wellington – 30 Days of Tinder

Date #22 Stories with a Bearded-Borderline-Colleague

Have you ever met Tintin in real life? Well, I think have. With the exception that he was bearded and didn’t have a dog.

Other than that, here’s the image I’ll leave with you with so that you can picture Date #22 as you read:

[Edit: I mean the blonde Tintin, not the ginger one as it seems like there are two.]

I swiped him knowing that I recognized him, but I decided to skip pretending like I actually knew him since we had never talked, I’d just Facebook stalked him (I do that quite a lot, actually – pretend I’ve only just met someone when really, I’ve Facebook stalked the shit out of them). I had seen him before, sitting down working hard at a co-working space where we were both based. From a distance he looked inoffensive, shy and the blonde beard gave him a bit of street cred. Yes, another bearded young professional in Wellington.

“I’m so shocked, I literally can’t even stomach another hipster beard” says Mary Cherry.

I believe he made the first move, I can’t actually recall, and since editing this blog he has deleted his Tinder profile and re-joined a few times. Typical bearded men who overthink their Tinder presence…

He had pretty good chat through Tinder, though I had built up this image in my head that he would be extremely awkward and shy in real life. His photos depicted a very blonde, very bearded big kid with blue eyes and a baby face. He wore a lot of checked shirts in various colours according to his Tinder profile. Another classic lumberjack look alike, AKA Date #13. So Hipster. So Wellington.

After some above average yet still mediocre chat, we agreed to meet for coffee at Stories on Cuba Street. I was running strangely early for my coffee with the blonde-bearded hipster and decided to go and check out more Coachella-themed stationary at Typo to kill some time. I spent about twelve minutes in a store that was hardly bigger than 3 meters wide on either side. I’m embarrassed at how often I’ve mentioned a shop that I haven’t actually spent money in. People must assume I just loiter in Typo in between all my Tinder dates. Which as it turns out isn’t far from the truth.

We arranged to meet during the morning coffee time frame and I made up some excuse at work about meeting a friend early for coffee as a way of taking an early lunch break. Although my dating exploits were hardly a secret to my colleagues (with my casual slutty work attire and the pash rash,) I didn’t want to admit every day that I was meeting a stranger for my caffeine fix.

On this particular occasion, it was a cold morning and my frequent Tinder dating meant that my care factor for how I looked was decreasing at a rapid pace. On this momentous occasion, I thought it was an excellent idea to wear black ponte pants courtesy of the Gla’sons with some brogues I had picked up from Hush Puppies. Not the sexy comfortable footwear that is made fashionable by Taylor Swift or the Kardashians, I’m talking about these bad boys with straight black pants:

71ghlk7iz5l-_ux500_ — These bad boys take me all round town, slayin’ and playin’. Just sayin’

It looked terrible, but I didn’t care, and it wasn’t like checked shirts were making me feel intimidated.

Date #22 was on time and weirdly enough, we were communicating solely through Tinder. Usually I try and upgrade to personal texting devices as soon as possible as a way of storing my conversations for dis blog, but I had clearly dropped the ball this time. He was waiting for me, on the street, in the cold, unaware that I was purposely avoiding him so that I wasn’t the one waiting on Cuba Street like a weirdo. He offered to get me a hot beverage before I had even got there. 10 points to Gryffindor! Take note, Date #7.

He was shorter in real life than I had anticipated. Maybe I imagined this blonde hair, blue eyed guy to be Nordic in all aspects, but he fell short of expectations. We had a few mutual friends according to my Facebook stalk. This stalk also revealed that this guy is/was/formerly engaged within the last six months.

Call me crazy, but this merely intrigued me. One of our mutual friends also told me that he was a left-wing self-righteous twat but this didn’t really set me back either, just made me more excited to meet him. As the icing on the cake, I later found out that a previous conquest of mine told Date #22 that he had dodged a bullet which I found a) so fucking rude and b) so fucking accurate.

