Tinder History #3: Colin, who isn’t funny yet.
I rewatched the Woody Allen movie ‘Manhattan’ recently and, while watching, realized a problem I’d been having with the subject of Tinder History #3: Colin.
‘Manhattan,’ which I watched for the first time at maybe.. 13? 14? — a formatively (and probably an inappropriately) young age, is basically the story of Woody Allen’s character in and out of relationships across the backdrop of New York City. It’s mostly a love story to the city itself, but every scene is the characters falling in love while walking the same streets that I walk, shopping at stores I shop at, sitting in the parks that I sit in; and in this most recent rewatch, I kept finding analogues in these scenes of my experience ‘dating’ (‘seeing?’ ‘going on dates with?’ Modern life is a nightmare) for the first time this summer, when I met Colin.
It’s more likely than anything else that I made my own life in the image of the film, but nonetheless: I matched with Colin in June. He messaged me first, and conversation was immediately natural (which Tinder Histories #1 and #2 have proven is NOT always the case). We tried to plan a date within a few hours of matching, but had almost opposite work schedules. He asked if I would be willing to meet up the next day for lunch — approximately 12 hours later. I knew almost nothing about him, but was game in that way that you can only be when you’re very bored, and showed up to lunch in a sundress nonetheless.
He was better looking than his pictures and (most importantly?) very tall (FINALLY). We talked for almost three hours before we both had to go to work, and before he got on the train we hugged and he said he’d want to go out again. I agreed, reveling in the straightforwardness of it all.
We managed to get together around once a week over the next several weeks, meeting all across the city. I can’t believe it took me until months later to realize, because the whole thing was just so much like ‘Manhattan’.
They went to the Whitney Museum of American Art and wandered around failing to understand the art. We went to the newly-renovated Whitney Museum of American Art and… did our best (a lot of the art there is very sexual, be warned if you’re a lowkey prude and highkey blusher #likeme). They walked along the edge of Central Park. We walked down the east side of the park from 68th to 57th as the sun set. In a famous shot from the introduction of the movie, fireworks explode to the swelling strains of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and on the Fourth of July Colin and I walked down the west side of the island in spitting rain and watched the fireworks over New Jersey. Put our dates in black and white and it was a shot-for-shot remake.
We walked a lot and kissed some and talked a whole ton for six or seven weeks and then his internship was over and he had to go, so he left. I guess this Tinder History isn’t funny because it ended while I really liked him, and it’s just been downhill from there. We’re still technically in touch, though it’s that fakey 2017 liking-each-other’s Instagrams version of ‘in touch.’
I do still kinda like him but I wonder how much of it is seeing that month and a half through a ‘Manhattan’ lens: through the way things are ‘supposed’ to be when you’re dating, remembering the evening walk and forgetting the uncertainty or the failure to communicate or whatever other very real problems exist (like… we live in different states and I’m about 99% sure he has a girlfriend now).
The problem with dating someone during summer in New York is that it’s too picturesque. Like a movie. And later, you forget how hot it was and how nauseous you felt waiting for him outside the subway, so you spend like six months hung up on him and then decide that a good way to move on is a dating experiment and a blog. Like I said, I’m sorry — this one isn’t really funny (or at least not yet). Maybe it will be when next summer rolls around.
