8th April 2022
| Him | Me |
| Hey! Nice to virtually meet you. What do u think about grabbing a coffee or drink sometime to get to know each other in person? | |
| Hey, That sounds great. I’ve just gone away on holiday, but I’ll let you know when I’m back. | |
| Sounds great! Where are you holidaying? | |
| Can you see how many km I am away? I’m not sure how accurate it is but if you guess within 3 guesses I will buy you that coffee or drink. |
He guessed Townsville, then Melbourne, which was then correct. For a week, we sent each other messages like old-fashioned letters detailing our whole day. Charlie was the one who had picked him out for me, refusing to acknowledge the guy who could make his pecks dance to Moto Moto. You want a big strong man, but you also want to feel safe.
Tinder is horrible for that. You stare at a screen judging everyone’s appearances and you know they’re looking back at you under that same lens. You spend the whole time searching for something and occasionally the faces and fish all merge and you find yourself swiping right on a man covered in tattoos with a gold-plated grill because maybe he’ll be different. You wait on those three dots. He messages, ‘smash or pass?’ and he isn’t different at all.
20th April 2022
He had an amazing smile, which he used often but it never lessened its potency. He looked like Rafael from Jane the Virgin and told me he was wearing a green sweater. We were both early and as we hugged, I commented on the grey-cream completion of the garment which was not the emerald I’d expected. The Gresham Bar was full of fancy whiskies and classic cocktails. We talked for hours. We moved on to Holey Moley. He suggested ice cream, tacking a new activity onto our night so that it might never end. This was the real getting-to-know-you question. He was a cookies-n-cream man. I liked classic chocolate.
We walked along the Brisbane River. I’d just finished Trent Dalton’s Love Stories and recited a passage to him:
‘There’s no brown in the dirty brown Brisbane River at night. You can look across the river from Victoria Bridge under a full moon and all you see are flashes of light bouncing off ripples and if you squint your eyes, you can almost tell yourself it’s the River Seine and this is the city of lights, the city of lovers.’
We kissed, pressed against the railing. His embrace was warm, his lips were sweet with cookies-n-cream. My knee sat in the parting of his. He grabbed my arse, the kind that draws you in. I played with the hem of his not-green but grey-cream sweater. He offered that if there was such a dispute, he could take it off. He did. We broke apart, his breathlessness on my shoulder like he’d been starved— – not for long enough to be crazed, but long enough to be unhesitating in his hunger as he kissed my neck.
We kissed gently before my Uber arrived. When I got in, the driver told me I looked happy. I looked out the window and received a goodnight text.
He told me his birthday was next month. I googled his star sign, Taurus. A strong match for Capricorn. I was at the point of looking for my match online, how far away from that is believing in the stars? I’d witnessed my own failed decisions; it was time to let the universe take the wheel. I researched things he’d said and his name’s meaning; conqueror of all miseries.
30th April 2022
He didn’t conquer shit.
We arranged a second date to see a movie. I spent all morning getting ready and then hung around the city for I knew I was too impatient to be entertained by anything else. I got my keys cut.
They don’t ask questions, just nine dollars for a key cut in whatever colour you like, and it takes two seconds. It’s thirty bucks for a key card. All I need now is a friend with a pool or a gym in their building and I could save thousands. I kind of want to copy everyone’s keys and carry around a rainbow chain of them.
I also patted many dogs. This one guy in the centre of Queen Street just stood there with a full-on camera and a completely monotone expression, lifted the lens, and took a picture of me. The corner of my mouth smirked but as he lowered it his tall, bald, blank expression greeted me again! Is it not some kind of physiological law that the person behind the camera has to smile as well?
I’m stalling. We came out of the cinema. He read things like Crime and Punishment and expected me to have read them being a creative writing major. My tastes however linger within this century, as that’s who I hope to write for. He suggested boba. I hate it but persisted with a rubbery dragon fruit-infused concoction that at the very least didn’t have any of those plastic porridge balls. They’re like some kind of disease, the only Boost in Kelvin Grove campus replaced by a fourth bubble tea.
As it turned out, I need not have endured all this. The efforts of skinny jeans, razors, a push-up bra, and makeup, were completely wasted. The first thing he asked as we sat down was if I was bisexual. To which I said, ‘Yes, you know this.’
He then followed with, ‘I think we’re different people.’
It could have been sent as a text. Then I could have shrugged my shoulders, thrown my phone to the other end of the room, and watched Jane the Virgin again to look at the real Justin Louis Baldoni. We didn’t owe each other anything, certainly not courtesy, it was only a second date. He could have ghosted or said he was busy, but he wanted to be a ‘gentleman’. He wasted my time persuading me he was seriously a gentleman by rejecting me in a boba tea café surrounded by the décor of Snapchat-filtered K-pop stars.
If he’d sent a text, I would have understood. He would not have wasted a day of my life only the minutes it would have taken to read it. I probably would have looked for someone else rather than deleting the app. I wouldn’t have had to feel that prickle behind my eyes as he looked through me and said he wasn’t interested in me at my best, where I’d put so much effort into my appearance and the arrangement of my day for him. He was looking for something more serious – than a bisexual. I felt I deserved it, as the number of men I had left on read was a staggering insurmountable Everest. When Failed Misery Conqueror and I waved goodbye at the station, all I could think was that at least I always showed the courtesy of not rejecting people to their faces in this digital age.
The whole experience inspired a poem
An Ode to Lobotomy
I wish I could take my brain out
Open my head like a draw
Leave it on the floor to collect spores
To fog the recesses of my mind
So that I won’t remember anymore
Maybe if I treat it gently
It won’t bite me
I love my brain
I
just wish it would shut up
Not chew the rug or piss on the carpet and
Jump out the draw when I need it
I just wish it would sit still
When I tell it to stay
Maybe I could leave it somewhere
like the RSPCA
