Tinderview #4 — Bexley

Bexley, 32, is seeking experiences on Tinder.

It had been a week since my last Tinderview. Two people canceled on me the day of our scheduled meetings, which was frustrating, but likely a true representation of the Tinder experience. Chat for a few days, set a date, show up to the date, get stood up.

I ended up matching with a female named Bexley, who drew me in with some unique photos to go along with her unique name. What I liked most about her was her excitement in meeting me for this series. After my initial message explaining that I was hoping to meet and get stories, she wrote back, “Yup :) that’s why I right-swiped.”

The smiley face melted my heart because who doesn’t enjoy a friendly text-smiley? But the actual message showed that she wasn’t right-swiping because she thought I was the NFL linebacker, but the skinny dude to the left.

We met at a local coffee shop. She grabbed a coffee and something to eat while I took a seat. I could tell she was hesitant and nervous, a common theme during these interviews.

She actually had questions for me to start, which was fair. She wondered if I had gotten any interesting Tinder stories thus far and I told her that, aside from a Catfish story, which happened on Facebook and not Tinder, that most of the stories had been pretty tame. I had learned more about the people I ended up talking to rather than getting crazy stories for their Tinder experiences.

This interview would be different.

Recorder on.

I loudly asked how long she had been on Tinder. She looked around, worried that everyone was going to hear our conversation. I didn’t do ask in a “I want everyone to know what we’re talking about” kind of way. I did it because I needed to speak over the music in the coffee shop.

She told me that she had gotten out of a long term relationship in November and was anxious to meet people and date. “I had a very busy life, traveling and work during my 20’s, so I didn’t do the whole ‘meeting a stranger and getting dinner’ kind of thing,” she said.

She recalled a story where she went on a date with Person A and then a date with Person B three days later.

“Person A walked in during the date with Person B. I go on two dates in my whole life and they run into each other. This is ridiculous. I didn’t know what to do. Instinctively, I got up and walked over to the first date and apologized.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her feeling the need to apologize to Person A.

“So, I ended up at home with Person B. That’s when Person A calls me up and is like professing his excitement about us. The next morning, I found out he was blackout drunk. (Person A and I) fell in love for like four days. It was fun.”

This is when I started to feel that this interview would be different than the previous three. For starters, she was the first female I had the pleasure of talking to. I imagined that the female experience on Tinder was much different than the male experience. That the stories would be a little more ‘out there’ based on the creepy guy-to-attractive-female Tinder ratio.

She directly asked, “do you wanna hear about my weird dates and stuff?” and I honestly hesitant because, while I did want to hear about them, I didn’t want to make them the center of the conversation.

I’m pretty happy that we ended up making them the center of the conversation.

“They’re all so uniquely…..awful, if you’re looking for something. I can’t imagine anyone staying on Tinder if they were actually looking for something.”

She told me the story of her date with a 31-year-old virgin who had only been kissed twice, which she found out midway through the date.

“By then I had wanted to end it because it was so bad,” she said. “But he told me that and I was like, ‘oh, I’ll kiss you. Get in the car.’”

She mentioned that his shirt gave him away as someone who was looking for something more serious. She brought up that his shirt made him look like “a family guy” and that’s when he told her, “I don’t typically wear this. It’s only for funerals and dates.”

Two things that definitely go hand-in-hand.

She ended up tossing the shirt out the window. While Bexley didn’t want to pursue any type of relationship with him, she wanted to “leave him better than I found him.” She told me that, “I sent him a list of podcasts and places where he could meet girls that I knew.”

She drifted away from that story and hesitated before saying, “here’s the real story I have.”

“The day after the virgin guy, I’m feeling super suave. So, the next day I met up with someone who…was kind of a pick up artist. This guy had messaged me something like, ‘I don’t mean to sound silly, but your face gives me the butterflies. You’re gorgeous and have a great smile. I’m going to bed but let’s chat tomorrow.’ It was very direct.”

She equated him to a vampire or werewolf. She told me that she now understood how people personify the two because, “this guy was the personification of a vampire.”

Within five minutes of the date, Vampire Guy had asked to kiss her. When they kissed, she said that it wasn’t a peck or even a “we know each other well but this is our first kiss” kiss. It was a passionate, “you’re the girl of my dreams that I’ve been waiting for” kiss.

Bexley described the guy as “pale and thin and like he’s always riding this undercurrent of ecstasy that he sees in you or other people.” He told her that he was agoraphobic for 10 years that he never left the house unless it was to get the mail. “He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t do drugs. He has no vices at all except for sex. It’s a person deprived of friendship and sunlight who is sexually intoxicating. Like an actual vampire.”

