Tinderview #2 — Braxton

Braxton, 29, is new Durham and I was his first Tinder date.

After a successful first Tinderview, I immediately lined up a second one. This time, with a gentleman named Braxton who said he was new to Durham in his Tinder profile.

We set up a meeting in downtown Durham, which immediately made me dislike Braxton because I can’t stand downtown. Fortunately, he picked a place with a good parking area, so my dislike dissipated quickly.

He was sitting outside when I arrived. I recognized him from his profile picture and was once again happy that the picture matched the person. We shook hands and he remained on his phone for a bit. I wasn’t as nervous as I was during the first interview, but he looked understandably skeptical.

After explaining to him what I was doing, he appeared to relax a bit.

Recorder on.

I started by asking him, “what brought you to Tinder?”

“All kinds of stuff,” said Braxton. “Friends, dates, fun. A lot of my friends were on it. I just decided to hop in on the craze and see what was up.

He told me that he’s been on Tinder for about a year and a half.

“I didn’t have any goals to start, but now I’m looking to seriously date.”

Being new to Durham, Braxton has been on a few dates and one non-date. After hitting it off with a guy, they agreed to meet up on a Wednesday night. The gentleman told Braxton that he wasn’t feeling well on Wednesday, but re-scheduled to grab coffee on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning came. Braxton waited 15 minutes after their scheduled meet time and texted the man. No response. 15-minutes later, another text. Still nothing.

“I then went on his Tinder profile and he had unmatched me.”

I would think that getting stood up on a Tinder date is a pretty common occurrence, but felt bad that Braxton was never given an explanation. If you’re reading this, Joey in Durham with the bad allergies (really narrowing it down, I know), you owe my man Braxton an explanation.

We discussed the stigma of Tinder and he told me that he’s never used it as a hook up app and that he always thought it leaned more towards dating. That being said, he has come across guys who are only looking for one night of fun.

When it comes to swiping on the app, Braxton only has one golden rule. “If I see more than one gym selfie, you’re getting a left.”

After our Tinder discussion, I was ready to move on and learn more about Braxton’s life and non-swiping personality.

He moved to Durham from Wilmington for a new job.

Braxton currently works as a religious education assistant at a Unitarian church. Given his ties to the church and theology of Unitarianism, I wondered how he was raised.

“I was raised Baptist. At 15, I switched to Unitarian Universalism. My aunt had a fight with the people at the church I grew up at because the theology was kinda lying. It was very traditional Southern Baptist hellfire and brimstone thing.”

Braxton explained that he thought his aunt knew he was gay, which, along with the theology differences, seemed to trigger the argument between his aunt and the church. Following the dispute, his aunt took him to a Unitarianism church.

“They are a welcoming and open congregation. My pastor back home is actually a lesbian with a partner.”

Despite his inclination that his aunt knew, Braxton didn’t come out until he went to college.

He told me that he grew up in a rural area where he didn’t feel comfortable coming out. He was very certain that he couldn’t let certain people, including family members, know of his sexual preferences.

College allowed him to get away from those people and find himself.

While he got accepted to UNC-Wilmington, Braxton chose to attend Appalachian State, which is roughly five hours away from home.

“Wilmington would have been way too close for me to come out. At Appalachian State, I was just able to be ‘Braxton the gay dude.’ At the time, that’s what I needed.”

When I asked if he had lost friends over being gay, he sadly told me about losing his best friend that he’d known since he was five.

“We have not spoken in seven years.”

He told me about vacations he used to take with his friend and seemed genuinely hurt that this person was no longer in his life. It is quite sad that you can seemingly know a person their whole life and then discard them just because of who they prefer to date and sleep with. If anything, finding out your best friend is gay should excite you because that’s one less person you have to compete with over a girl.

I asked if being gay and working with children as the education director at his church made parents uncomfortable. He told me that his sexuality has never been an issue with parents and that they were more put off by his age than anything.

“There were some that, as I was greeting them, kind of gave me a look and paid most of their attention to the executive director, who is just there to back us up.”

We then moved to things he enjoys. He mentioned that he loved to dance and that he loves to listen to Katy Perry, though her latest album was a disappointment. We bonded over a love for fighting games and he told me he’s currently playing Tekken 7.

We discussed Game of Thrones, a topic that I feel like will be an easy discussion point in upcoming interviews. It seems like everyone has an opinion on Game of Thrones. Braxton’s opinion is that this season is moving quick and that until this year, he’s had trouble naming anyone that wasn’t part of a main house.

We ended our discussion talking about the communications landscape. Braxton went to App. St. to earn his communications degree prior to leaving after two years. I told him that I went for the same degree before switching to journalism and that I know plenty of communications majors who are doing nothing with their degree.

“I’ve been told that I was smart to get out,” he said. “I wanted to write for a gaming magazine, but that industry is going the way of the dodo.”

He said he would still like to work in the gaming industry someday, but appeared happy and relieved that he didn’t spend his 20’s studying and competing to break into a waste field.

After talking about potentially following up in a few months, I turned the recorder off and we went our separate ways. Until we got to the parking lot, where I discovered that I had parked next to him. He gave me a sarcastic “creeper” comment upon seeing me and my parking space.

I’ll take that over searching 30 minutes for a downtown parking spot and incorrectly parallel parking.