This is an awkward story, and a real one.
I met a lady named Gem through Tinder, and she was really the only good relationship I got out of that app.
We matched. I got the notification and I went to check her profile. She was a tall, blonde woman, blue eyes, round face, sharp Scandinavian features. She was a big woman. She wasn’t my type I thought.
She was 34.
I was 22 at the time.
That was interesting, to say the least. She was a beautiful woman. I would have not thought she was anywhere on top of 30. She had a PHD, was an amateur fencer, and she was quite bright. I was intrigued.
However, I was at an awkward place at the time.
I had recently left a relationship with a woman that I thought I was going to end up marrying. A three-year-old relationship. My longest relationship at the time. I wasn’t at my best.
I was, at the time, trying things out with my current partner. We were talking everyday, but we were also in different countries. We had more than 6 hours in time difference between us. To see her I had to take a 14 hour plane trip. We thought we wouldn’t commit just yet. We were finding our way. We had talked about it. We made that choice together. We did end up committing. That’s another story.
I am an incredibly monogamous person. I wasn’t on Tinder for sex to be honest. I was on Tinder to meet people outside my circle. I am fully aware that sounds like bullshite. Some of my coworkers thought the same when I told them in confidence. It wasn’t bullshite. I wanted to befriend different woman and talk. I missed talking face to face, and enjoying a dinner with someone of the opposite sex. I wanted psychological intimacy without the physical, at least at that time.
It was an awkward situation.
I am an up front man. If I started talking to someone and we eventually ended up meeting, I would tell them I wasn’t here for a quickie straight away. I would tell them about my long distance relationship and my situation.
Gem took this better than I thought. It was over coffee. We met at the centre of the city. She was at an awkward place herself. She had focused solely on her career for more than a decade. Ever since she left university. She had dated, but never committed. She said she understood where I was. That was interesting.
She was an industrial engineer. A good one. She was the daughter of migrants, first generation, and as such, she was held to a really high standard in terms of her education. The money her parents had, was not much. She couldn’t waste a second of a lesson. That would be throwing her parent’s money away.
Her company was undergoing some problems and she was on a reduced schedule, 35 hours a week.
To anyone with any sense of balance, this would have been awesome, but she wasn’t the balanced kind.
If you suddenly take cocaine away from an addict, he’ll go into withdrawal.
For her, work was everything. Work, religion and fencing, that was her life. When one of those things was taken away, she got bored. Boredom is a slow killer, and that’s why she was looking for a date. She had focused on her fencing for a long while, but physical activity only gets you that far.
Another interesting fact about Gem. She was a devout Christian.
That was a problem for me, since I had experience with very religious women, and it wasn’t something that I wanted to go through again.
On our first coffee, after we got both of our situations explained, we talked religion.
I’m not a Christian per se, but I’ve read the book, twice. I’ve also read the Tora and the Cur’an. Religion fascinates me.
We talked about the old testament, and how God seems a much harsher figure there than in the new testament. We talked about the figure of Jesus, and Mohammed, whom she had very little knowledge of. She listened, drew parallels between both religions easily. At one point, I entertained the possibility of religion as a method of control.
She said something wonderful about that.
“I am not going to disagree.” Ice blue eyes fixed on mine.
Finding a person willing to accept the flaws of their chosen lifestyle with grace is not something that happens every day.
We dropped the religion talk, as it was getting a bit serious, and I told her a few of my funny stories. The one about the croissants, she had a laugh with that one. Told me that I should write it up. Funny enough, I did end up writing it up. She thought it would be quite a hit. When I posted it, it was. She was quick to laugh and we had a similar sense of humour. We thought it was a pretty good talk over coffee at 4pm.
We kept meeting over coffee. Once every two weeks or so, and we texted infrequently.
I kept in touch with my long distance partner and we would talk every day. I always told her where I was and when I was going for coffee with Gem.
In over two months, Gem and I shared nothing but words over coffee. I was not interested in anything physical and Gem said she understood. However, the age gap was starting to show after a few months.
Some of my conversation can still be considered a bit immature. I’m a kid at heart. Some of this she enjoyed, but some of this bored her. She stepped up the game and invited me to dinner.
