I woke up renewed today, which was kind of a miracle considering I didn’t walk in my door until 6am this morning and then woke up from my “nap” at 9:30. I tried to go back to sleep, but for some reason, I just wasn’t all that tired.
A strange thing happened to me yesterday. The optimistic hippie in me is always trusting that I am exactly where I am supposed to be when I am supposed to be there even if, at times, it is at the wrong place at the wrong time. God don’t make mistakes right? I told you a couple of days ago about my Tinder-ing and how I deleted the app because it was making my phone freeze. Well, I re-installed it, because out of the hundreds, and I mean hundreds, of left swipes I had made, there were about 40 that I had swiped right. I didn’t know if I re-installed the app if the matches would still be there or if I would have to start over. I was going to just delete it again if I had to start from scratch because I had spent quite a bit of time swiping and I didn’t want to do it again, but as fate would have it (or technology), all my stuff was still there. Score! Everything was still there, including my mutual matches, which out of the forty right swipes was about twenty-nine. Out of the 29, there were nineteen who messaged me. Out of the nineteen, there were three who were consistent and interesting. And a fourth who, well, we will get to him.
Tinder guy 1 was nice and seemed interesting. He didn’t ask for my number, he just messaged me through the app. After a day or so, he wanted to meet for drinks. I was already going downtown so I just said, “ok, let’s me at this place at 8pm.” I was going there anyway and I’m always skeptical about guys, because 50% of the time, they flake out and don’t show up. So I never accept a date on a day that I’m not already thinking about doing something. It saves me from getting mad when they don’t show up, because a lot of times, they don’t. And I don’t take it personal, like an attack against my character or charm. I’ve cancelled a date or two, but I’ve cancelled, not just been a no show, but we all have our reasons. So about 2 hours after we were supposed to meet and the show is over, he sends me a Tinder message that says, “Sorry my phone died and we got stuck on the lake just now getting home I realize not a good start hopefully I can make it up to you.” I get it. Stuff happens, but I call bullshit on this excuse. So I just responded, “no make ups.” And I haven’t heard from him again. And I don’t blame him. He doesn’t know how awesome things could have been and I am aware that it goes both ways, but, in my experience, the way a relationship starts is pretty much the basis for the whole relationship. If it starts late, lazy, and apologetic, that is how the whole relationship will be. So I think I spared us both.
Tinder guy 2 lives in Georgia, has a kid in Knoxville, comes here a couple times a month. He messaged me that he wanted to meet me before he left town this weekend. Again, I already had plans to go wander the festivities of downtown, so I said yes and told him where I was. Plus, it’s hard to kill someone in a public place full of police and witnesses. But he seemed harmless enough. I’m usually a pretty good judge of bad character and according to my friend, Liz, I have an army of guardian angels and have since we were 20. He showed up. There was no immediate spark, but we walked to a coffee shop, he got a coffee, I grabbed a water and we started walking toward the festivities. He didn’t have much to say…about anything, which I found odd considering he has a master’s degree and he quickly used his mom as an exit strategy to cut out in about 15 minutes. Maybe sunshine wasn’t his thing. Maybe crowds weren’t his thing. Maybe I wasn’t his thing. It’s anybody’s guess, but that was the end of that.
Tinder guy 3 lives somewhere in North Carolina. Not much to say about him except he is interesting, but he’s 77 miles away and I don’t have a car. He says it’s fine, first date will just be here in Knoxville, which suits me just fine, because I wouldn’t drive there first anyway. That’s against the rules. He hasn’t asked me for my number yet, which is also fine, but we are continuing to talk through the convenient little app. This one is to be continued….
