It’s been nine months since I stopped using dating apps. I’ve moved through a whole spectrum of new bodies coming out of nights at clubs and bars, kissed strangers on the subway whom I eventually block on Instagram, and gone back to ex-lovers for whom sex was the best thing we had. Or the only thing.
It’s been nine months since I stopped using dating apps, the approximate length of a pregnancy. And, weirdly, though almost no one knows this, nine months since I was pregnant for two days, in that Apotheke on Bülowstraße, with a father who panics at the first sign of trouble, whose relationship to ketamine is directly proportional to my ex’s relationship to cocaine. (M) and I we had something. Something quite traumatic from my side. A false positive that sent me into planning an abortion and awakened my mother’s inevitable desire to become a grandmother.
Nine months ago I decided I no longer believed in romantic love, but I clung to dopamine and infatuation to giving myself halfway, to seducing and running away, the way so many people had done to me. Then, I meet (D) and learned what avoidant attachment feels like, what this ghosting everyone talks about actually means, what the thin line is between disinterest and the evasion of someone who might be autistic or simply German. I’d say it was a waste of time, but it was the opposite: a lesson in what I don’t want. Insomnio is back.
It’s been nine months since I stopped using dating apps and, in Greece, in the middle of an airport, I’m back to the catalog of love and sex. External validation is addictive. The notifications keep ringing all day, and the number of new names is endless. I feel pretty, and everyone is commenting out loud how tanned I am. I meet (SO), a sweet guy, and our obvious age difference is impossible to miss. He talks a lot about Greek hospitality and picks me up to take me to the airport before having sex. Probably the shortest summer love story I’ve ever had, but enough to displace all the possible loves before him, whose semen had left a bitter taste in my mouth.Then comes (SA), who makes a little dinner in his beautiful apartment in Prenzlauer Berg. The sex is good; his tenderness and his lifestyle are too. His French accent is going to make me fall in love. I try to remember, I don’t want to fall in love. This time, I don’t want to fall in love. I refuse the idea of love all over again, and yet I joke with my friends that I’m in a cloud of dopamine.
(SA) has a house, (SO) has not. (SA) has an apartment that belongs to him, and suddenly I remember (AN), who promises me a house on the Costa Brava while, at the same time, telling me I’ve fucked up his life and he is breaking up with me. As with everything in my life, nothing ever unfolds quite so predictably. Deep down, I like control, but I like surrendering to all the possibilities I can’t control. I’m a Gemini and I skirt the spectrum of bipolarity and contradiction. Or maybe I’m just human.
It’s the last day of Brancusi, a Romanian artist everyone talks about and whom I’d barely heard of. I’m so bad at ceramics that I want to go admire someone who actually knows how to do it well, as (DO) (my friend). (DO) is acting strange. Love, heartbreak, and the eclipses have her up and down, and all I want is for some man in this fucking world to see the value of my best friend: her unique beauty, her innate talent, her particular sensitivity, and the kinship between our pain. And it will happen, just not right now. One day she’ll hook up with (MA), (AN), or any other letter, and I’ll tell her I’m a witch. (SE) (my worst break up story) hit her with a like on hinge. And I don’t know if he is provoking a reaction after his sorry 2 years later or he is just am asshole that would love to fuck the best friend of his ex. He looks ugly on every picture. Hate his curly hair, I miss his dog. (DO) cancels on me. (SA) is in London, and there are 999 possibilities for love right now on my phone. I don’t look through them because most of them don’t interest me, and my ego is so high and directly proportional to my sudden insecurity that I collect potential lovers and remind myself that, even though I’m tiny, my ass is big and I’m particularly beautiful. Still, that day I check the likes. The last 50 likes. (NI) and (DO) know why.
(SO2) appears in between those 50 profiles. His face is symmetrical, his eyes hypnotic, and he gives me a sense of peace that makes me curious enough to match with him immediately. He writes to me at length and with clarity. I write back at length and in detail. He is so fast in replying. Im so fast in replying. His fingers could be long or short, but he knows how to use them. With his phone, creating his art, writing me back, touching me later. I want to spend an afternoon talking to him, but I’m leaving to Málaga in a few days, and I’m still waiting for (SA) to arrive from London, so we can eat sardninian and fuck afterwards. (DO) cancels the museums. I text (SO2). I dream about him before I ever see his face. I know him from before. He’s from my cohort (?) He’s a karmic contract, like (SA the first); my ex-husband; like (SE) the painful love; like (AL), who fucks me in a busy street during the night and never writes to me again, except when the desire for another three-minute orgasm calls him back. Men. I have fucked so many S. and A. I’m confused with all this initials coincidences. A glitch in the matrix or a weird orthographic algorithm.
(SO2) is a fucking dream.Those eyes looking at me, the constant flirting, the nervousness he causes just by looking at me, the desire to take our clothes off in the middle of the museum, to call each other “trouble,” when we just met, knowing that from that day on neither of us is going to let the other go. Because falling in love is fine, but falling in love in sync. Fuck, that’s paradise. It may sounds exaggerated, but we did fall in love that day. I did fall in love that day(?).
Having our first orgasm at the same time and knowing, knowing deep down that this doesn’t happen to us all the time. Idealizing each other through sex and desire, then suddenly realizing that we’re in trouble, that falling in love in sync inevitably leads to a dance that, no matter how much we want to dance it, scares us af. And yet, despite the fear, neither of us runs. Saturated with heart emojis, affectionate nicknames, words in Romanian and Spanish, barely three days after meeting we admit that we’re going to fall in love. I mentioned jokes about getting married, but am I actually joking?
I don’t know if falling for someone it’s a conscious decision, but it has been a joint one, a simultaneous one. Like the sexting we do in public while we’re apart. Me masturbating in the restaurant bathroom while I drink tinto de verano and he fantasizes about his body on me, in me. If falling in love is a political act, then I accept it. If it means breaking again, I accept that too. No performance, just vulnerability. Sexuality. Staying. Not running. Fuck, I’m falling again. A small rebellion together, a refusal to become indifferent to the fact that the world is ending.
It’s been nine months since I stopped using dating apps. And here I am, under the numerical probability of a match, giving myself completely to a stranger who lets me in. And I let him in. The door for the exit for the flight FR233 and many more are open. Is the only exit door for us. Is the only exit door for me. And there he is, awaiting for my body to grab. Flowers in his hand, his kisses on my mouth. And that’s our rebellion, not the fact that we found each other, but that we decided to stop looking. Against all evidence, the act of choosing is a political act.
