The worst date I’ve ever been on
Sometimes when I’m early in my “dating mode,” and there’s a world of possibility open, I’ll set up four or five dates in one week. This way I can get that first impression with a bunch of people and see which are most worth pursuing. Obviously, Fridays and Saturdays become pretty prized days (and thus I would try to save for the dates I’m most excited to go on). So whenever someone actually wanted to meet up on a Tuesday or Wednesday, I’d feel relieved because it made scheduling so much easier.
I had one of these Tuesday dates lined up when Tuesday afternoon rolled around and suddenly she had to cancel. Hey, cancellations happen. It’s a bit of a hit to the ol’ ego, but oh well.
So with my newly opened Tuesday, I began swiping again moments after being cancelled on. Soon, I got a notification that I had matched with Avery on Tinder. I thought her profile looked pretty appealing. She was attractive and her pictures showed her doing a variety of activities like biking and hanging out with friends on a beach. We exchanged messages a couple hours later, and after almost zero back-and-forth she asked if I wanted to hangout that night. Tuesday night.
I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Mere hours after being canceled on, I already had another replacement date for my Tuesday slot. I thought the universe was smiling down on me. She said she was getting off her shift soon and we should meet at a bar nearby, The Common at The Forks.
The evening rolled around and I drove over to the bar. The place was sparsely populated, which wasn’t a big surprise for a Tuesday, but it didn’t exactly help the mood. We’d be a bit on display, and the lighting wasn’t exactly giving an air of romance. Regardless, I saw her and sat down beside her at the bar top. She was already drinking a beer, and when I went to order one, they told me they had just turned off the tap and I’d have to wait a few minutes for them to turn them back on.
Not the best start.
After some quick greetings, an awkward silence filled our conversation and it dawned on me — I knew absolutely nothing about her. We had no jokes to reference, or anecdotes to ask about. We’d agreed to meet up after only three messages back and forth. I had done none of the due diligence that came naturally over dating apps where you talk with someone and see if there is a good vibe between you. I was going in completely blind, just satiating my hurt ego because this girl looked pretty attractive and was available on short notice after I was canceled on.
I moved the conversation on and asked about her. I found out she was working at a retail job part-time that she absolutely hated. She wasn’t in school or really doing anything with the rest of her time either.
Now, I’ve been on dates with people who were unemployed, recently laid off, living at home while they’re going through school, or any number of issues that maybe don’t look great on paper. Hell, I’ve been that person, who had to talk about what my ambitions were, while also collecting employment insurance as my income. People are complicated. I can’t know all the life events they’re going through, or what larger factors are at play on a first date. However, for being past her mid-20s, this girl was the least ambitious person I had ever been on a date with.
She said she “really wanted to go to Australia,” but had no thoughts on how she was going to get there. She liked eating at tapas restaurants in the city but didn’t have much money to go there. And she didn’t see herself staying long at the job she was in but didn’t have any other prospects. Her job was at least easy enough because no one was ever in the store on her shifts. I nodded along, certain I was going to find some hobby of hers that she was passionate about, or some artform that really inspired her and got her excited.
After about twenty minutes, she said we should go to a different nearby place, The King’s Head, since they had food. The vibe at The Common really wasn’t hitting right, so I thought this was a fine idea. With so few people around, it felt way too much like someone could overhear our painful first-date conversation, and it was putting undue pressure on both of us. I was the only one with a car, so I drove us both there, and when we arrived the mood here was a lot more date-appropriate. There were other people around having loud conversations and the atmosphere was more friendly. A server walked up and told us the specials and Avery ordered some fries with ketchup and vinegar on the side.
I tried to get some more information out of her as our clumsy banter stopped and started without any real rhythm. It was hard to make much of a connection partly because she seemed exhausted from her four-hour shift. But it was mainly difficult because she was constantly getting notifications on her phone which she instinctually acknowledged every single time. It was basically Pavlovian.
Soon our food and drinks arrived and we started to talk a bit more. She said she had ADHD, perhaps trying to explain why she couldn’t help but acknowledge every time her phone lit up. As we talked more and more though, I realized she wasn’t just getting random texts — these were Tinder notifications. And she wasn’t just looking at them. She would half-listen to me and half-respond to guys on Tinder. Right in front of me!
I could see she was getting new matches almost every minute, followed by opening messages again and again. We’d be in the middle of a story and she’d glance at me for a second, then just look down and start replying to some message on Tinder. I’d never seen anything like it.
I decided to just lean into it and not pretend I couldn’t see what was happening in front of my eyes. I asked her about what it’s like to be on Tinder and get so many messages all the time. This seemed to relieve some of the tension for us and we started swapping dating app stories and got into an actual conversation. She said how many matches she got every day (dozens) and what type of dumb lines she’d seen a million times. I told her what it’s like on the guy’s end and we slowly built a bit of a rapport.
We finished our drinks and she said she wanted to go to Langside Grocery now, a much trendier cocktail bar than the place we were. What was with all the location changes, I thought. She seemed unable to sit still in every sense of the phrase, but I figured since this was a more intimate spot, maybe it would work better for us to get to know each other. I drove us there and ordered some fancy cocktails. We got into the conversation, but it was just as agonizing as before.
The night came to an end as I paid the third bill in a row and offered to drive her home. It was around 11:00 and she said her friend lived nearby and I could drop her off there. I pulled up to the address. As she got out of my car, I figured there was a very good chance I was dropping her off at the home of someone she had just been messaging on Tinder.
When I woke up the next day, I saw we were unmatched, and thought that would be the end of the Avery chapter. I had my worst date story, and that was that.