The restaurant was in one of the oldest buildings in the centre. It overlooked some of the most iconic parts of the city. It was her treat, she said. The thing about dating a woman that has a decade on you is that the pay gap shows. I was working at a big company, an internship, barely made the minimum salary working 25 hours a week. She didn’t mind putting out of her pocket but I felt… lesser? I’m not sure how to describe that sensation. I’ve always thought that a good 50/50 is the best way to go about paying things, however… She was making a lot more than I was.
I arrived to the place wearing a shirt and tie. One of my first attempts to look nice since I left things with my ex. She was wearing an elegant blue dress, v neck and skirt ending about a hand after the knee. She was looking beautiful.
I felt like an elephant in a cathedral. I was not used to fancy. I still ain’t.
The talk there didn’t feel like our usual coffee afternoons. We would usually dig up some politics, or some old story of ours and the chat would organically shift from one topic to another. Not that night. She wanted to talk investment banking, where she was putting her finances and such. Something that I frankly had very little knowledge of. She ordered this white wine, I didn’t ask, it was amazing. We were both two cups down when the main course came in.
The main course gave us a chance to quietly enjoy each other’s company. It was a relief not having to pretend that I was enjoying the conversation. Normally I wouldn’t, but she was buying dinner.
We finished our main course talking about the views and how pretty the city looked from there. We finished the bottle right before the second course came in. She ordered another.
The waiters took the first course away and she started yet another… controversial topic to say the least.
She was thinking about buying a bigger house. She didn’t quite say this but I inferred she was already thinking about moving in with someone. A place that would have extra rooms to be filled in the next couple of years. She said she was about to be moved to a managing position, or so her boss kept insisting. She wanted to stay in town, even though her parents were from other parts. She had too many plans and I was adrift. I really wasn’t enjoying this dinner. It was a pity on my eyes, she had been such a good conversationalist up to this point.
I decided to take the conversation elsewhere. I focused on another couple. They were 50 and they were quite… cheesy. The man was kissing the lady’s hand and she was making these posh “Oh darling!” noises that were driving me insane. I started to pretend I was the woman, comically extending my left hand like I was a queen about to get my hand kissed by a lord, on my other hand I was extending all of my fingers, grouping the middle finger and the ring finger together, and putting them close to my mouth while I made an exaggeration of a “oh!” face.
She started laughing, chocked on the wine and made a huge mess.
Second course got to the table. We were a bottle and a half down. Food was superb and I was looking to avoid any “please marry me now” topics from there on. We managed to avoid those, mainly because as we ordered desserts the wine hit me.
White wine is like an old lady with an umbrella, you think she’s harmless until she swings the thing, hits you in the head and down you go, like a house of cards.
At that point of the night Gem was looking for easy laughs. Wine made it a lot easier and I’m quite the clown. We left the restaurant at 1 am.
“Your parents are away on holiday… right?” she asked.
“Yes they are! I’ll get home, I promise!” I replied. I was quite drunk by then.
We got in a cab and she dropped me at my place. She walked me to the door and we said goodbye. When I got home I couldn’t fit the key through the keyhole.
I called her, laughing like a hyena, asked her to come up to help me. It was a battle I could not win alone.
She arrived to the reception area:
“Cadet Gem reporting for duty!”
We laughed while we tried to fit the key through the hole. Not an easy task.
We managed to open the damn door and we cried “YES!”
We were super proud of our accomplishment. I thanked her and wished her well in her own battle at her doorstep.
“You will be fine soldier, we couldn’t have done this without you.” I said.
“Well, I could come in and spend the night…”
Remember how I said that I was monogamous and I wasn’t interested in sex? Well… I was very drunk and…
“You could, but you’re not gonna.” I said as I slammed the door in her face.
I was drunk but I was still me. She shouldn’t have been trying to tempt me out of something that I clearly stated from moment one I didn’t want to do. She of course didn’t quite see it the same way. At least right away. But I wasn’t giving up on our platonic relationship so long as she was fully aware of what the terms were.
End of part 1.