What do you even mean “dodging a bullet”?

tumblr_inline_n6gjscfm0i1ripgeb — I’m the one who’s got one less, one less, problem.

Date #22/Tintin talked fast and immediately gave off this non-flirty vibe. I think that was his style. It was as though I was immediately friends zoned, or I was having sex with his brother and he was trying to suss me out to see if I was worthy of his bro while politely tolerating me at the same time.

I don’t expect my dates to be drool and crotch-grabbing, but I enjoy a false sense of security when I’m on a date and am constantly reassured every three or four seconds about how great I am.

During our caffeine fix I found out three things about him.

He was engaged VERY recently. I was totally a rebound Tinder date.
He was previously a journalist and worked in media. This pissed me off. He was definitely going to be a better writer than my uneducated, barely comprehensible self and he was going to judge anything I wrote.
He was smoother than I expected. By that, I mean he had a quick wit and talked fast. I liked that about him.

From first impressions, I thought Date #22 would be quiet and unassuming (read: boring loser) but he was a lot more put together than my Tindersumptions had led me to believe. I didn’t expect this and after 21 dates, you would think I’d have it sussed.

There wasn’t much disagreement between (from my perspective!) but I felt like his body-language and chat had friend-zoned me before I could even bring out my adorable-slutty charm on. That, or he took my previous conquest’s advice seriously. Regardless, I wasn’t too gutted.

My free coffee finished after we walked around Cuba Street making small talk about everything and nothing, therefore my time for him expired and I had to get back to work. He invited me later to attend a work event with him later on that night (my adorable slutty charm must have worked) but alas, I had another Tinder date lined up.

4nvicep — This is Date #22, dodging a bullet.

Edit: I had written this blog thinking I was so clever for referring to him as TinTin. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one who thought he looked like TinTin. Go figure.

Date #21 Wines with a PYT

This was such a hard entry to start writing since I want to make it very clear that going on a date with a girl was not a token effort for this blog.

I have always been open-minded and if I could be satisfied that people weren’t going to misinterpret this, I’d leave it at that and keep writing. The thing is though, people are dicks and misread things. Even though I’m all about over sharing; it’s nice to be on a platform where it’s all on my terms.

So to clarify: I am probably straight. I can’t categorize my preferences any other way as I feel like it’s not fair to people who are genuinely bisexual or bi-curious if I claim to be something that I am probably not. Not that it matters, but can I sum up my sexual preferences with the analogy below (that I like to think I made up):

“I eat a lot of curry and sometimes, every once in a while I like to get a vegetarian curry. If I eat a vegetarian curry, it doesn’t mean I’m a vegetarian, it just means I like vegetarian curry.”

So that’s how I like to describe my sexual preferences. I’d also like to bring in a quote from my favourite girl Mindy Kaling: “I hate it when people say ‘girl crush’. No one is going to think you’re a lesbian if you just say ‘crush’.”

So basically, I’m just normal, open minded person. Obviously I think that love is love and I change my Facebook picture to be colourful as a reflection of this (and as a token effort), but I don’t want use my sexuality as some sort of defining point. I’m a fun person to play ‘Never have I ever’ with, but otherwise I like to leave it at that. ;)

I love swiping on girls on Tinder. Unlike guys, they’re so much better at uploading nice photos of themselves, with good angles and appropriate facial expressions (and the occasional duck face). Girls have this natural gift for being able to tell which photos best show off their derriere, whereas guys are mostly too stupid or lazy to change from their default profile pictures. Like, we know that you’re not Steve Hanson or Richie McCaw holding a World Cup or a weird meme that no one gets, so why you upload it as your profile picture on Facebook and Tinder? No one will swipe you and you will be forever alone. Some free advice.

Needless to say, Date #21 had the best Tinder profile that I have ever matched, and was the best looking date I have ever been out with. She had a sassy bio with six photos showing various hair colours, close ups, long angle shots displaying her nice figure and only one selfie. Perfecto.

