So, I started dating again.
Well... let me rephrase that. I tried to start dating again. It turns out it's really hard and not quite as fun as I remember, though that's likely because the last time I was dating multiple people it was because I wanted to, not because I had recently found out the guy I was seeing was also seeing other humans and then I too felt pressure to maximize my options.
There are a lot of reasons why dating is exhausting, but one of them that is perhaps specific to just me is that I would way rather spend my Friday night sitting on Zach Groth's couch drinking wine and doing something like this than meeting up with a stranger for drinks:
Really, we can't figure out why we're still single.
Anyway, before I actually started to try interacting with more male human beings, I was getting somewhat excited about the possibility of meeting new people. I would probably never say I'm good at dating -- I was in a long-term relationship during my late high school/early college years, so the time in my life where I was supposed to learn how to not be awkward during dates has long since passed -- but, when I was actively dating in New York City, I always had a pretty good time. I also had just recently taken a picture where I looked exactly like Harry Styles, so I was ready to add that to my collection of prime online dating photos. (Currently, those photos consist of me in a bear suit, me covered in fake flowers lying on a Manhattan sidewalk and me accidentally strangling my friend Abby's cat, George.)
Again, I can't figure out why I'm still single.
I haven't ever had a lot of experience with online dating apps because most of the people I dated in 2015 I met through real-life interactions. But, because I tend to think I am a quasi-expert in almost everything after I've had a few drinks, I had recently given dating advice to a stranger I'd met at a bar.
Specifically, a stranger I'd met at Jake's bar.
On the Friday night before I asked Jake, the guy I was seeing who was also seeing other people (and, who has little-to-no idea I write about him somewhat regularly on the Internet), what we were, I was sitting at his bar, waiting for him to finish closing up. Generally, this was always my favorite part in the night because everyone was gone except for us, I did not have to wait to get beer and, because once, Jake turned the music up really loud and we danced completely alone in the middle of the bar at 4 a.m..
I was under the impression I was by myself on this particular night and wasn't focusing on my surroundings, instead putting all my concentration toward texting Ashley and Zach about chicken sandwiches. So, when a guy I'd never seen before slid into the seat next to me and loudly said, "HELLO!," I gave a slight yell and toppled off my stool.
If you couldn't tell, I'm stellar at first impressions.
After our surprise meeting, the guy introduced himself as Stefan and then immediately started bombarding me with compliments. I was pretty sure this was because I was not only the sole female in the bar, but I was also the only other actual person in the vicinity besides Jake. So, his options for taking someone home were fairly slim and, although Jake is very attractive, the fact I am a woman made me slightly more Stefan's type.
Stefan, clearly trying to impress me and also, clearly not realizing I was very much aware of who the bartender was, told me I needed to meet his "best friend, Jake," then called him over from the other side of the bar. As someone who has frequented Jake's bar at least once a week for the past three months, I was very confident they were not best friends. Still, Stefan proceeded to blindly introduce me to the guy I'd been casually dating. Neither Jake or I let on that we knew each other and, Stefan, pleased with himself, then asked Jake to please give me a shot of tequila.
Jake, who knows me well enough to know my days of doing tequila shots are long gone, refused, then went back to closing down the bar, leaving me once again to deflect Stefan's compliments in the bizarre situation I'd found myself in.
While I should note that I am appreciative of the compliments Stefan gave me, I was not accepting them as kindly as I normally would have. Also, Stefan was like the third man that night alone to begin hitting on me by mentioning how much he liked my glasses, so instead of saying my usual "Thank you, I need them to see," I stopped him cold by putting my hand straight up in his face.
Stefan was not expecting this and stumbled off his chair in the exact same way I had when we'd met not fifteen minutes earlier.
"Look," I told him, while I sipped my beer and he tried to regain his balance on the stool. "I'm glad you like my glasses, but I think you need to try harder. People look at me and that's the first thing, the easiest thing, to compliment. You have to look a little bit deeper to be different."
I'd assumed Stefan would leave after this comment because, let's be real, it was pretty mean, but to my surprise, he cleared his throat, then tried again.
"Well," he said, studying my face. "I like your..."
"...And don't say my red lips," I replied dryly, causing Stefan to stop talking and Jake, who had been listening to our entire conversation, to snicker from his spot behind the bar.