While ‘thin, pale, and lacking sunlight’ may explain his vampire qualities, Bexley soon found his werewolf attribute.

“I got his shirt off and he has a foot and a half wide patch of fur on his back. It’s an actual wolf patch of fur. He’s an actual werewolf vampire.”

Bexley described the sex as “a life-altering psychedelic experience” and that after that weekend, people started falling at her feet.

“One dude heard that I didn’t like big bushy beards and he shaved his beard for me. One dude sent me a cake in the mail. People in my past were texting me. It was like a sixth sense. Like I had this magic potion.”

Bexley wasn’t looking for anything serious and I never got the feeling that she had any false illusions of spending the rest of her life with this guy. She admitted that she was adventure-seeking and willing to see where the journey, or in this case, Tinder, took her. Given her story, it seemed obvious to me that the guy was only looking to hook up with girls and never talk to them again.

But he did let her down easy.

“He told like ‘I don’t know if I can see someone who makes me sad about my ex.’ So, it’s like eliciting sympathy while asking for distance.”

The next day, Bexley ended up hanging out with a co-worker of Vampire Guy. She told him how she had just gotten the boot from him when the co-worker replied, “oh you mean Cock Boy?”

According to the co-worker, he walks around in tight pants and just wants to bang everybody.

I wondered if her experience with Vampire Guy/Cock Boy made her more skeptical about using the app. She said she was shaken because, “it’s weird to be made to feel so beautiful and then know that it was all lies.” But she also admitted that she had fun, she learned something, and that it made for a good story.

After talking about her swiping preferences, I wanted to know about her matching experience. I told her that I’ve had trouble with matching with females because I thought they were more protective and picky compared to guys, who probably swipe right on just about everyone. Being my first female interview, I wondered if she matched with just about every guy and what kind of guys are on the app.

She told me that her settings include men and women that she’s just more impressed with female profiles.

“They know how to take pictures and they write an extremely clever or impressive bio. The dude’s, not so much. Maybe it’s easier being on the app as a girl, but I tend to find that they are just better at this.”

She told me about the pitiful state of straight guys on the app. Given my settings, I’m mainly attracting straight girls and bi/gay guys. There are very few straight guys on the app looking for male friends. Then, she offered to show me the selection of men she comes across on a given day.

It was quick exercise because her phone was seconds away from dying, but I noticed some trends:

• A lot of guys wearing an American flag t-shirt.
• Most profiles weren’t filled out or only had one sentence.
• The majority of the pictures were from the chest up.

In fairness to the profiles, Bexley wasn’t lying when she told me that she “swipes left at rapid speed” earlier.

Her phone died after around 12 swipes. After grabbing a charger to plug in her phone, she told me about a man who wanted his cake and eat it too.

“There was one dude that started making out with me and turned on The Waterboy. The 90’s Adam Sandler movie. He’s watching it out of the corner of his eye and laughing out loud. I was like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? Is this your fantasy? Like, what’s going on?’”

She told me about meeting a guy who was creating a virtual reality movie, but also turned out to be an internet troll and another guy who just liked experimenting with different substances.

After her phone had charged enough to be used again, she showed me screen caps she had taken of various profiles. This reminded me of those Tinder Twitter accounts that post funny profiles and conversations. I spend hours scrolling through those accounts and laughing at the absurdity people post. Some are hilarious, some weird, and most show a complete lack of shame that is almost admirable.

Bexley and I didn’t have hours to spend going through her photo archive, but here are a select few that made us laugh, cry, and re-think everything we know about life:

Following our trip down Tinder lane, we had to wrap things up as Bexley had to get to work. But not before she shared one last dating horror story with me.

“He looked nothing like he did on his profile. And he was totally awful. From the second he saw me, he just said ‘hey’ and walked away, giving me the cold shoulder.”

The date didn’t get any better from there.

“He came off super appealing on Tinder but then he’s like this crusty, rude, asshole. He talks the entire time about himself like he knows better about everything. He says something like, ‘There is no time. I’m a lot of things and I’m nothing. I don’t make plans because plans are for morons.’”

At this point, Bexley decided to make a plan of her own.

“So, I said, ‘well, I’m gonna go to the bathroom. And I plan on taking a shit.’”

What better way to end our interview?

While the interview was almost 100 percent Tinder-specific, I wanted to know more about Bexley. Her profile mentioned that she was big into hula hoop dancing, and when I asked about it, she told me how dancing allowed her to travel all around the world. While she probably didn’t run into vampires, werewolfs, or giant Adam Sandler fans, I figured she must have had some interesting stories throughout her time in the dance world.

Another time, hopefully.