#1 — A Story That Is Mostly (Partly) True
Maybe this idea is too personal. Maybe it’s not personal enough. My first instinct about documenting snippets of my life is absolutely no don’t do it seriously stop go home. But there’s creativity that sits dormant as a fat cat in a smoke-filled jazz lounge and there’s the kind that can awaken sleeping giants, those undisturbed creatures inside our imaginations just waiting to be stirred. Here’s hoping these posts rouse the latter.
By the way: I’m only doing this for the month of August, a kind of 31-day experiment in flexing the dexterity of my mind. (I think.) So if you aren’t crazy about these little stories, don’t worry. Like the smell of late-afternoon sunscreen and a happy hour Mai Tai, they won’t last long.
On Monday I joined Bumble.
For those who don’t know it, Bumble is an app launched in 2014 by boss babe Whitney Wolfe, who co-founded Tinder then left after filing claims of sexual harassment and sexual discrimination against the company. Recently, Bumble has seen huge growth, jumping 570 percent in the number of downloads over the last two years. It’s not quite as big as Tinder, which hit $400 million in 2017 revenue compared with Bumble’s reported $100 million, but it’s getting there.
The premise of Bumble is pretty simple. Girls make the first move. You swipe right on the people you like, left on those you don’t, and if a person you’re into also swipes right on you, then you — assuming you are the girl in this scenario — can message the guy. Anyway, here is who I have met so far:
- A petty thief.*
- A lovelorn Midwestern transplant recently dumped by his fiancé.
- A guy who non-ironically says, “What up home slice?”
- A professional a capella singer.
*Yes it’s my own creepy fault I know this information but he left his Instagram handle in his profile and from there came a Google search and from there (on Search Results, Page 1) came the Huntington Beach Police Department records with two words typed along the damnable bottom that signaled the end of our ‘let’s walk along the beach together at sunset’ plans: “Petty Theft.”
In Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance, a didactic deep dive into the perils of digital dating, the actor/comedian says apps like Bumble commoditize love, creating a retail-like experience out of something once sacred and sweet. We window shop for prospects and when one seemingly fits, are left to wonder if there’s a better style encased in the glassy expanse of the store around the next corner. Well, after 24 hours spent on Bumble I can say with confidence: Who knows.
I’m not leaving the app quite yet, (and yes, I’ll be sticking around in part because of the narrative prospects for my one-day musical sitcom any conversations might afford) but it’s certainly not a contemporary Shakespearean sonnet come to right-swiping life. Also, one of the dudes asked me: “What’s your story?” And I wasn’t sure that after a “hey” “hello” “what’s up” “nothing you” “same” “cool” “cool” exchange, he really deserved to know. (Instead I decided to start this series to share minute details of my life with friends and complete strangers.)
On Tuesday a man defined his ‘simple diet.’
He wore an orange button-up. I wore a blue skirt. (This detail is irrelevant but the skirt was cute.) He spoke too loudly as I passed by, his bulbous chin jutting into the butt of his cell phone. I noticed his mouth was too small for the face that drooped around it, like a Mastiff wearing a tiny fascinator. He spit out his words: “… you know I agree. After that doctor’s visit, I decided I’m on the simple diet. From now on it’s just pizza, cheeseburgers and beer.”
He didn’t laugh. This was serious.
I imagine his name is Harry Bellfort. He’s 53 years of age and works at a small IT staffing company called Rhubao Technologies Inc. on the sixth floor of the third-highest tower of the business complex. He’s assistant supervisor — has been for sixteen years without a whiff of a promotion — and sits in a cubicle decorated by walls of gray carpet and the thin, dying embers of his drummer-in-an-80s-cover-band dreams. He wonders sometimes why there’s carpet on the floor and the walls but in his carpet-cloaked world, he’s happy. Enough.
Harry’s wife Barbara sells handmade necklaces on Etsy and is a part-time accountant at her family’s hardware store. She was the one who urged him to see Dr. Guendi. Harry had taken to crumbling leftover ice cream cake on his cereal in the mornings. He was sweating a lot, and sometimes when he sat for too long in his cube, the sweat pooled at his thighs and formed circular puddles of perspiration against his khaki pants.
There had to be a better way, Barbara said, trailing off with an “or else, Harry …”
The rolls haloing his stomach were starting to coagulate into hard rings of flesh and most days he resembled The Blue Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland without the air of haughty charm.
“I’m worried about you and all the sugary stuff you’re eating,” said Barbara, who was at the time stringing a necklace for her niece’s sixth birthday at their kitchen table. “Go get checked out.”
“I’ll fix this, Barb,” Harry replied, and left his carpet-lined cubicle early the next day to visit Dr. Guendi. Yes, he was categorically obese and borderline diabetic. No, watermelon jellybeans did not count as fruit. Yes, there were things he could do.
Except a freak fire drill at the physician’s office meant Harry left without any real idea what those things might be.
So he would change. Wear more orange shirts, take up drumming once again and fill his mouth with only certain foods. He’d be OK, he told Barb on the phone. From that day forward, he’d strictly follow the simple diet of pizza, cheeseburgers and beer.
On Wednesday, Bird wasn’t the word.
Blah, blah, blah innovation. Blah technology. Blah the encroaching arm of disruptive businesses with aesthetically pleasing Instagram accounts and cool, one-word names.
I get it.
Those black scooters by Bird, a dock-less scooter share company based in Santa Monica, Calif., are solving some motorized, helmet-less problem we didn’t realize we had. Although are they really? Because from what I can see in the past week since these Birds have festered like an electric rash around town, people aren’t sure what they can — and can’t — do on them. Or, more toxic still, where to leave them when they’re done riding.
The craziest thing about Bird isn’t even how in cities across America, one day they aren’t and the next day they are, it’s the name of Bird’s founder: Travis VanderZanden. He sounds like a character from an early episode of Gossip Girl or someone who should work in the SpaceX communications department and inform us when the rockets are being launched instead of the general public randomly discovering a rocket launch tear across the sky one evening as Twitter lights up with the news that aliens have finally invaded and human civilization will surely cease to exist.
VanderZanden started Bird in 2017 after a previous stint as chief operating officer at Lyft and before that as vice president of international growth at Uber. (Ugh, he’s experienced. Great.) In June, Bloomberg reported the company was raising $150 million with terms “that will value the company at $1 billion.”
It doesn’t matter what the business is worth. When piles of Birds are left abandoned on sidewalks, porches, lawns and streets, nobody is going to care how rich the CEO is from these dark, dark contraptions.
OF COURSE when the Birds started popping up as proverbial late-night-pizza-induced zits on the face of my fair neighborhood, I immediately contacted the Newport Beach Police Department to ask what was up. They shared some interesting … no.
The post is long enough. Let’s end here in semi-dramatic and cliff-hangery fashion.
Tomorrow, we write again.
