing to do in situations like these is to drink yourself a drink. light yourself a cigarette, and start seriously re-evaluating the choices that delivered you, in all your smeary makeup’d water logged glory, to this moment. Which is exactly what I’m doing. As my apartment smolders behind me. Oh yeah, it’s that serious.

So how did I get here? Where did I go wrong? And did I really just watch my life go up in smoke because I once again fell prey to the devil penis magic?

So try not to judge me Athens, but I Tinder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s the lowest form of social interaction. I KNOW. It’s also fun in the same mindless sort of way as winning at penny slots in Atlantic City. You invest nothing and when you hit, shit lights up and makes noise. Yay! Fun!

Typically I don’t actually meet anyone on Tinder. Meaning, I rarely message guys back. Partly because I’m one of those annoying chicks who thinks there’s not much I can or care to say in response to “hey baby you sexi” (yes, I spelled sexy with an I), and partly because  I only use it to prop up my failing self esteem after a bad date or when I’m having a fat day. Yikes. I know. There are much healthier paths to self worth; I travel them frequently. But in a pinch, nothing combats the idea that you’re a frumpy troll who’s going to die alone in her shoe closet faster than the 27 guys you think are cute thinking you are cute in about ten minutes flat. I am just saying.

So I actually met a guy on Tinder. He is in his residency, he is funny, dark haired and over 6 feet tall. JACKPOT! The good soon-to-be-doctor sent me a clever message, we went back and forth for a couple weeks (we’re both insanely busy) and finally decided to meet up to see this band we both like. What followed was one of those magical evenings you can’t quite believe is happening to you. My outfit was perfect. His outfit was perfect. Conversation flowed freely between sets. Laughing at the bar, we looked like an ad campaign for some uber cool British label that’s so cool no one has even heard of it yet. I LIVE to look like I am an ad campaign. I was having so much fun I forgot to be nervous. We were clicking all over the place and when the show was over he suggested we hit up The Grill because neither one of us was quite ready to call it a night.

Over a feast of fries and feta dip, we talked about all the things we were passionate about, how our friends pretty much are our family and, of course,  Game of Thrones. He also did that adorable thing guys do where you catch them kind of starring at you all starry eyed every time you look away. This guy was cool, and interesting and really really sweet. I was half smitten already.

We made plans to hang out the following night. And the next. Date three wasn’t really even a date since we didn’t actually make it to dinner. The doctor was definitely in that night. Holy mother of God. I now can vouch, personally, for the superior grasp would-be-doctors have on anatomy. If you can bone one, DO IT. Just do it. You can send me Thank You flowers later.  Docs are now second only to chefs on my list of bang-worthy occupations. More on that soon.

MD Sexy Pants and I have a deliriously sex filled few months. We get along famously, I’m having a blast, everything is chill and then before you know it – GULP – he wants me to meet his parents. Here’s the thing, I’m actually great with parents. Like, frighteningly great. Like you’ll catch shit from them for the rest of your life for screwing it up with me great. Which is why I don’t tend to agree to meet the parentals until I’ve also got a serious case of the feels and could see things going places that aren’t exclusively x-rated.

If I were a Greek heroine, my tragic flaw would be that I’m honest. And not the bullshit half truth crap people who SAY they’re honest pull. Actual, painful, inconvenient, will bum you out and ruin your day honest. I’m never mean about it, but I also don’t see much point in lying about my feelings or lack of feelings. I tell Doc Holiday while I’m deeply enamored with his penis and think he is a great guy, I am not quite ready to meet the parents. He seems to take things well.

Later that week we have plans to make dinner together and space out with Netflix. I haven’t really spoken to him since the meet the parents incident, but I think nothing of it since we both have grueling schedules. He arrives at my door with food and booze in hand and I twirl around in my new favorite dress before kissing him and showing him to my kitchen. Immediately something is off. His kiss is tight lipped and his usually easy going demeanor is clouded by intense brooding energy. He says he is just tired. Since I am wired a bit like a dude, I just take him at his word rather than pumping him endlessly for details to make sure that I am sure it is not anything more sinister, and get to work on some Israeli couscous.