And, finally, Tinder guy 4, we will call him TK, because this story is a little lengthy and he deserves a name. TK was match number 30 on my 40 right swipes. He was the last person who swiped me right. It happened Saturday around 5:20pm. He says hello, I say hello, we exchange the what do you do’s and the what makes you happy’s and he immediately sent me his number and said, “use this.” I immediately liked him when he first messaged so I replied, “yes, sir.” And sent him a text so he would have my number. We texted for the next two hours or so. He has a main job that pays the bills and he has a second musical job that he does for love, DJ-ing. So I was listening to his radio show and it was music I had never really listened to before, but I liked it. It was danceable. And I like dancing. So we are texting back and forth and he mentions that he has to go out of town for a late night gig and he’s super tired. So I suggest that he takes a friend to drive so he can sleep. Then he suggests that I come with him. And, since I have my guardian angels and all, I said, “Sure!” But then as time wore on, I talked myself out of it. I didn’t want to be up that late. I didn’t really want to be at a club all night. I didn’t really have money to spend on the off chance that he was a cheap bastard. And did I really want to get into a car with a strange dude and drive 120 miles from home? Not so much. But then he called me and told me that it was him and his friend driving, that I was in good hands because he doesn’t drink, never has, not a day in his life. He promised to get me home safely. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t love Asheville, NC? Plus when was the last time I went on a “terrible idea” adventure? The little voice in my head said, “if not for you, do it for the blog.” So I told him, what the hell, pick me up. So he came to get me. He called me one more time to make sure he wasn’t gonna get shot coming into my neighborhood, because I’m in the “we kill each other” side of town. I assured him that he was safe and he pulled up shortly. I took a picture of his license plate and sent it to my friends, Crystal and Liz, in case he and his sidekick raped and pillaged me and set my body on fire. In which case, you would have had to read about this whole night in the paper and those reporters are always so dry. Luckily, I survived to tell. I got in the car and he and his friend were super nice. Totally my kind of people. Me and the friend talked most of the way there. Well, the friend did. I mostly listened and laughed and replied where appropriate. TK drove, very tiredly, to North Carolina. He was running on fumes and had been up working all of his gigs for like 30 hours straight or something ridiculous so he wasn’t very talkative but he was still pleasant. We got to the “club” which was a little hole in the wall place and there were only about 10 people there. TK and the friend were under the impression that it was a big club that was going to be packed out with people, but it was quite the opposite. Which was good for me. The less people, the less compelled I feel to drink my anxiety away. TK and friend both asked if I wanted a drink. I declined. Plus TK doesn’t drink so I wasn’t going to either. So I watched him and his friend do their DJ-ing thing. And here is a funny little tidbit about DJs. They are like celebrities. I found out later that these two are actually kind of underground celebrities so maybe that is why, but every woman in there wanted to fuck them. They were all giving these two “the eyes.” Seriously, I think the men would have fucked them too. These two were like musical gods. It was really a sight to see. Almost the same as a drummer and a groupie. So I watched as TK got semi-molested all night by drunken horny women all while inching closer and closer to me thinking that maybe they would get the hint that we were there together, but they didn’t and I didn’t care, I had just met the dude and it was hilarious to watch his discomfort. Eventually the show ended and one of the other DJs who lives there invited us all over to his place for food before we hit the road. I was tired. TK was tired. The friend was drunk and didn’t care if he was up all night. We went to guy’s house. I could tell TK was miserable and just wanted to go home but he’s one of those nice guy types and he hadn’t seen the other guy in a while so he conceded and we went for food at guy’s house. TK and I sat on the couch. Well it was really a loveseat. He was laid back waiting on his burger and I was next to him. He put his arm around me and I laid my head down and was almost asleep. He ate half his burger and the guy whose house we were at said we could go lay down for an hour before we left, which sounded great to me, because it was 3am and I was tired and TK was probably ten times more tired than me. So we went to lay down in the bedroom down the hall for an hour. Bad idea. As soon as we laid down in that little twin bed, super close to each other we were awkwardly canoodling like two middle schoolers. After about an hour, we both agreed that no sleep was going to be had and we might as well get on the road. The irony of the whole situation was that when we turned the light on, we were in fact in a middle school girl’s bedroom. So we got up and got ready to go. I offered to drive since he was tired. I told him if I got tired, I would switch with him, but I ended up driving all the way back. He wanted me to come back to his place so we could finish doing whatever comes after canoodling, but he was exhausted, and snoring. And you know how I feel about snoring. So I woke him when I got to my house and we hugged and he gave me a small little kiss and we went our separate ways. Even if nothing more comes from the whole Tinder thing, this guy and his friend were pretty awesome and I hope we will be friends at the very least.
Moral of the story: It’s not always a terrible idea to follow through on one of your terrible ideas.
RouletteWeekend 