Try a Little Tinder-ness

Usually I’m not one to kiss and tell, primarily because the first part of that statement is missing so there isn’t much to tell. However, recently I had an encounter with a man I’ll call Mikey. I met him through an app I’m almost too ashamed to admit to using, but what the heck! It was Tinder. I think I’m one of the five people in the world who don’t use Tinder for hookups. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t expect to find prince charming on there either. I guess I’m what you call a curious peruser.   Now, for you lost souls wondering what’s a Tinder, please allow me to give you the Cliff Notes. It is an app that encourages our most shallow and superficial tendencies. You upload your picture(s), write a few words about yourself (or not) and then go to the main page where you view pictures of other members. If you think the person is attractive, you swipe right, if not, you swipe left. If you both swipe right, then congratulations, you have found yourself a Tinder-roni, and now you two can communicate. That’s it. Just mindless swiping that turns into mindless communication.

Every now and then in your swiping adventure you stumble upon a person who presents with a tricky appearance. They are tricky because you aren’t quite sure if they are unattractive, cute or just unattractive in a cute way. In those moments you rely on the footnotes of their life provided in their “about me” section. If they seem interesting, then you go for it. If not, then you let them go. After all, you don’t have time for people with tricky appearances and boring lives. (Do you see how this app sucks you into such debased superficiality?)

That was the case with Mikey. He was a tricky fellow, but his interests seem to overlap with my own, and I thought perhaps this would not turn into mindless conversation, but maybe a business venture. In the end, I was right about it not being mindless, but for the wrong reason. So with the abandon of a skinny dipper running toward the ocean, I swiped right.

And that’s where the saga begins. My approach was simple; just ask him about his business and film interests. He responded very eagerly…perhaps too eagerly. I had about six new messages from him based upon my one question. His responses not only answered my question, but included flatteries and his number. While I don’t like when men drag their feet in the dating process, being overly eager is also a turn off. So I tried to tone things down by resorting to mindless communication. You know, ask him why he decided to go into the field he’s in and if he likes it. Blah Blah Blah blahs. It didn’t seem to work. He sent another barrage of messages, and then concluded them with “you know you have my number right? You know you can use that? Lol.” While he may have been laughing out loud, I was not. I was ready to un-match (think de-friending someone) because he was simply. DOING.THE.MOST. And he was too tricky looking to be like that.

Despite my better judgment, I forged on. I didn’t want to un-match just yet. That would be mean, right? Furthermore, I felt it was too passive, and one of my goals this year was to be less passive. Eventually we communicated via phone and a date was set for Friday at 7pm. Immediately I was a bit confused at this time, because beforehand he told me he works until 9pm during the week. I didn’t quite know what to make of the inconsistency. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it was I who was confused. Again, this was a grace I should not have extended.

Thursday rolls around and he sends me a text message. Apparently the part of his brain that allowed him to remember his work schedule went from a dormant to active state. He suddenly realized that he gets off at 9pm and wanted to know if we could set our date later, around 10pm. Well, 10pm is far too close to booty call hours for my comfort so I said no. He offered a feigned apology and insisted that he wanted to meet up with me because he was interested in a business and personal collaboration. I suggested dinner on Sunday. He accepted and assured me this was going DOWN.

…But of course it didn’t. Sunday morning comes and I’m in bed thinking about the goodness of the Lord and how I’m about to go in on this church service when I get a text from Mikey asking me to call him when I get the message. Immediately I knew he was about to flake out on me again. I was ok with that, however, because I was ready to let Tricky Mikey go. So I called him and he sounded shocked to hear me. “Oh I didn’t know you would call so soon,” he said sounding half awake. Why? Didn’t you just text me to call you?

As expected he hit me with an excuse about why we may not be able to meet, but I wasn’t quite ready. This adult male, who presented with at least average level of intelligence, told me that he works for JP Morgan Chase as a financial consultant and that he gets paid via direct deposit. Well wouldn’t you know it, he was supposed to have been paid that Friday, but Chase accidentally wired his paycheck to another person’s account. “So my money is literally sitting in someone else’s account right now,” is what he told me in the shadiest voice you can imagine. He just noticed that morning and it would take 3-5 business days before Chase cleared up the matter. To further lend credence to his story, he expressed concerned about his bills that were deducted automatically from his account. He hoped he had enough to cover these bills. Thusly, accordingly, and for the above stated reasons, he couldn’t go to dinner because he was unable to pay for it.

Oh, but it gets better. He then threw out the suggestion that I pay for dinner and he pay me back after his money cleared. I let that ball drop right to the ground. I was not catching that. He also threw out the idea of me picking him up so he didn’t have to take the bus. “I mean, I have a car, but I was just thinking you can pick me up,” is what he said in the same shady voice as before. Again, I let that ball fall right to the floor and watched it fall gingerly.

At this point I was over it and him. I can’t deal with tricky guys who are allegedly financial consultants for Chase, but don’t have enough money in their account to go to dinner and want me to pick them up even though they have a car! I had to let him go…but I’m a procrastinator. So I put off telling him about himself until a more appropriate time. We rescheduled one again, but this time for brunch during the week. I knew I wasn’t going to brunch, however; not because I thought he would cancel, but because I knew I would cancel. It was all a part of me letting him down gently.

I guess I wasn’t gentle enough. The day after canceling our brunch I sent him a text message letting him know that I didn’t believe things would work out between us. What ensued was nothing short of hilarious and scary. He proceeded to go through the five stages of grief in five text messages. There is no way to summarize his messages without doing them justice, so I included them below.

Poor Mikey. He didn’t know if he wanted to be mad, laugh, wish me well or scold me for being unprofessional. And apparently he forgot that we met on Tinder not LinkedIn; this was not about business. There were many ways I could have responded to him and his bipolar reaction. However, I have found that it is best not to fight the wind. Rather you must let it blow past you and move on.   So that’s what I did. I left him in his grief; never to deal with him again.

Or so I thought. Fast forward weeks later, I was volunteering with the American Lung Association at our city’s Chili Festival. When I walked to my station I saw another volunteer that looked awfully familiar. As I passed him, we met face to face, and I thought to myself, “No! That can’t be him. What are the odds?!” He was much shorter than expected, but his tricky appearance confirmed it. He stared at me; I stared at him. In his eyes I could see that he recognized me too. His eyes were also filled with a mixture of shame and fear. His face looked like a man who had been exposed. Fortunately, he never knew my first name, so he said nothing to me. I certainly did not want to speak to him. After all, I was there for the chili, not the drama. So like Dionne Warrick, I walked on by and went to my chili station. I never saw him again. Hopefully that was my last encounter with Mikey, but given the way the world works, he is sure to pop up at least one more time.  When he does, you can be sure to see a Part II.