There was a bit of back story with her as well. I don’t know if I explained this to her very well at the time since I was actually really nervous, but I recognized her from a few years back when we were both in a bar. I was with my boyfriend at the time and drunkenly told him how attractive I thought she was. He encouraged me to confront her (like the supportive boyfriend he was) and to invite her to back to ours (like the very supportive boyfriend he was) and I remember drunkenly slurring at the time that “I didn’t want to share!” and that was the end of that. Then we stopped going to that particular bar since I got elbowed in the nose after my nose was only recently broken. Woe is me.

I also didn’t admit this to her, but I had Facebook stalked the shit out of her after that night and there was something about her which was different than the crush I have on Taylor Swift. I found this girl really endearing.

Luckily for me and unlucky for my now ex-boyfriend, she recognized me from that bar, that night too. When we matched on Tinder and she talked to me first, I was totally stoked.

When she said that she remembered me, I admitted that when I’d first met her, I’d had this wild crush on her. She was so sassy and said: “What shall we do about this? I’d love to meet you”.

Oh yes.

We chatted a little bit and then she gave me her number without my prompting. She was so much better at this than me and – unlike the communication I was exchanging with useless dudes – I was interested in what she was saying.

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I was so excited that when I sent her a text and she didn’t respond I messaged her on Tinder saying ,“Hey I texted you, I haven’t heard back?”.

She definitely knew how to be cooler than me, that was for sure. Not that its hard to be cooler than me.

I’m so lame, I put a Snowman to describe how cool I was… Good one Melissa.

We agreed to meet for wines on Monday at 5.30pm and she suggested the General Practitioner, which was great since I hadn’t really been there much (and certainly not within the last 30 days) and it was within perfect walking distance for both of us.

Unlike the minimal effort I like to put in for my usual dates, I decided to actually be there on time. I even topped up my foundation and lipstick as girls tend notice these things, boys don’t. Whilst I was waiting for my ‘crush’, Date#18 happened to walk past. We hugged and he told me I looked great and I said I was meeting a ‘friend’ for a wine. Obviously he wouldn’t have assumed it was a date if he saw that I was with a girl, but he most certainly would have assumed it was one if I was having a wine with a guy. We lied to each other saying we should catch up soon, before he went the opposite way.

craig-david-o — So hard to find a Craig David ‘Walking Away’ gif.

Then Date #21 showed up and she was adorably apologetic as she had just finished work. Man she was so much better than me at everything, including being late. She was as gorgeous as I drunkenly remembered just with darker features and we went off inside.

As it was my idea to meet up, I bought her a wine. I think we got chips too, I can’t remember. She nailed this wild and free vibe with this driven and determined attitude. We sort of got our sexuality out of the way and I fessed up that this was my first girl date. She defined herself more as bisexual but had recently got out of a relationship with a guy. Even though she was three or so years younger than me, she struck me as mature for her age. I was so intrigued by her background and was just so interested in whatever she was saying. It was bizarre. I never usually care that much but there was something about her, or the situation we were in where I seemed to hang onto her every word. It was getting cold and I had to cook dinner for my flatmates, but before we finished our second wine, she wanted to go out onto the balcony to have a smoke.

Even her smoking was attractive, despite the fact I find smoking rather repulsive. She looked like bad Sandy with her brows on fleek and giggling away.

giphy1 — I’d like to pretend like I’m Marty but realistically I was probably a hot blend of the three of these bitches in the back all at once. Cringe.

It was so nice leaving that date, as we could finish the date like old gal pals whereas with some guys you don’t know there’s this element of awkwardness. You don’t know whether they’re going in for a kiss on the cheek, the pash, the handshake or the bump n grind. I could have had a ferocious pash like Date #10 or a crotch-grab like Date whichever that one was, I was just pleased to have finally met her.

tumblr_mw7yhuu1nm1recb9mo1_500 — Seriously crotch grabber, I can diss you more since you defriended me.