A few weeks later though, when I was on a different dating app, Bumble, I came across Avery’s profile again. It simply said “Looking for love.” It had most of the same pictures as her Tinder profile. I could not help my curiosity. I swiped right on her and very soon got the notification that we had matched.
As it was Bumble, she had to make the first move but it didn’t take long to get a message from her. She started with a simple “hi,” which I responded to in kind. Much like last time, she asked if I was doing anything that night. I was kinda floored at how unashamed this all was. No mention of the past date, or the unmatching, or anything really. She just asked where I lived, and then said she was in the area so she could stop over soon.
What was going on? It seemed like she remembered me, but I couldn’t be sure. I told her to come on by, and an hour later she was knocking at my door. I opened it to see her wheel her bicycle into my apartment. She plopped herself onto my couch and told me about her night.
Apparently, she had a lot of “fans” on Instagram, and one of these fans asked if he could take her out to dinner. They went to a nice tapas restaurant and had what she said was one of the most expensive, best cooked meals she’d had.
I figured out the whole story from the way she talked about him. This was clearly some poor dude in who she had absolutely zero romantic interest, and once the night was done she needed a convenient escape, and poof, there I was. I was probably messaging her while she was on her non-date, the same way she had been messaging with people on mine.
After hanging out for a little while longer, interspersed with her suggesting we do some shots together, I was well aware this was the last time I was going to see this person. The mystery of this person had been solved to me, and I was getting pretty bored with it. It was the middle of the week, so I felt a little more confident winding down and suggesting we call it a night.
“Please no? Just let me stay a little bit longer,” she asked. I said I had to start getting ready for bed as I worked tomorrow (an issue she did not have for herself), which she said was fine, and that I wouldn’t even notice her.
She meandered to my bedroom, which I did not want to follow her into, so I awkwardly stayed in my own living room by my computer. I was suddenly trapped in my own apartment.
I don’t even know what I was hoping for, probably just that she would get tired and decide to leave. I tried to passive-aggressively do very “adult” things to make staying feel very unappealing. I began to clean up my kitchen (clanking around the pots a bit extra to show what was happening) and brush my teeth loudly as the minutes ticked away. I felt like Larry David on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, insufferably gargling mouthwash so she could get the hint. I really wanted her to leave so I could just relax in my own bed. It felt like I was a hostage.
Eventually, she got a call and walked out of my apartment, leaving her bike behind. I assumed she was meeting someone and couldn’t have cared less. Whatever plans you need to make to leave my apartment, please just make them, I thought. I was completely regretting my willingness to go along with this experiment as she walked back in with a box of pizza in her hands.
“Want some?” she said with a smile.
“No, thanks,” I replied, trying to convey zero emotion.
She departed for my bedroom once more.
In general, I was someone who’d gotten by just fine with running away from my problems, big or small. I knew this philosophy wasn’t smart or healthy, but I’d engaged with it often enough with positive results that I couldn’t help it being my first plan of attack whenever small issues arose. I remember once trying to pay my rent in New York City and dealing with the confusion over who exactly was supposed to get the cheque. Instead of dealing with it head on, I ignored it and hoped someone else would figure it out for me. Well, no one figured it out, and I got to leave without paying two months rent to anybody. A clear victory for me!
Countless other times something had come up and I’d ignored it and hoped the problem either solved itself or wasn’t a big enough problem to bring any big consequences back for me.
It was becoming clear that this would not be one of those times. She was not going to get bored and leave of her volition. After 30 minutes of eating pizza on my bed, I finally had enough and moved to act. I opened the door to see her splayed out on my bed, greasy pizza box on my nice, clean sheets, texting away on her phone.
“Hey, I gotta go to bed, you should probably go,” I said, as if it was bad news I had just received from someone higher up on the management team of my life. Sorryyy, boss says you gotta go.
She got up and gently tossed back the comforter invitingly. “I could sleep here,” she offered.
“No, that’s not gonna happen.” I blurted out, leaving no room for discussion.
Thankfully, she got the message and didn’t push back. At that point she hustled out pretty quickly, probably sensing that there was still time in the night to hop over to some other guy’s place and spend the night there. She wheeled her bike out and I closed the door behind her, letting out a giant sigh and feeling a wave of relief come over me.
I walked back to the kitchen to see that she’d left her pizza box with 3/4 of the pizza still inside. She’d ordered a small pizza from one of the most expensive pizza places in the city and eaten two pieces from it.
Did this person have zero concept of the value of money? I remembered seeing some Neil deGrasse Tyson video saying how you always order an extra large pizza because it has the most dollar value per pizza. Why was she not heeding Neil’s advice? So she’d ordered the worst size for the least amount of pizza, on a delivery app that added a bunch of fees, chosen a premium pizza place while selecting a specialty pizza, and then only eaten two slices of it. Not to mention the disrespect to the world’s most famous astrophysicist. No wonder she was taking free meals from random Instagram fans.
I opened my phone and unmatched with her on Bumble. Just not the type of person I was looking for, none of the same values, nothing in common. Lesson learned.
Two weeks later, ten minutes past midnight I got a knock on my door.
People don’t really knock on doors much in an apartment building. Since it was so late, I thought maybe it was an emergency. I put some clothes on and opened the door. A man holding a pizza box looked back at me.
“Avery?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“For Avery?” he repeated.
I realized what happened. She had put my apartment information into her phone when she ordered last time, and now she was ordering pizza again and had forgotten to update it. Her pizza had come to my place by mistake.
“Uhhhh, no I’m not Avery. Is that pizza already paid for though…”
