For just a second, I wonder if getting the mail constitutes drunk driving. I’m not drunk yet, but with any luck, I will be soon.
I’ve spent the last week locked in a cycle where I wake up around eleven, have coffee, ignore all my calls and texts for the day, mindlessly surf Facebook comparing my life to the lives of my colleagues and former classmates, and then drink myself to sleep when the sun so much as threatens to set. Sometimes I throw in a true crime documentary to spice things up. I measure my time at night in bottles of wine and hours of Netflix. Tonight is feeling especially bland, so I’m tempted to start Inside the Criminal Mind. Four episodes. Two bottles of wine. I could finish that in an evening. Goals are important.
I’m the only person in my former circle of friends who lives alone. The rest of the girls I went to college with either got married, engaged, had children, or a combination of all three. In any case, their homes don’t groan and echo in the night in a way that only a large, uninhabited house can. They have boyfriends and husbands to investigate the noises that a house makes when it settles. They have someone to hold on to until sleep seizes them and leads them gently into a dream. I just have the house. And the remnants of my grandparents’ curious collections.
The place is enormous and in gothic revival style, built by my grandparents and given to me as my inheritance. I attempted more than once to coax friends and relatives into living with me, but something about the way their eyes met the taxidermized bobcat in the foyer or my grandmother’s collection of mourning jewelry in the China cabinet always told me that I’d be flying solo so long as this was the plane. If the bobcat and the jewelry had been the worst of it, I might have found someone to share the place with. But the macabre décor extends beyond there. A menagerie of once-living animals lurks in the hallways and displays of moths and butterflies adorn the walls of each of the guest rooms. In spite of the morbidity of it all, I can’t bring myself to part with any of it. It meant something to my grandparents and, for better or worse, it means something to me, too.
I get back to the house and take the mail (and my wine) inside. I toss the stack of bills onto the counter where they fan out like a stack of cash. Instead of opening any of them, I retreat back to the couch and grab my cell phone on the way. Seven unread texts wait for me, but I avoid the messaging app. In place of that, I log onto Facebook for my daily beating.
Pictures of babies crawling for the first time or videos of them making rudimentary noises seem ever-present. Their mothers cloud my feed with updates that I’m sure would hold more meaning for me if I had a child of my own. As it is, I can’t relate.
These posts bother me less than the ones featuring career updates. Promotions, celebrations, colleagues getting book deals. My enthusiasm for my writing has waned since the blunder with Wes. I’m letting the situation burrow deep into my psyche and it’s poisoning my work like termites eating a house from the inside out. I haven’t written a word since I returned home. The iron is hot, and I haven’t struck.
I’ve had my fill and I log off, feeling sufficiently insufficient. I sip my wine and thumb through my apps, looking for distraction. It’s then that I see Tinder. An app that a Norwegian girl had encouraged me to download during my last month in Europe. I’d obliged but never completed my profile. I didn’t want to tell her that I’d rather bury myself in more work than acknowledge any aspect of my life that might be lacking. But now, alone in the house on a Friday night, the idea of messages from random strangers pouring into my inbox isn’t so unappealing. I’m lonely and I’m weak. So, I fill the profile out.
I google advice on the perfect tagline for your Tinder profile. Articles abound. This is a hot topic. Some argue going for the bottom line: if you’re looking to hook up, say as much. Others assert that you should beat around the bush—there are codes. These articles suggest terms like fun if you’re after sex. After settling on something pretty bland that doesn’t sit too far at either end of the spectrum, I begin swiping.
It’s a rush at first. After a few minutes, I begin getting matches. There’s Brad, a construction worker; Liam, a lawyer; Tommy, a doctor; and Philip, an employee at a local bookstore. I go to his profile first. He’s young—twenty-two—almost ten years my junior. His black hair is swept down over his eyes in a look that would have been popular when I was in high school. He has a lip piercing and striking blue eyes. He messages me.
I feel my heartbeat quicken as I touch the little icon bearing his picture with a red dot indicating that I’ve got a message waiting from him. I open the chat box.
Wyd, he says.
It takes a moment for my brain to search through a rolodex of acronyms. I respond and tell him Not much. Properly capitalized and punctuated. He doesn’t respond in kind.
We go back and forth for a little bit. He’s flirty and fun. He reminds me of a younger me. I can almost feel the agony of those first years of college breathing down my neck as I talk to him. He’s not looking for anything serious and I