Date #20 Sunday Night Stroll with a Poetic Canadian

Don’t tell my most recent ex-boyfriend this, but I met a better version of him with Date #20. After the horrific experience of Date #19 (Don’t lie Melissa, you loved it!) I decided I needed to cut weirdos if they said anything offensive, stupid or creepy and not to meet anyone who looked suspiciously tiny. My Tinder prospects immediately dwindled.

Enter Date #20. I have zero recollection of actually swiping on him but since I was notified at some point on Sunday that I had a match, I guess we had done so during one of my mindless swipe sessions.

Date #20 went for the bold first move and said “Hi Melissa, how’s life going?”. His Tinder profile made me think that he looked like my most recent ex (which wasn’t disastrous, just a solid meh of 10,) with the exception that he was Canadian.

AND REMEMBER HOW MUCH I LOVE CANADIANS?!

Seriously.

Since I love Canadians and hate chatting on Tinder, my first reply was: “Good. Would you like to go for a coffee or a drink now?”. He seemed a little taken aback by me coming on to him at 5.30pm on a Sunday evening and said “Just please don’t be an axe murderer, that would be the fastest request to meet on Tinder.. so yes”.

S u c k e r.

I assured him that I would leave my axe at home before proposing we grab a hot drink and walk along Oriental Parade (so that I could take my dog for a walk… I was becoming really resourceful with these Tinder dates!).

I insisted that I pick him up in the Barina in 20 minutes, before asking what sort of drink he would like. He said he wanted something good for recovery, so I chose some sort of fruit juice to ease his hangover.

After I initially messaged him at 5.26pm, he was sitting in my car by 6.43pm. Now that’s what I call efficient! (And potentially desperate).

Date #20 was quite similar to my ex on quite a few fronts. He was a little shy, rather lovely and seemed like the kind of sensitive soul who would find love at the end of a movie but whose scenes would end up on the cutting room floor, so no one ever found out.

I learnt that he worked in I.T and was here on a working holiday, just like my previous lover. It was nice that he had travelled, it meant we had a little more to talk about than basic bitch topics. We tried to find our common interests, and at this point there wasn’t a lot to go off.

Things got interesting when I found out he wrote poetry. I take back what I said about finding love at the end of the movie which no one cared about, this guy was smooth. He was real. I like the idea of a man who can express his feelings in more ways than the post-coital chat.

tumblr_lp0007leub1qztfc6o1_500 — Have I ever told you how amazing your eyes look in this dim light, late at night?

He was sweet and genuine, I’ll give him that. I don’t think our spark went off because I was talking too much about myself to make the time go by. After our moonlit walk along Oriental Parade which was a cute setting for any first date – until Richie went for a wee poo – we walked back to the Barina and I must have driven him home. I was busting to pee by this stage and could barely string sentences together.

He messaged me at 7.47pm to thank me for the spontaneous weekend. I said that it was so lovely meeting him as well and then never met up with him again. Although he did suggest it four more times after that.

… Of course he did.

Date #19 The Best Date Ever

During my month of swiping, I matched with a guy who often used to upload selfies which hinted at a six-pack to his Tinder Moment, along with pictures of his fancy looking red car. I made the choice to give him my number early on in the Tinder game based on the prospect of excellent ab selfies. I could only imagine how the conversation would go.

He messaged me the day I got Tinder. He sent me five messages in a row before saying “Ok I will stop boring you. All the best to you”.

Ick.

Stage Five Clinger alert! God forbid I’m allowed to be too fucking busy to respond to a complete stranger on a phone app. I replied saying that I had been at work quite early (true) and that I go to sleep quite early (massive lie) as an excuse for not responding. He was somewhat happy with this response and sent me two emoticons in the next message telling me how cute I was. The conversation continued on a five to one message ratio, with him telling me that I was ‘so beautiful’ and ‘also you like dogs’ (clearly, that’s secondary to being ‘so beautiful’).

I asked him vaguely if he would like to meet for coffee, so that I could rip off the band aid and get this date over with. He then bombarded me with messages, saying that he was free at 4.30, whether that was okay, what I thought about this, sending a singular question mark, then telling me that “he would really like to understand what’s in my mind and that it is so rude of me.”