Somehow, this still didn't deter Stefan. In a chain of events that I cannot quite follow, the two of us were suddenly looking at his phone, where he had opened the multiple dating apps he uses and was explaining to me how they all worked. There were so many -- I hadn't heard of a lot of them -- and, while the general format of swiping right and left was the same, each app had some slightly different feature that made them unique.
I found it exhausting and, when Stefan finally left, after forgetting my name twice and me finally telling him it was "Sage," I was just happy I was with Jake and didn't need to be doing those things. But, literally five hours later -- when I woke him up and asked if he was dating other people and he said "yes" and I said "I need to go to karaoke" -- my viewpoint of where I stood with him got flipped upside down and I landed squarely onto the same playing field as Stefan.
Which, I guess, brings us to this past weekend, when a snowstorm shut down all of New York City and Zach, Serria and I spent a full 24 hours together drinking wine in an apartment.
Zach and Serria were very excited for me to begin talking to more men, not because they don't like Jake, but because they (accurately) think I am very inept at conversing with the opposite sex and thought this would be good practice. The amount of times this year where the three of us have been sitting at Barfly and they've both groaned while I explain my thought process of speaking to men have been numerous and it's still January, everyone.
They were ready for me to re-download all those apps I'd deleted and, so, stuck in the snowstorm and sipping out of our third bottle of wine of the day, I did. The conversation with Stefan still fresh in my mind, I also decided to see what some of the apps he'd shown me were all about from a personal standpoint.
So, the following is my field study in swiping:
GROUPER
When I told some of my friends that Jake had told me he was dating other people, they were mad at him and I was like, "Well, here's the thing..."
I was sort of dating other people, too.
But, again, I feel like I need to rephrase that. I was trying to sort of date other people too, but not actively -- I'd signed up for a Grouper date along with my friends Shanice and Serria, so while I was technically going out with three men, they were still complete strangers and, in my mind, that didn't really count because I wasn't sure what they looked like, let alone if I was even going to like them yet.
I had gone on one Grouper date before with Zach's two girl roommates, where we were placed with our three dates at a fancy bar and ended up at a club that was reminiscent of Dill Street (RIP). After the date, one of them added me on Facebook, one kissed me and one vomited on the sidewalk while his friend kissed me at the end of the night.
So, yeah -- pretty much how you'd think a blind, six-person group date would end up.
Still, it was a fun experience, so when Shanice and Serria said they wanted to try it, I was down and we set up a date through the app to meet up with three strange men at 9:00 on a Friday night. (To say my mother was unhappy I was putting myself through this again would be a vast, vast understatement).
We showed up to the bar and the hostess was probably the most excited person I have ever seen when I said we were there for the Grouper date.
"Oh!," she exclaimed. "We've been waiting for you guys to show up! You're all so cute! This will be wonderful!"
It was very clear the entire wait staff had been informed of our situation which was uncomfortable in and of itself, but became even worse when the guys never showed up. Our hostess was devastated. Technically, this should have been embarrassing -- all the people who worked at the bar that had been staring at us all night tended to now avoid eye contact when passing our table -- but, in reality, it was actually the best. Because the guys didn't show up, but their credit card was on file through the app, they had to pay for all of our drinks, so the three of us drank at the swaggy bar for free, then met up with Zach at what is perhaps the most adorable bar in Manhattan.
Now, I may be biased because the bar we'd met Zach at (where he walked in and announced loudly, "I wasn't going to show up, but I couldn't let you get ditched by four men tonight!") is called Ampersand and, true to its brand, there are ampersands everywhere. Coincidentally, Ampersand is right across the street from the bar where Jake works, where we had traveled to after Ampersand had closed...
...Which is how I found myself sitting on those seats and talking to Stefan later that evening about dating apps, the entire time thinking about how ironic the situation really was.
HINGE
I had high hopes for Hinge, mostly because I recently became friends with two people who met on it and they are the actual most perfect couple. The enthusiasm they have for both karaoke and each other is unmatched (get it??), so I was setting most of my bets onto finding a date into this app.
Turns out, the karaoke couple of the year gave me some pretty false truths. They'd been each others first and only matches on Hinge, so when I got my first match (which took, like, days and did not do wonders for my self confidence, FYI), I was excited to see who this stranger was.
