Mr. Swiper, a suitor from Tinder, had just moved to New York from Boston over 4th of July weekend. He’s originally from Minnesota. I don’t know what our Tinder exchange consisted of and I cannot check it because he’s unmatched me. But, we pretty quickly moved from Tinder to text. He then also pretty quickly locked down a day to meet up for drinks. That was a solid move on his part. Why? It’s as simple as Newton’s First Law of Motion: An object continues to do whatever it happens to be doing unless an external force is exerted upon it. Substitute ‘specimen’ in for ‘object’ and ‘meeting’ for ‘external force’ and there you have MoMo’s First Law of Tinder.
Because he had just relocated to NYC, he asked me to suggest a place. But, I am not an NYC expert and my primary objective on weekdays is to end up as close to the train station as possible so that when I begin my epic trek back to my homeland of New Jersey, I’m well positioned. Accordingly, I proposed a neighborhood nearby the train station and passed the venue selection baton back to him. I assumed he had the internet because our communications began on an app that required such connectivity and, thus, he had the capability to Google a bar.
His recommendation was a place called Anotherroom. As you might expect, I have internet access. I used that access to conduct some due diligence on this place; in other words, I Yelped it. My first discovery was that the place only serves beer and wine, no cocktails. Otherwise, the place received rave reviews. Well, come to find out, those Yelp reviewers are a bunch of liars.
I arrived a few minutes late and Mr. Swiper was even later, which was fine. The place was dark like a shitty cave, or in the opinion of the lying Yelpers, there’s “great ambiance.” We sat at two bar stools. He ordered a beer and I ordered a wine. I started telling a story in which I referenced my name. He said, “Oh, is that your actual name? I have you stored in my phone as Princess.” My secret was out. After about four minutes of sitting on these stools, I asked if we could relocate to the seats behind us because the stool was cutting off my circulation. The seating behind was bench style. I noticed Mr. Swiper and I kept a fair distance between ourselves, reflecting lackluster chemistry between us. I asked him why he chose the place he did. He said because he thought it had a good happy hour. However, there are only three items on the happy hour list and all three are beers. That sounds like a sad hour to me.
Conversation was flowing with relative ease. But, then, despite the dearth of lighting, I noticed an imperfection on my wine’s surface. I was unsure whether it was a piece of cork or a winged creature. I reached for my go-go-gadget flashlight, otherwise known as a smart phone and beamed it at the inner content of the glass to assist in my inspection. To my dismay, a fruit fly had kamikazed into my adult beverage. Look, I am not a vegetarian and if I were to accidentally ingest a fruit fly and later find out about it, I would continue to survive without being traumatized. However, once I have an awareness that the corpse of an insect is floating in my drink, I will cease consumption of the bug cemetery immediately. If that makes me a princess, so be it. I will wear that crown proudly and sip from a fly free goblet.
Well, Mr. Swiper was not sympathetic. Instead, he said we’d leave after he finished his beer. When he got up to close out, I told him to mention the fly in the half full wine glass to the bartender. The bartender gave even less of a fuck saying, “That’s on you guys.” So basically, he accused us of bringing a suicidal fruit fly with us into the establishment.
So, at this point in the story, you should have concluded three things:
- Yelp reviews should be taken with a grain of salt.
- I prefer my wine without fruit flies.
- This date with Mr. Swiper was like ordering vanilla ice cream and getting vanilla ice cream; no major excitement, but no major disappointment either.
Mr. Swiper turned to me and said, “You’re up, Princess,” alluding to it being my turn to pick a spot. My recommendation was a nice rooftop bar. On our walk there, he asked me what my real name was again. Pro tip: Guys, you really need to pay attention when a girl tells you her name during or before a date. It’s not that hard. When she says her name, repeat it in your head several times until it is etched in your memory at least for the remaining time you spend with that human being.
We arrived at the rooftop bar. It was a perfect night weather-wise for this setting. We ordered drinks and sat down with our backs to the beautiful skyline behind us because he didn’t want the sun in our eyes (which was fine by me because I have no burning desire to stare endlessly at buildings). But, because this rooftop offers such a beautiful view, many of the people at the bar were taking pictures of it. Mr. Swiper said, “We’re going to be in so many pictures.” I told him that it isn’t likely we were being captured in the photos because the phone photographers were likely taking the pictures at a higher angle to cut us and the railing behind us out. We playfully argued back and forth about it, until I spotted a photographer in action about five feet away from us. I stood up and approached the girl. I asked her if he was in her photo. She reactively deleted the photo and apologized, assuming that we had some strange aversion to appearing in random pictures. I explained that we had no problem if we were, but that I just wanted to prove to him that we were not. I felt bad that she deleted her picture and offered to take a picture of her and the guy accompanying her with the scenic background. She politely declined stating that they were on a first date. I shared that we too were on a first date. She asked which app we met on and revealed that she had met her beau through Bumble. The four of us engaged in conversation and it essentially turned into a double date.
They sat down next to us in the following formation: Her Bumble date, her, me, Mr. Swiper side by side. I was talking to either her or her guy with my back turned to Mr. Swiper momentarily. When I repositioned to talk to Mr. Swiper, I saw his smart phone in plain view in the palm of his hand with his fingers in swiping action on a dating app. Nigga, what?!
I opened by unabashed oral kingdom and said, “Are you serious?” He said something to the effect of I was talking to the other people and he was just occupying himself. No. MoMo don’t play that. That brings us to MoMo’s Second Law of Tinder: No swiping while on a date and if you absolutely cannot restrain yourself, be discreet about it. For example, do it in the restroom – dick in one hand, phone in the other.
I replied to him, “If you’re bored and don’t want to be here, that’s fine, you can leave, but it’s ridiculous that you’re swiping on dating app while you’re on a date.” He babbled some bullshit and then got up to leave. He reached his hand out to shake mine and said, “I had a really good with you time up until now.” No one cares. I declined the handshake and bid him adieu. He made it about one step away when a female (Celeste) who was seated to the left of him turned to me with her hand raised for some high five action and said, “You’re a boss bitch!”
The immediate positive feedback from strangers with no allegiance to me or him was pleasant. I then conversed with Celeste and her friend Natalie; they were like the Siskel and Ebert of the date. I was very interested in hearing their perspective on what had just gone down in the N-Y-C. They kindly gave me the play-by-play from their view. Natalie said, “We saw the whole thing.” She explained that they noticed him scrolling through a dating app and began to wonder what the dynamic was between us. First, they thought he was my boyfriend, but then upon witnessing his smart phone pimping, they revised their view to it being a group of four friends (us plus the Bumblers) hanging out. But, then, they reverted back to their original thesis of some kind of romantic coupling between us. They said they felt kind of bad for me, but then when I turned around, they wondered what would happen. As I described, I immediately called him out on his bullshitary and he departed. Natalie labeled my reaction inspirational, stating that if it had happened to her, she would have been annoyed by it, but would have kept it to herself and then never spoken to him again after the date, but she was happy to witness my approach. Natalie said Mr. Swiper struck her as “very basic.” Celeste echoed that sentiment saying that he looked like every other guy in the bar. Basically, as I mentioned earlier, he is very vanilla ice cream – no sprinkles, no fudge, no frills.
I will credit Mr. Swiper on the fact that on his way out, he paid for our drinks. He then must have immediately unmatched us on Tinder because on my walk to the train, I went to screenshot our Tinder convo for purposes of this post only to discover that he was longer on my list. Welcome to New York, Mr. Swiper. Swipe with caution.
The End.
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