It Was Just All Physical
I originally connected with this one guy on Hinge over two years ago. This is while I was still living in NYC and visiting Seattle for the holidays. In my limited vacation time, all my dating apps were set in Seattle and I had two solid matched romantic prospects. Since I was trying to optimize my time in Seattle to visit friends and family, I ran out of time and had to choose to meet up with only one, and I decided then that I would meet with the individual who I thought I had more texting chemistry, my CoffeeMeetsBagel (CMB) match. Even though Hinge guy and I were sending each other novels in our dating app chats and through phone texts, I was more excited about my other match from CMB and had to wish Hinge guy a proper and respectable thank you for his time and that I wished him the best of luck in dating.
Fast forward to two years later, on a warm August summer day in Seattle and letting my dog play in the Seattle Junction Dog Park, I see an individual that I recognize walking by the dog park. My brain couldn’t immediately make the connection why he seemed familiar. While my dog is wrestling and barking with all the small dogs and me being lost in thought trying to remember, 30 minutes later it dawned on me, it was the old Hinge guy I connected with over two year ago. He looked exactly like his photos, tall, glasses, no hair, a body build for regularly climbing mountains. I immediately while my dog is still stirring up playtime at the dog park obnoxiously, I dug up my Hinge app and looked for our old chat from over two years ago and asked through the app, “Did you just walk by the dog park? I think I saw you.”
We didn’t meet up very much, maybe a total of six times in a span of six months. Sure, I was busy with my previous posts’ romantic interest, but I still had a small sliver of an open door for this old Hinge guy. His apartment was so close to mine and I was stumped at we were good at drinking together and kissing, but beyond that, I couldn’t tell if there was anything more between us. It didn’t help that he was so limited in time and where he is in life, dating wasn’t a high priority, hence the seldom times of going on dates together. In my vulnerability of expressing wanting more from him and that I too am a woman that wants to love and be loved, we officially ended whatever we were doing in person. It was his idea to chat in person and to say our goodbyes in person. The thoughtful effort and ask to do it in person assured me, in what we could have easily done via text, he thought highly enough of me and respected me to want to do it in person.
It’s a funny dance to say goodbye to romantic prospects for the sake of it being the “right thing to do” and not because I wasn’t interested or didn’t like the guy. I was very interested and should old Hinge guy ever ask me out at a time when he could offer the time and attention I want and deserve, I would definitely give him another shot. When we were saying our initial final goodbyes, it turned into a long drawn out goodbye make-out session. While this giant laid on the crevice of my armpits for a moment of pause from the make-out session, he fell asleep. Looking at him asleep had me feeling a wide spectrum of feelings of this is sad and funny all at the same time. Here we were trying to say goodbye like respectable and mature adults but squeezing in our last moments of physical embrace like teenagers.
There is something to him falling asleep on me that struck a chord and still sticks with me. He is older than me by seven years, and still aggressively trying to accomplish his professionals goals that are impeding on his social and dating life. Being from the east coast and only living in Seattle for less than five years of which half of it has been during a pandemic, I knew that he didn’t know very many people. The sleeping giant’s fine lines around his eyes and cheeks, the slight receding hair line, his big muscular stature looked all so lonely in that moment. I was wide awake but let him sleep on me for a little while longer in my arms. I guess, lonely knows lonely, and I let him sleep on me one last time.