By the time I go out with Andy #3, I start to worry about the creativity of our mothers and the malleability of my attraction. Why were there so many of them, these boys named Andy who didn’t appreciate me the way I wanted them to. I start to worry my type is stupidity (theirs and mine).
I go out with Andy #3 three times (which feels too on the nose but is sadly just the truth). I go out with Andy on three totally separate occasions and in three totally separate headspaces. Andy never changes, not once. Andy #3 is himself the whole way through; I am progressively losing my mind.
Andy #3, the first time:
For weeks Andy messaged and texted me every single day. Every. Single. Fucking. Day. Several times a day. When I didn’t respond fast enough to his texts, he would message again on Tinder.
Are you getting my messages?
How was your day?
Send me a picture?
Tell me what you’re up to.
Before we ever meet, Andy #3 is so fucking curious, which is a thing I desperately want from men but his patience for my response is an irritant. He asked a dozen questions before I had a chance to answer even one. And now, two days after we’ve met and had a fantastic first date, now he’s nonchalant. Now he’s in no rush. Now he’s no longer so fucking curious. I blame the dick sucking.
Andy tracks the paths of ground water. He calculates to figure out where the water running under a proposed mine site will end up. “It’s mostly calculus,” he explains.
Why can’t he do the calculus on this? Why doesn’t he know how this nonchalance, this casual and abrupt lack of enthusiasm, will dilute my excitement? Why can’t he see the spillage, the exact place where the flood will happen.
For weeks before meeting, Andy had messaged multiple times a day, and now that we’d met and were no longer so far apart, the dam of my desire was breaking in his silence. My interest had burst and was running dry, all because he changed the pace of contact. Andy had set a precedent of texting every single morning, every day and now that there was nothing from him, there would be nothing between us.
I have lost my mind in the time it takes to…text a woman back.
Now, in the silence following a first date, I’m creating data reports in my mind. Mapping out a hypothetical chart for the timing of text messages. Who messaged first each day? (him). How long did it take between responses? (varied). When did I become so pathetic? (unknowable). Why can’t I stop freaking out? (to be determined).
The irony is that all the texting and attention was a burden before, an inconvenience, just another example of men imposing themselves onto my time before there was anything real between us. I didn’t know him before. He was just a stranger on Tinder who had had ‘super liked’ me, which could be an indication of interest or just sloppy fingers—you can’t trust anything on the apps. Men are always putting in effort and interest at the wrong times. Too much in the beginning, too little after we’ve met.
The first time we matched on tinder, he messaged right away. I didn’t respond immediately, but he just kept messaging. By the time he asked me out and my interest had been piqued enough to say yes, a week and a half in, he was in the Yukon for the next three weeks working.
I’m so excited to see you he typed.
Sorry, I wrote, you should’ve told me earlier that you were going to be away for three weeks. I wasn’t really sorry though; men were always rushing me. Him being away gave us the space to get to know each other.
Sorry, he typed, I wasn’t sure if you were interested. He was right to be unsure. I wasn’t sure I was interested either. But he kept asking me questions, in addition to the usual you’re so hot chatter. Men (who are attracted to me) are always telling me how attracted to me they are. As if I didn’t know. As if I didn’t understand what swiping right and having full blown conversations meant. As if it would endear me to them, but I knew I was hot and the compliment (especially before meeting) was virtually worthless. Attraction is a fickle business. Men cannot be trusted to always want to fuck you. A man will think you’re so hot he could die one day and the forget your name the next.
Every day he wrote about how excited he was to meet me. He sent pictures I hadn’t asked to see (such a turnoff), and then pictures I had asked for (snow covered forests of the Yukon so brilliant they solved math problems). Half his steps were wrong, but the right ones made up for the ground lost. And then one day I asked him to resend a picture, this time a little lower down. If I was going to be bombarded with shirtless poorly lit pics, I might as well get a glimpse of something more interesting. Because now there was a possibility, I’d see it in person. Because now it was a preview rather than unaware bragging. Men have such little concept of the value of their dicks without context (even with context the value is low and the availability is abundant). He acquiesced almost before I typed the request and then lamented having to wait to see me.
By the time he was back in town, our timing was off again. I had pulled a muscle in my neck and managed to catch a cold, and then it was the Christmas holidays. He was in Maine (or New Hampshire or Vermont or Connecticut—one of those white boy/rich family states) for the holiday. By the time we finally met, we had been talking for over a month. He wasn’t nervous at all; I was terribly so.
He’d told me how excited he was to meet so many many times that I started to fear I could never live up to whatever he had imagined about me. How could anyone? Then again, he had already seen me in pictures with my hair up and fresh faced. I hadn’t wanted him to see me without my hair and makeup done; that was the Achilles heel of my last remaining (jk) insecurities. But he had asked and asked, and I had felt pressured so I told him that he should respect my answer (read: fuck off). I told him he should respect my desire not to send a fresh-faced pic simply because he had said I like girls with their hair up, I’m sure you look great, I just want to see you right now. I told him that maybe we could both live in a world where men respect what I say the first time instead of pressuring me to acquiesce to whatever their current desire of me was. He apologized-ish and said he hadn’t meant to pressure me, but then again men never seem to mean the pressure every time they try to navigate around a woman’s boundaries.
A few days later, after the feeling of pressure had worn off, I thought fuck it. I was so tired of feeling like I had to be my absolute goddamn prettiest self in front of men. I was tired of always having to wear a shield; dating wasn’t supposed to be a battle, was it? I wanted to show him who he was really getting right from the beginning, and if he didn’t like it, then that would be that, and at least then I’d have more time on my hands. If he didn’t think I was beautiful without any guards up, at least I wouldn’t have to go on another first date (that would most certainly end in disaster). But he loved it. Over the next few days, I sent him several more just-as-I-am photos and every time he responded with tremendous excitement, his excitement became our excitement. Finally, I agreed to meet.