Looking back on this crazy exchange, I was clearly too focused on this 30 day challenge to stop and cut my losses. I felt like if I had invested my cellphone number and a small portion of my time, I had to at least try and make amends. I faked an apology and he asked me to respond to his texts in a timely manner, since the two hour lag between my texts was simply too much for him.

That week we texted on and off:

Date #19: “Do you have any time to meet me this week?”

Me: “When do you want to meet?”

Date #19: “Saturday will be great. But I’m scared whether you will reply to me on Saturday :(”

Me: “What do you want to do?”

Date#19: “Movie or dinner? Really want something quiet.”

Me: “Dinner would be good.” [Sidenote: I hate movies on the first date].

Date #19: “Cool! I can’t believe it but am looking forward to that.”

Me: “Give me a chance! What do you do in Wellington?”

Date#19: “No worries, I just don’t like games and I’ve had enough of girls’ games! So let’s start it again! I live here I have two jobs actually, I told you about that, wbu?”

Oh he hates games?

… I should have broken it off before it started.

On the Friday I had asked him whether he would like a drink that night. He then bombarded me with about eleven messages and told me to stop “playing with him“.

I was so sick of all his shit and I hadn’t even met him yet. I decided to CALL him as I was so agitated that I was contemplating yelling. I really wanted to tell him that I didn’t actually owe him anything since a) we didn’t know each other and b) he was coming across like a serial killer

When I did call, I kindly explained that I wasn’t texting him back because ~~I’m a massive Tinder whore who is dating the entire Wellington population~~ I was simply busy, but I was free tomorrow night and was able to meet up for dinner. I mentioned that I’d just had a big week of work ~~and dating the entire Wellington region.~~

[Side note: I was so frustrated by this point that when I called him, I was reversing my car and accidentally rear ended my neighbour’s car. If you’re reading this, fellow Northland resident, I’m not even sorry.]

After this phone call he sent me four love-heart smiley emoticons and four love-hearts. Red love-hearts too. Is there such thing as a Stage 6 clinger?

On Saturday, he sent me a text in the morning telling me how much he was looking forward to that night. Being the cock-tease I am, I responded with a “Me too, x”. He then messaged me saying that he just saw me out with a black dog. That was true, but what he probably didn’t know was that I was off to Memphis Belle for a coffee with his predecessor. He told me then how beautiful I was with another red love-heart emoticon before asking if 7pm at Bluewater Grill on Oriental Parade suited me.

I don’t think anyone really realizes how exhausting dating can be when you have two jobs, a small dog, a big mouth and a huge appetite. You have to put in effort to be funny and adorable. My brain was full of nothing and yet I was exhausted and not even thinking about what I should and shouldn’t say to these Tinder potentials.

Anyway, because of the exhausting life I was leading, Richie and I had a nap on Saturday afternoon at around 4.30pm when he texted me. Experts say that naps should be around 20 minutes otherwise you’re technically just asleep on a Saturday afternoon. Because I was napping for two hours, I was technically sleeping an hour before meeting Date #19 at Bluewater Grill.

Yeah.

I’m a bad person.

Instead of jumping out of bed and urgently getting ready like a good person, I just texted him asking if we could push that to 7.30pm and (naturally), fell back asleep.

I woke up again at 7.11pm when I realised that I was going to be late again, so I texted him asking if 8pm was going to be okay, since I was “getting ready and running late, x”.

This guy sent me back four angry emoticons followed by a smiley face. I asked whether he had left already. Sure enough, he had and I was barely dressed and basically mucking around. I’m notorious for being late (less so since people have constantly mentioned it after reading my blog) but this was just pure bad form on my behalf. At 8.10pm, I got a text asking if I was still coming.

I was, I just hadn’t left yet. Appropriate YOLO.

