Really Good, Actually(24)

“There’s only one winner of a breakup,” Amy said. “Why shouldn’t everyone know it’s you?”

I had to admit that it did have the air of a competition, all this being observed. The experience of my marriage ending felt like the closest I would ever come to a kind of grim local celebrity: I imagined our wider circle tracking my movements, studying my posts, wondering in groups about my dating life. I felt super visible—supervised, even. If everyone was going to look, why shouldn’t I have, like, a six-pack when they did?

I told Amy I would try cycling, but would not attempt to “win” the breakup. Amy, one false eyelash starting to peel away from the corner of her eye, looked at me like I was the dumbest idiot alive.

“Why do you think they make you wait a year?” she asked, slurring only slightly. “So you have time to look amazing at the mediation. I bought this top that’s going to kill him.” She smiled, and I saw a tear building in her left eye.

By the time the bar closed, Amy and I had each cried twice. We stood outside waiting for her Uber, and I couldn’t believe how pretty she still looked, with her dainty features and long, shiny hair and her flippy wrap dress with the ruffle down the front. I had caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror during a trip to the bathroom and could not say the same for me. Why didn’t she have wine teeth? How did she keep her hair like that? She exhaled the last of her cigarette and said, “I hate being someone’s ex-wife. It’s so random.”

I said it did feel pretty unexpected.

Amy laughed bitterly, the first time she’d sounded rueful all night. “When did you ever hear a good story about an ex-wife? They’re horrible, all of them. This chain around a man’s neck. But he made me one. If he didn’t want to deal with an ex-wife, he shouldn’t have fucking made me one.”

Amy looked at me and smiled shyly before throwing up a little into her hand. Her car arrived and she threw up again, properly this time, before climbing inside. I heard her telling the driver not to worry about it, though he did seem very worried, and fair enough. I walked home, listening to breakup songs and feeling like a loser for relating to them all. Losing love is like a window in your heart, I thought. I tweeted, everybody sees you’re blown apart, then deleted it, then found the lyric on a Paul Simon fan account and retweeted it from there. As I walked, I opened Tinder and swiped right on everyone, feeling an unbelievable rush of self-esteem or something like it when matches came up, not speaking to any of them. No harm in looking. I could delete it in the morning.

Clicking “show men and women” was exciting. My bisexuality until now had been largely theoretical, based on one university hookup and a few drunken kisses. I’d had a number of charged same-sex “friendships,” one spectacularly botched threesome, and my preferred genre of porn was some variation on one or many women bullying another in a sexual way, but none of this felt substantial enough for me to proclaim it part of my identity. Though I’d always felt at least 35 percent gay, whenever my orientation came up in conversation, I felt inexperienced and sheepish. Now if I told someone I liked women, I could back it up with supporting evidence. I scrolled through some profiles, drawn to ones with pithy, lowercase bios: pile of human garbage seeks same; looking for a partner in crime (i plan to commit many crimes); run. The women’s profiles were on the whole more subdued than the men’s, except when they were many times more intense—badly lit close-up selfies in the bathroom of those clubs where there is a pool and you wear a bikini, bios seeking someone who was willing to get real and NOT about drama.

It was nice to feel my phone vibrate, to see the looping, exclamatory cursive, like a wedding invitation: It’s a Match! I swiped on tall women and short men, women with nose rings and men with tattoos, men in large, anonymous groups or standing alone on top of mountains, gesturing vaguely to the outdoors like, get a load of this. There were men holding babies (don’t worry, she’s not mine!) and women at house parties with their tongues out and men next to big, sedated jungle cats. Women who were too into having a bicycle, men in suits who were looking for no-strings fun, sepia-toned shots of attractive androgynous people with half their faces obscured, winking from behind a dog filter or in heavy makeup. Nobody was terribly appealing. I kept swiping for hours.

The next day I had a hangover and forty-seven new matches. I was scrolling through my options when Amy texted:

such a fun night, babe!!!

main thing to know about the apps is

nobody actually likes anyone else on there

just breathe and remember:

hakuna matata :)





Selected Correspondence, Tinder, August 20




what’s up, how’s your day going cute pics

hi

hey beautiful how’s your day going? lovely curvy figure hi haha hows it going i don’t like to waste time messaging on here, want to go for a drink? you look hot :) so u work at a university, nerdy but sexy haha heyyyyyy

if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go? just got back from peru, it’s so rad there. crazy foreign and everything’s dirt cheap. can rec some places if you want hi baby what are you looking for on here, i’m casual redheads not really my type haha but maybe you can change my mind in person

hola chica ;) i’m lisa nice to meet u, hows ur day? want to be super upfront and say my girlfriend doesn’t know i’m on here hey, looking for fun on here, hbu did you go to macdonald high school? thought you were married. it’s danny haha Hi Maggie! You seem like a pretty and fun person with a very interesting job :) I’d like to get to know you better and buy you a drink or dinner. Just to be sure we are compatible, could you send pics of feet? I’d love to give them a massage and some kisses and licks. All the best!