let's call him frank.
i should capitalize that, eh? anyways, let me sum up our (once?) flourishing romance. we met on Tinder 4 months ago when I was in the heated, axe-drenched midst (or should i say mist?) of my first and latest internet dating frenzy. between Tinder and this dumb app called "How About We", I had (unprecedentedly) met up with 6 men in a series of weeks. i fucked 3 of them (including my current boyfriend). i had webcam sex with one of them. i performed for a portuguese foot-fetishist. two of them were jewish. 3 of them attended the University of Toronto, and one of them still does. one goes to the same place i do for psychological counselling and told me so, directly before presenting me with the most cringe-worthy pick-up line of my entire 19 years: "how about we put our lips together and see what happens?". we were on the roof of some campus building across from New College, so it was hard to slip away, but slip away i did. anyways, i digress. back to my current beau.
i didn't want a relationship. i was doing the whole going-out-with-guys-every-fucking-day, grinding-on-them-at-concerts, seeing-wes-anderson-films, eating-at-allegedly-hipster-joints thing for a while and it was pretty okay. single was okay. i wasn't lonely for the most part, albeit i was a tad sad. but not while i was pouring back budweisers with guys who studied human bones or watching screenings of documentaries about mad-cap couples circumnavigating the globe in dilapidated London taxi cabs. not in those situations.
anyways. it was may 30th, 2014 when i met philosophy/poli-sci grad, Frank. (which is a horribly unhot name, but i assure you the real one is much more fuck-worthy). i met him at the divest of bars before a James Murphy DJ set that i had been pretty excited about. i had chatted with him a little on Tinder, saw he had photoshopped Drake into his picture and that his ideal date was sipping gin while watching Nic Cage films. it was good enough for me and really, all i wanted was a spontaneous concert buddy to laugh with while i sipped on my 9 dollar beer and beat to the formidable drum that was James Murphy. never, in my wildest dreams, did i think Tinder was capable of yielding someone i would date, let alone love or think of really being with. on our first meeting though, i took a small mental step back. he wasn't skinny. and i had only been with beanpoles. this guy had a gut. a cute face and an affinity for nice paisley dress-shirts, but... a gut. i (shallowly) wrote the date off and poured back some dirt-cheap beer while airing my grievances over a past (and failed) Tinder romance, of which he had some connection. I ended up losing him at the concert (not deliberately, but my phone was notoriously dead) and going home with a Jewish app-developer/DJ who i had previously fucked. it was a lucky night. i was a mess, but a happy, liberated one who even may have had a second chance to reiterate my affair with said Jew. of course, the next morning, while gazing at the Bata Shoe Museum and spooning, I checked my finally-charged phone to find a plethora of apologetic texts from my relatively unmemorable suitor that i had nonchalantly lost. "i am so sorry for this mishap. free drinks on me next week?" and "i actually had a really great time despite not expecting much of Tinder". they were sweet, almost tragic. i felt so superior, so light; like i had cheated the system and won. but really, i hadn't cheated anyone. i hadn't owed anyone anything.
well, i did end up seeing him again. who am i to refuse free drinks? we went to a turn-of-the-millenium nostalgia themed dance party that proved to be clubbier than we had hoped. but i guess it really started happening then. he was still meh in the looks department. i didn't really know how exciting he was in the others. but we got drunk, wetly made out on the dance floor and, on our second date, i was already telling him about my dad, my cousin's hilarious appearances in both Nicolas Cage and Robin Williams' shittiest movies and how i really, really should be in a band. and then i told him something deep. or maybe i was just so drunk that it seemed profound. but at that moment when my forgotten sadness began to seep back into view, he passionately kissed me. and then we kissed in an alleyway. which was nice. although i do remember internally/possibly-externally rolling my eyes as he tried in vain to grope my breasts through my tight late-'90s turtle-neck dress. we parted our separate ways, me eating pistachios with a strange man in his 40s who wanted me to come to an after-hours place with him and his friends and Frank eating a shawarma (he actually confusedly passed me and said strange man on his way home). let's not talk about my convoluted and tipsy bikeride home.
i don't think we'd really have hit it off it weren't for the remake of The Wickerman. the. shittiest. movie. of. all. time. but it was so bad it was good and my cousin was the main freak in it and we made it a date. and we fucked. and he was beginning to be so sweet and special and hot. although, somehow, in our alcohol-laden fog, the bastard pretty much never used a condom, complaining that he wasn't brave enough to buy the big ones that fit him (till this day, i think there were two instances of condom use. not that i put up much of a fight. morning-after pill it was. i know. you'd have to be there to understand why i could possibly be so stupid.)
by the fourth date, another wild dance night, i was blubbering embarrassing phrases like "i really like you" and "we match" and "this is special". and it all went to hell. before i knew it, i was seeing him every second day. drinking with him. seeing mac demarco with -SURPRISE - all his friends. and we were having the best (condomless, but now semi-protected) sex i had ever dreamed of. after 2.5 dates, i had forgotten my initial reaction to his weight. a face that may have seemed funny-looking or childish was suddenly my new ideal. his caramel eyes were captivating; his style, his demeanour perfect to me. i was proud to be with him. he had money to do fun things. he paid his half. we took turns treating each other. it felt good. he felt right in my body and right in my arms. i wanted him and only him; craved lying excitedly awake with him, recollecting childhood experiences, laughing about what we saw in the world that was funny.
fast-forward 3 months.
somewhere between now and then, he became self-conscious, cripplingly so. "i'm a piece of shit". "i don't know why you stay with me." "you're going to break up with me because i have no job". "i look like shit". "this shirt used to be loose on me". "fuck it; i need a smoke". i'm trying to love him no matter what. but the fact is, nothing about him used to bother me until he started loudly complaining about virtually everything. suddenly he is tarnished. i liked his face; his hair. i admired him for being bold, adventurous, fun and not giving a fuck that he wasn't Channing Tatum. i thought it was hot as fuck how he grabbed me in bed and loved his carnal, hungry facial expressions as he tossed me around and talked dirty. i loved his hairy body, his meaty thighs. i loved it all. but something switched. maybe he got too comfortable. maybe he started to get nervous, scared, that if he didn't voice his insecurities, i would think them first. but the God-honest truth is that i never saw any of that. initially.
now, i look at him and i feel sad. i see how broke he is; how self-conscious he is, yet unwilling to solve his money problems and it makes me angry, hopeless. i see how he makes me buy him panzerottis, shawarma, subway sandwiches late at night because he can't afford to feed himself throughout the day. i see how he's thrown up the last three times he's had alcohol (embarrassingly enough, I had to find out from my roommate that he left noticeable evidence in my bathroom). i see how he sleeps hours after i leave the house. i see how, maybe my unconditional love and acceptance are not helping either of us, but encouraging him in his secretiveness, shame and sloth. and it hurts my heart and makes him ugly and makes me sad.
but i still love him.
now, don't think liberated, free-spirited, self-preservationist Tinder-Kate is dead and gone. she's not. i'm going to stand my ground. i'm going to celebrate the sweet, funny, intellectual, creative dude that i fell so hard for. but i'm not going to pay for every drink, every sandwich, every subway token. because that's not my job, and it's a shitty deal for both of us. i'm not going to sleep into the late, late morning just because he does and ruin the productivity of my whole day. that's not how i can function. and i'm not going to go out and stay up all hours of the night just because my boyfriend is unemployed and out of school. because i'm neither of those things. and by having low expectations of him, i implicitly have low expectations of myself.
so that phase is ending.
and if he can't adjust to the realities of post-graduate life, and life with me, then maybe we'll have to end too. i have to be open to that, regardless of our love.