Finally, at 8.23pm – about an hour and 15 minutes after the original time, I showed up looking like Ariana Grande since I had watched a YouTube clip while I was getting ready for some inspiration. I went for the adorable look and pretended like I was so clumsy and cute, claiming that parking was so hard (given the 100 options I had outside Oriental Parade in the middle of Winter, how could I even choose?).

13 minutes of learning how to wing my eyeliner like Ariana Grande was totes worth it.

I expected him to react along these lines, since I was technically an hour and a half late:

But instead, he stood up and greeted me with a kiss on the cheek.

When he stood up I had this horrible realisation:

He was a lot shorter than his Tinder pictures had led me to believe. I mean, I enjoy a bit of dramatic exaggeration, but come on, lie about the size of your dick, not your height!

He was barely taller than me and I’m 5ft! Ladies, never trust a man on Tinder that only has face shots, with no pictures of him and his friends because it either means he’s a tiny little man trying to hide it, or a loser with no friends to take pictures with. No wonder he had abs, there was only 20cm of real estate to tone!

I’m not one to get awkward but this whole night was just too much for me to grin and bear. I found out that Date #19 didn’t drink because he was religious and into his (20cm) abs and ordered a coke when I ordered a wine.

I was so excited for that wine.

I tried to be as sweet and innocent as possible and tried not to act like myself at any point. The guy was telling me how much he loved this restaurant (which has a 2.4 average rating on Zomato, FYI) and was so excited to finally meet me. He was from South America, loved his Mum and talked a lot about meeting a nice girl. He was in his mid 30’s and I could see why he was a little unlucky despite having a six-pack. He was relatively good looking, I was just shocked at how small he was in comparison to how he looked on Tinder.

I decided to get the same meal as him as he ordered a plate of grilled meat with a side salad. The conversation progressed slowly, to the extent that I checked my phone four times before our meals came out. I forgot to mention that we were the only people in the restaurant, so this poor guy was waiting for almost an hour and a half along in the restaurant sending me emoticons.

When the mains finally arrived, the only other two people in the restaurant came out (staff), one carrying the food and the other carrying a small white teddy bear and single rose.

Man, this was actually the worst thing that could happen.

I was mortified that he had done this. I know that he was sincere but this was also kinda creepy. I couldn’t deal. I thanked him and gave him a kiss on the cheek, genuinely blushing before resuming my plate of grilled meat.

I thought that things couldn’t possibly get worse that this, but they did. When I was eating my salad (that had far too much cheap dressing flooding it), I noticed there was a moth swimming between the sauce and the lettuce.

Of course there had to be an insect in my food. This date couldn’t get better otherwise!

I didn’t want to bring up the moth situation to Date #19 because he seemed emotionally ill-equipped to handle it. However my disgusted face betrayed me and he began panicking and thinking that he had done something to offend me.

“What have I said?” “What have I done?” “Tell me Melissa, what have I done”.

He was so quick to overreact, I would hate to see him in an actual disaster.

I finally told him about the moth and he was kinda just like “Oh okay“, as though it was completely normal to have an insect in your salad, and then he kept on talking whilst I decided that I was full and that I needed to leave. ASAP.

When I told the waitress/only other people in the restaurant that there was a bug in my salad, they offered our desserts for free as compensation. There was no way I could stomach more food after that and, luckily, Date#19 wanted to maintain his ab real estate.

When we went up to pay (I REALLY wanted to pay half), they offered us 15% off since I dined with a moth and Date #19 blocked me out of the way to pay for my (much-needed) wine, his coke and our two mains.

Turns out he had walked to the restaurant (of course he had) so I offered to drive him home and he graciously accepted. After a five minutes of driving, we got to his and he invited me inside to watch movies.

“Sorry I’m not that kind of girl” I insisted before he pashed my face and I egged him out of the car because I was ‘tired’.

Then I drove to Motel to pash Date #1 again.

Tag: wellington

Date #22 Stories with a Bearded-Borderline-Colleague

Date #21 Wines with a PYT

Date #20 Sunday Night Stroll with a Poetic Canadian

Date #19 The Best Date Ever

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