I Don't Understand How The Heart is a Spade

I'll admit I'm afraid of Tinder. It's not that I'm afraid of meeting people or extending myself emotionally/verbally/socially/sexually/romantically. Those things are all par for the course and, even though it's been five years, I think I still remember the finer points about etiquette and graces and generally not being an asshole. At least not right away. The trick is to let them get to know a scrubbed and sanitized simulacrum of you first before you let them in behind the gauzy, soft-focus facade. Then if they find out you're an asshole, well, it's who you were deep down inside and from the beginning anyway, so who loses?

I'm not afraid of other dating apps or websites. I've poked around OKCupid again. It's still pretty similar, but five years is about forty generations in the app world. It looks old, feels old. Things like word-heavy biographies crafted to attract some and weed out others seems less quaint, more just out of phase with the new frequency vibration of Google-branded spacetime.

I've tried Bumble as well, the one where there is NO website component at all. It's app born and app reliant, meaning basically they've turned the search for romantic and physical companionship into Candy Crush. I'm sure futurists and social commentators have had plenty to say about the instant gratification and crass commodification of sex and love, but from my point of view, I'm not sure what good breaking it down in sociopolitical terms would do me. They only give you 300 characters to write your whole profile on Bumble anyway. I'm not sure that's enough room to do the entire topic justice.

Bumble is basically like Tinder, except ONLY the women (in heterosexual matches) are allowed to send the first message. And even then, ONLY after you've both mutually swiped the correct direction (I still get confused as to which is the good one, dexter or sinister. I suppose there's a clue in the wording there). So the going is slow there. What I have noticed however is that OKCupid is peopled by people, meaning folks of all shapes and sizes and ages, whereas the women of Bumble (I'm not seeing the male profiles, so it's hard to say) are all yoga instructors and underwear models, apparently. I'm a little suspicious that this is a marketing ploy at Bumble to get me to buy a microtransaction or seven in gratitude for laying this on-brand embarrassment of Southern California beauty unspoiled by words and phrases at my fingertips. But then that's a terrible marketing scheme: here are all the stunning lookers. Pay us money and we can offer you... what? If this were Glengarry Glen Ross, these are the good leads.

With Bumble, there's no small amount of luck involved and it requires a certain amount of time and energy commitment to filter through (in the heavily populated area I live in) hundreds and hundreds of profiles to find one that a) I like and b) who might like me back. Of course I'm using "like" here in the strictly physical verb sense of making a quarter-inch flicking motion across a screen one way or another.

As hard as it is to get any result from Bumble, right now I think I like the space and the distance it provides. Tinder, as I understand it, is basically the same thing except dudes can initiate contact as well. And... I don't know. I mean, they call them hook-up apps for a reason and I'm really not the hook-up type. It's something I talked to my therapist about as a lifestyle possibility and she, very helpfully, laughed at me. The co-pays are only $30, so I guess I should have seen that coming.

So I'm not ready for Tinder. It seems like the wrong speed for me. Too fast and I'm getting old. But I'm not as old as I used to be. It's weird what being single can do for your self-perception. I'm 43. When you're in a relationship that will (ideally!) kill one or both of the people in it, "middle age" seems exactly the same as "partially mummified." But when the world is opened up to you, with all the grand splendor of its multiverse of possibilities, 43 suddenly seems vibrant, alive, awake.

I guess by that I mean I could date someone in her 30s and it wouldn't seem creepy or weird yet.