No hard feelings

Or an alternate title: Don't judge a book by its cover, because the book is fictional, dumbass

So I’m not usually in the habit of using my ~platform~ (what’s that? My Polyester article has 70,000 views? Where’s my blue tick, Instagram?) to shame other people. But occasionally something so egregious happens that it would take too long to screenshot to everyone I know, so here goes.

I went on a fairly average date last week with some dude from Hinge. It was a fine two hours, but not an experience I felt we needed to repeat. We were talking about my writing and I told him about this newsletter, and he asked me to send it to him. At the end of the date he asked if I’d like to hang out again and I said sure, assuming I would just say no via text when he asked me later, because being 30 is all about being mature. I didn’t hear from him over the next week and was supremely unbothered, continuing to go about my daily business.

Then yesterday, I got a message from him, informing me that he tested positive for Covid, classic. I tested and was fine and told him so, but he continued to message chattily. Not particularly interested in continuing, I thanked him for letting me know about the Covid scare. And then… well. Screenshots incoming.

For context, he had read quite a lot of my writing by the time he messaged – this newsletter, but also some fictional writing from my website (which he must have tried pretty hard to find since, as you can see, my website is not displayed anywhere obvious in this newsletter. Which is probably something I should change. It’s in the ‘About’ section if you’re interested).

Of the people I have already shown this to, I’ve been besieged with requests to send this into beam_me_up_softboi, but I think this way is more satisfying. Particularly since the guy in question asked if I was going to write about the date in my newsletter, to which I wondered (internally) what could possibly have been interesting enough about this date to write about it on the Internet. Little did I know, apparently. Well congrats, bachelor number two thousand! You made it in!

I gotta say, it feels good to be back on Hinge surrounded by the scourge of humanity. Truly. I’m so glad to have made absolutely zero progress. So glad that that’s all I have to say this week. Happy New Year, and if you need me, I’ll just be re-reading this conversation and dying of laughter until the end of time.

One good thing:

The sun shone today for the first time since I got back to England. Does this mean 2022 is going to be better? Sure, let’s go with that.

One bad thing:

My dad got me a rape alarm and a travel toothbrush for Christmas. I don’t know where he thinks I’m going, but I’m excited to find out.