He starts in on vegetables . . . and some Jack. A LOT of Jack. Rut row raggy. This doesn’t look good.

Several minutes into him agro-chopping vegetables and slamming them on a roasting tray I take the bait. “What’s up, Doogie Howser? You seem a little tense.”

Death glare. Apparently I amm not funny.

I soften my approach, “No seriously, babe. Clearly you’re upset about something. Maybe I can help. What’s wrong?”

“WHAT’S WRONG IS YOU GET ME TO CARE ABOUT YOU AND WHEN I DARE TO TRY TO TREAT YOU WELL YOU SHUT DOWN! DO YOU WANT TO BE SINGLE FOREVER? GROW UP, BLAIRE!”

Aside: Can someone please explain to me why this is EVERY drunk guy’s go-to insult? I can be an overgrown baby sometimes – valid – but never have I ever in the history of ever-ton had a guy tell me to grow up when he wasn’t himself behaving like a sulking man-child . . . which kind of makes it difficult to take the feedback seriously.

He flings the tray under the broiler and continues drunkenly yelling at me for being a heartless non-parent-meeting gutter snipe. (WHAT?) Basically, he emotionally vomits on me. Which would have been understandable had at anyyyyyyy point whatsoever we’d had the ‘where is this going’ talk and I’d mislead him in someway. I liked him – a lot actually – I just wasn’t ready to be zee girlfriend or meet the parents who had pushed him into thinking he wanted to be a doctor or that he needed to settle down with some weird version of a trophy wife right-this-very-second in the first place. Doc did NOT want to hear it. The only thing that got him to pause even momentarily was the cloud of smoke that started curling up from my oven.

Exasperated and intoxicated he doesn’t wait for me to move before yanking the oven door down. The corner of it catches the delicate fabric of my dress and RIPPPPPPPPPP. Goodbye favorite dress, so glad I spent two month’s rent on you. But before I can process or begin to mourn my loss, I’m distracted by the fireball that’s erupting from behind the wall of smoke that is now filling my entire kitchen. Doc has moved over by the sink at this point and is now attempting to use the sprinkler attachment thingy to play fire fighter. That plan would PROBABLY have worked too had I not dived out of the path of the hell flame, tearing off the rest of my damn dress by the way, and directly into his torrent of tap water. I slip in a puddle of it and fell, losing one of my shoes in the process. My apartment is now completely filled with smoke and the alarms are blaring. I’m lying on the floor of my kitchen thinking, “This is going to be a REALLY lame way to die, but at least it can’t get any worse.”

Famous last words.

I look up just in time to see McSteamy make like a ninja and disappear into the smoke . . . . . . . . . never to return.

That asshole left me to burn to death in my own apartment!!!!!!

Resolutely, I pull myself up, shove my hand into an oven mitt, pull out the offending pile of, now only charred and singeing vegetables and drown them in water (and bitter, bitter, tears. HA. I’m only kidding, but the story is way funnier that way, no?). I then reach in my fridge, grab a bottle and gimp my drown rat looking self outside to wait on the curb for the smoke to clear.

One of my neighbors runs out of her apartment and starts in on me frantically. “Is everything alright? I heard the alarm and smelled smoke! What happened???”

I paused. Took a very long swig and replied, “Bad date.”

 

 

Blair, as she says: ” Everyone knows someone, who knows someone, who knows who I might be. I’m smart. I’m funny. I’m reasonably attractive. I’m willing to spend more on shoes than, say, the gross national product of Uruguay.  And yet, I am deeply, deeply, single.” Want to read more of her adventures? Go HERE.

 

I, Vivienne, tell her stories and those of my others friends here. And perhaps y’all will hear those of my own someday 😉