My Brain on Tinder: A Conversation

Can I take you out for a drink sometime?

Sure…how about Wednesday?

…I attempt to pace around my room, but it’s cluttered with too much dirty laundry for me to do safely. So now I’m back at my desk, my phone open once again, staring down at a cute girl with black hair and a Harry Potter Horcrux tattoo on her forearm. She smiles at me from the LACMA lampposts, half a mile away from my apartment.

“Daniel!” I shout. “Daniel, wake up.”

Ugh, he’s fucking drunk again.

I walk out into the living room to find myself passed out in my boxers, empty beer bottles scattered along the table. A half-eaten burrito sits by face, chorizo and rice spilling out onto my carpet.

“Wake up, man,” I shout. “It’s 4 in the afternoon. How are you already drunk?”

“I…I…dunno. How long can you leave chorizo out before it gives you a stomach ache?”

“A few hours, I think.”

My drunken self-confidently takes a bite out of the nearby burrito, but he does so in a way where he doesn’t need to use his hands. He simply snaps at it with his mouth like a Hungry Hippo from that board game.

“Should I take this girl out from Tinder?” I ask in a panic. “I need to answer quickly.”

“Let me see.”

I throw him the phone. He scans through the pictures.

“She’s cute.”

“You think?”

“Sure, but I think everyone is cute. What’s the triangle on her arm? Free Mason?”

“No, it’s a Harry Potter reference. She’s a ‘self-proclaimed Hufflepuff.’”

“Oh fuck no, dude, we don’t do well with Hufflepuffs.”

“C’mon man, really, I need some help here.”

I’m pacing back and forth again, this time with a little more carpet to traverse.

“Sure, what’s the big deal?” answers my drunken self. He grabs a half empty beer bottle and pours it onto his face, desperately attempting to land some in his mouth.

“The big deal is it’s Tinder.”

“And? Plenty of our good friends met significant others on Tinder.”

“Yeah…but we’re supposed to be old fashioned.”

“I literally just GrubHubbed an ice cream sandwich…what about that is old fashioned?”

“Well…at least with dating…what if we get married? And then I have to walk around and tell my friends and family we met on Tinder.”

“As opposed to a bar in Santa Monica? Is there really much of a difference? Trust me, dude, Tinder is the way of the future. Remember when I told you to invest in Apple?”

“That was two weeks ago.”

“Yeah, but it’s gone up, right? Don’t discount me because I’m constantly intoxicated. I’m just as Jewish as you are.”

“What about your late night Amazon purchases?”

“Well don’t leave shit in the cart like that! We’ve been over this!” my drunken self-shouts, he pulls himself up to a sitting position. “Look, take her to a bar, buy a few drinks, see what happens. I’ll be right there with you.”

“But think about it though,” I reply. I take a seat on the couch next to him. I catch a waft of B.O. as I sit. “If this girl was really that cool, why would she be on Tinder?”

“Why are we on Tinder?”

“Because I’m a workaholic. Because I’m awkward with women. Because you need something to do in Ubers.”

“See? You can say the same for her. AND she takes more of a risk because you could be a serial killer.”

“So could she.”

“Yeah, but its more statistically likely to be a man.”

He pulls a cigarette from his the table next to him and lights it.

“Dude! Put that away! I’m trying to go to the gym today.”

“Yeah…but you won’t.”

“Fair enough.”

Drunken me takes a long deep inhale.

“So what do you really have to lose? Take her out for a drink. See what happens. Or…delete the app, pretend you detest it, and then I’ll redownload in Uber on the way back home from a bar on Saturday to start this whole cycle over again…”

Smoke spills out of his nostrils like some sort of little Jewish dragon. He passes the cigarette to me. I take an inhale.

“When you’re right, you’re right.”

Wednesday sounds good.

“You should listen to me more often.”

“Alright, don’t get too cocky.”