Page 17 of The App Trap
“Where is it?” I asked.
“Tooting.”
“Fuck that. Enjoy.”
“What? It’s fine. What are you on about?”
“I know, I know. I’m joshing. I suppose it’s only down the road, and I just got a pay rise. I told Neil that I was offered a new job as Head of Sound, so he made me Head of Sound because he’s too lazy to look for someone else. So, the long and short of it is that, yeah, I guess I can probably do it. Besides, she said the doctors are pretty confident she’s gonna be okay. Why don’t we talk to her tonight and see what she says? If she goes all quiet like she does when the Dutchman sends his wife along for the flower deliveries, then we’ll know she’s not keen.”
Finn agreed and snatched his man-bag from the banister then left for work. I felt kind of excited that I was potentially going to move out of the family home for the first time in my life.
As soon as I was alone, I grabbed my phone andwent for a bit of swiping. It was during that particular shift that I unexpectedly came across the most perfect human that I’d ever seen in my life outside of a two-minute online movie: Harry, 31.
I swiped positively in Harry’s favour, albeit in vain, I thought. I mean why in the name of our sweet Earth would he match with me? He was ludicrously out of my league with his pristine teeth and posh suit––or so I thought, until I saw those magical words flash up on my screen:
‘Congratulations: You can now slide into Harry’s DMs!’
What a rush seeing those two circles containing our faces bump together and link, like some kind of sexy Venn diagram.
It was always a pleasure to see that magical box pop-up. It generated such a warm, fuzzy feeling. However, as he hadn’t messaged me yet, it was up to me to instigate the conversation, so I had to think about this.
But what if he’d slipped and swiped by mistake? Lord knows, that’s happened to me enough times. Screw it. I bit the bullet and swept the other eight conversations that I was involved with to the side so that I could concentrate all of my firepower on this one.
‘Hi, I saw that my picture must have got caught up in the process of you wiping your phone after dribbling over whoever’s profile was before mine, but thought I’d say hello anyway.’
Perfect. A mix of lightly amusing and slightly self-deprecating. I pressed send without even vetting it twice. Four and a half excruciatingly long minutes later, I received this:
‘Oh. Sorry, I thought you were my Uber XL?’
I felt a sense of humour here. This was a good response.
I struck again:
‘Humble brag alert: Somebody wants to tell his potential love interest that he can afford large-sized cabs.’
I received a row of emojis back with jets of water coming out of their eyes, which apparently is a modern version of a ‘LOL’. Bingo. And without another flicker, I asked Harry, 31 out on a date. Stupid, I know. It was way too soon, but I panicked. I fancied him so much that I simply didn't want to risk cocking up the chat, as was so often the way with me.
‘Fancy going out any night except Wednesday?’
‘Thursday’s the new Friday, I hear?’ Harry responded.
Thursday night it was. A great night for a date. Some would saytheperfect night for a first date. Friday was too much of a commitment and suggested that you didn't already have a thriving social life. After all, everybody knew that Friday was the best night of the week to go out for a few slurps. And Saturday was recovery night from Friday night for those approaching and over the age of 30, although I would never tell a stranger that.
Between now and Thursday, Ben was messaging me, asking me whether I had any more dates lined up and also whether I was free to go out with him again next week, which I found a bit odd. He didn't seem to mind that I was always online and actively still trying to date other men. He had even changed my name to‘Tron’in his phone, because I seemed to live in cyberspace, although obviously I was too young to get that reference.
Nevertheless, I accepted his proposal of a further date anyway, despite the fact we both knew that we were blatantly on the scout for other people. Ben even started to recommend some more dating apps to me––some just the right side of acceptable, some downright terrifying.
I still couldn't resist taking a peek at the proffered sites,or indeed registering for all manner of three-day trials. The floodgates opened to a plethora of new faces, and in most cases, big old cocks. It was good, because I was becoming bored of swiping over the same old profiles again and again. But this was when I first began to notice that maybe I was forming a little bit of an addiction.
It was the sheer level of choice that was causing all of these distractions. Online dating was the most addictive thing since the Panini sticker albums I used to have as a kid. Maybe that’s why I subconsciously felt the need to ‘complete’ every dating app that I was registered to. On more than one occasion, I even found myself muttering, ‘Need, need, need’, under my breath whilst browsing my matches.
I was learning about the etiquette of online dating on the fly, but I was a fast learner. I was also learning a lot about myself.
It was odd how online dating was bringing out previously hidden traits in me, such as mild grammar snobbery. I would never dream of chatting someone up in a bar and then suddenly whipping out a pad and pen to demonstrate the correct use of a semi-colon.
Grammar was especially important to get right if you were going to employ the cut-and-paste message method or the ‘cluster bomb’ as I call it. You didn’t want a mashed-up message going out to all and sundry. Check your work, because auto-correct could be a real ducking bitch at times. See what I did there?
Of course, I didn’t cut and paste messages. Anymore. Well, not since I’d sent exactly the same messages to a couple of guys that happened to be best friends and caught me out.