My excitement turned to unbelievable awkwardness when I saw the other person's photo and discovered he wasn't a stranger at all. Apparently, I had drank enough wine on Saturday to just start swiping away that I didn't realize the first person I had matched with was actually the guy who had thrown up on the sidewalk at the end of my first Grouper date.
Life really does come full circle, friends.
BUMBLE
One day in early January, Serria, Zach, Chelsea, Alberto and I went to Barfly to celebrate my one-year anniversary of living in New York City. Zach, Serria and I were trying to explain to Chelsea and Alberto, who have been together since college, what dating is actually like in New York City, so Serria opened Bumble, the dating app that's exactly like Tinder, but the girl has to start the conversation.
Serria scrolled through her matches -- she had a lot of them -- but she also showed us how, despite her clever one-liners or simple "Hey!"'s, the fraction of people who responded back in comparison to her matches were slim. This gave me anxiety because not only is starting interaction with people my actual nightmare, but also because Serria is way funnier than me, so if her greetings were being ignored, there was little-to-no hope for me.
And, that was pretty much accurate. In the few days I had Bumble, I matched with a lot of guys, many who were attractive and some who even quoted Kanye West in their profiles, so yeah -- I totally would have gone out with them. But, literally not one person replied back to me which is probably the most embarrassing thing I could broadcast on the Internet and I once wrote an essay all about how I thought I got pregnant from looking at Zayn Malik's face in real life.
TINDER
Tinder was the only "dating" app I'd ever originally had. During the snowstorm, I re-downloaded it, looked at the few messages I'd received in the past months of me being off it (most of which were some form of "Bitch better have my honey" in reference to my bear coat and, perhaps, Rihanna), laughed hysterically at how awful it was, then immediately deleted it again.
COFFEE MEETS BAGEL
I literally laughed in Stefan's face when he told me about Coffee Meets Bagel, a dating app that only gives you one match per day. I don't know why I found it so ridiculous -- maybe it was the name, maybe it was the concept -- but, I was so astounded by it that leaving the bar that night, Jake told me he couldn't believe Stefan continued talking to me... though of course, that could have been more in reference to the bizarre conversation we were having at the time.
"What if, like, you're into coffee-ing and she's into bagel-ing?," I'd asked Stefan, a description that made full sense to us at the time, but had Jake staring bewildered and confused from behind the bar.
Stefan was showing me both his match from the day as well as the girl he'd gone out with from the app earlier that week. Neither were his type, he said, but he'd taken that one girl out because of the lack of options, which made me feel very sad, but also gave me an uncomfortable appreciation for how the people who created Coffee Meets Bagel think.
The farthest I got in Coffee Meets Bagel world was going to the App store in my iPhone, typing in "Coffee," then realizing I wanted Starbucks at that moment more than I wanted a date. That was pretty much my feeling toward all of these apps and after less than a week of trying this out, I re-deleted all of them in a fit of frustration.
So, needless to say, the field study is not going well.
Maybe the reason dating someone new is going to be more difficult for me is because Jake and I met cute and in real life. I left my phone number for him on my receipt because I was crazy about him from the moment we locked eyes across the bar (ZG told me never to verbalize this, I instead not only told Jake, but also just wrote it on the Internet). But, now, the closest I've come to meeting someone in real life since I found out he was dating other people was when all the construction men on the Second Avenue subway line watched me fall violently on the ice after my yoga mat got stuck in my heel last week.
Still, despite that, I'm not that worried about actually starting to date again when it feels right.
About a month ago, I was at a bar with my friend Abby when we were talking to these two men I was under the impression were in their early-to-mid thirties. I'm either not very good at judging ages or these men were immortal because it would turn out they were actually 45, so when they guessed my age as 26, I went along with it. After amicably chatting for awhile, one of them asked for my number, but I declined to give it to him. As I turned around to leave, he said from behind me, "Are you serious? An opportunity like this isn't going to happen again."
Immediately, I whipped back around and looked at him sweetly in the face.
"Actually, sir," I replied. "I'm 23, not 26. You are not the last man who is ever going to hit on me at a bar, so an opportunity like this is definitely going to happen again."
And, I'm pretty confident that's true.
Just, please, when it happens -- compliment me on something other than my glasses.