And this little masochist is lifting up her dress.
I put up a status about feeling like shit upon the Facebook. I didn’t go into detail.
I have a bad feeling that as this was happening to me it was going way worse for thousands of girls around the world and maybe I can get some good from this. Or at lease draw the poison out.
I said I joined Tinder. I did.
After a year or two of inside jokes and me not doing it.
*Say Tinder 3X and a cute boy appears.
*Sarah, you can’t go on Tinder, you will break the internet.
* Q: Is there a Tinder for cougars?
A: No that’s just regular Tinder
All of these were funny to me because they’re true.
That whole retrospective thing? Half-funny.
I have a date tonight with the very first man I right swiped on.
This will be date number 3. He is a literal giant and an arborist. He is funny, sweet, gorgeous and kind.
I call him the Lumberjack. He calls me Sweetcheeks.
I had other Tinder dates. 2 before and one in the middle. This is where it stops being funny ha-ha and starts being funny as in ‘okay universe I got it thanks’.
What happened is this. I temporarily forgot how my life works. And that OF COURSE the first one would be the best one.
I kept going.
And now for our regularly scheduled metaphor…
I felt like I’d been living in Africa, in one of the famine-stricken countries, mostly eating bowls of rice but on occasion getting fed really good snacks by UNICEF. Then suddenly someone put me on a plane and flew me to the nearest Mandarin Buffet.
So I loaded my table to the breaking point with everything I could carry and I just looked at it, overwhelmed. Tasting this or that. Spitting some out immediately (yet discreetly) into a napkin. But nothing topped that first bite I had. It was/is delicious.
I mentioned in my last post that I felt like I was doing something wrong, and I was.
I forgot about eating the elephant. One bite at a time.
I did that thing I promised I wouldn’t do.
I won the lottery and kept buying more lottery tickets.
Universe said “NO dummy, STAAAAAAP”.
I don’t need to hedge my bets. I like this guy. I want to see what happens.
I know where the Mandarin is, and if this one leaves and I get hungry again I can always go back.
I digress.
I’m stalling.
It’s time to talk about the bad date.
I haven’t told my therapist yet. I almost told the Friendly Giant.
I told my roommate last night by saying “I’m not sure if you still read what I write but I think I should tell you about my bad date before you read about it.”
There is yet another Tinder guy who I have struck up a conversational friendship with, I told him. We were discussing Catholicism and I realized I really needed a priest in a box.
And this little masochist is ready to confess.
I was late for the bad date. I got lost as I tend to do going up the mountain. I picked a pub close to where bad date was doing a radio interview to save him navigating downtown.
This was my first mistake. The pub was almost empty. I was on my own and out of my element.
I walked in flustered and stayed that way throughout dinner. He had the power position and kept it.
I felt like I was sitting across from Sigmund Freud when he was in a particularly vicious, misogynistic mood. Or like I was with a hyper-intelligent toddler asking why why why over and over. I felt ripped apart, like a vivisection with salad.
He sent a dick pic AT the dinner table. I already knew I wanted out, but this cinched it. Things went from being mildly entertaining to yuck with a hot fudge brownie on top.
I was scared of him. I see that clearly now. I didn’t then.
So unlike me, I’ve put a man up against a wall by his throat, while I was naked, in stilettos for behaving this way. I got grabbed on a patio once and stopped 2 inches short of breaking his nose. I don’t know where that girl went. I lost her in the move maybe.
The closest I can figure is I was sitting across from some kind of super predator, real life Christian Grey/American Pyscho, and I froze.
I agreed to continue the date as we walked outside to our cars. I would have said the sky was green with conviction just to open my car door and climb inside. All the while I was turning excuses over in my mind trying to find one that would be bulletproof.
We started driving, I was following him. I called to say my kid was locked out of the house and I had to go.
Here is where it gets weird. He said “pull over here so I can say goodbye”. Empty parking lot.
AND I FUCKING DID. I could’ve kept driving. I felt the stranger-danger, I was still in freeze mode when I should have been in full flight.
The point I am at in my novel, our heroine gets drugged and almost raped in a parking lot. Life is imitating art. And I am the idiot holding the pen. But in real life, no one came to save me.
Here is where I start blaming myself, my dress was short enough that he easily reached in a groped my vagina with me in the driver’s seat of my car. And I didn’t hit the gas and rip his arm off. I just sat still until I could get away.
I’m more disgusted with my behavior than his. I never said no. My mind was screaming it and my mouth stayed silent. I put myself into a bad situation. I felt like I regressed to high school and had that ‘just tune out until it’s over and then get far way and stay there.’
Roommate says I did the best I could given the circumstances. Tinder buddy said it wasn’t my fault.
But I still somehow feel like it’s my fault.
I’d already found a really nice guy and I went on another date because…I could? Lame.
Karma came down and bitch-slapped me for my stupidity.
I sat in my car crying because I was scared he had followed me so I drove way past my house.
Lessons learned. Learn with me girls.
* Tori Amos, Hey Jupiter