Casual dating

A list of all my romantic encounters since the start of the year

Updates: I’m hosting an event in London next week; I published a piece in the Guardian (a condensed version of my pamphlet); I appeared on a podcast for Dazed Magazine; my band released a new single.

New Hampshire in the snow

After a season of deep isolation and deeper sleep in the frozen woods of New England, I made a long-overdue return to London—and to the world of dating. The following is an account of my first two weeks back in the game.

1. I was walking past a coffee shop when I noticed a man sitting at a table by the window, writing in a notebook. He looked up. Our eyes met. We stared at each other for a long moment: a rare instance of animal connection in this frigid prison of civility known as a British sidewalk. In other words: it was hot. But what could I do? I continued walking, my thoughts growing frantic. Should I go back and talk to him? Is that insane? I decided to stop at a grocery store, just to have something in my hands when I inevitably returned to the window. That way, I would look as if I’d been out running errands, not pursuing strangers. I bought my groceries and walked past the window again. Our eyes met, the intensity magnified by my unexpected reappearance, our connection so obvious, so mutual, that I almost thought he would step out of the cafe and come running after me. He didn’t. I got to the end of the block. I looked back. What was I doing? I was late for an appointment. I checked the time. It was 2 p.m. on a Sunday. I would need to return to this spot every Sunday afternoon for the rest of my life. I boarded a bus. I briefly considered calling the cafe and asking them to give my number to the man by the window. A half hour passed in transit. Surely he had left the cafe by now. Why hadn’t I just gone in and said hi? The bus reached my stop. When I stood up, I dropped a zucchini on the floor and its stem fell off like a little hat.

   

   Two views of North London – possibly my favorite place in the world

2. My friends made fun of me for downloading the designated “sex app” because I’m so anti-hookup, having already lived through enough ceiling-staring, soul-flattening, UTI-causing sexual encounters to know that the modern conflation of casual and fun bears true only for a small percentage of the population, many of whom are sociopaths, most of whom are men. (Yes, there are normal women out there who enjoy hookups; I bet they’re in high demand. The rest of us, when we do engage in casual sex, do so in the hopes that it will lead to a round two, three, four—after which point it will begin to become possible, albeit far from assured, that our partner might understand our bodies well enough to impart real pleasure.) Anyway, a guy on the sex app messaged to ask me what I was “looking for.” Too ashamed to express what I really wanted—which was to find some unsuspecting horndog and transform him, by the sheer force of my personality, into marriage material—I told him I was “open to whatever.” He said he was looking for “a consistent connection, where we spend time together in and out of bed, but not a relationship.” I asked him the difference between the two. “Expectations,” he replied. We met up in person. It was doomed from the get-go because he didn’t laugh at my jokey asides. (Whenever this happens, when my jokey asides don’t land, it reminds me how reliant I am on humor to forge bonds.) We walked through a park. I purchased a cookie from a bakery. I ate the cookie. He talked about casual sex. I pressed him on what this meant—I was being difficult—saying, “You could pair up two people, both of whom want casual sex, and they’re going to have entirely different expectations.” He seemed unconvinced. On the train platform, I reached out for a hug. He looked down at my arms in confusion. “It’s a hug,” I said. He hugged me. After he left, he texted: “Sorry, that was obviously a hug.” Then he invited me to go running. I agreed. But when the day came, I had to admit to myself and to him that I was not about to go running. I didn’t even own a pair of sneakers. I had been weightlifting at the gym in leather boots.

   

   This photo of my bedroom is more embarrassing than any story I could tell you

3. We messaged a lot before planning a date. He seemed engaged, though not particularly engaging. He asked a lot of questions, some of which I judged banal and obvious (e.g. do you play any sports?) but which I nonetheless wanted to answer. How often did a stranger care if I preferred swimming to cycling? Occasionally, I felt trapped by the relentless politesse of our talk. When I veered toward more difficult subjects, he was quick to course-correct, sanitizing my rougher feelings and handing them back to me in neat little packages. Me: This is bad. Him: Well, in a certain light, it’s actually good. Me: Fine, I guess it’s good. We planned a swim date: outdoors, in a reservoir, in London, in January. I brought along two red beanies so we would be visible to the lifeguards. The guy waded right in like a champ. I was impressed. I followed him. After a minute of paddling, he wanted to turn around. But I wanted to finish the lap. Then I noticed how cold he looked, so we swam back to the dock. He slipped and fell on the way out—I couldn’t tell if this was because the dock was wet, or because his legs were weak with cold. Afterwards he seemed embarrassed, annoyed. We dried off and put our clothes on. I bought him a cup of tea, in penance. We sat near a radiator to warm up. Conversation flowed. He was charming. I was at ease. I looked at his mustache and wondered if we would have sex. We were laughing a lot. I made a joke about drinking my own menstrual blood, which may have been going a bit far. We decided to grab lunch—adding a third location, a promising sign in my book. We ate. He paid for my sandwich. I checked the time and realized I was about to be late for a meeting with a publisher. We mounted our bikes and I said a hasty, touchless goodbye. I felt bad about this, and after my meeting texted him to say so. We started planning our second date. I sent him a link to a possible venue. He replied that it was “maybe best to call things here. I had a lot of fun yesterday but I think it’s not quite what I’m looking for.” I wasn’t that upset. Still, I’d been hoping for a little more. Just a little.

   

   The reservoir

4. There’s this guy I’ve flirted with on and off for the past year. We run in the same writer circles. We kissed once, early on, before switching to text-based flirtation. There was a moment last summer when I thought we should try dating. But he was only interested in sex. We kept chatting for a bit, then I ignored him. Recently, I came across his profile on the sex app. I texted him. We started talking again. I think both of us were wondering where it might lead, whether, after all these months, it might finally happen. But “it” meant something entirely different to each of us.

5. One last internet person, this time from the serious app, not the sex one. We met for a canal walk. He laughed at my jokey asides, which was a relief. The conversation quickly turned candid, personal—not something you get every day when dating Englishmen. (My sincerest apologies if you fall into this category. In fact, I’d love to apologize in person sometime…you have my email.) He started talking about the apps, and I mention that I did not enjoy casual hookups. “Sex these days happens so soon,” I said. “I feel deprived of the chance to feel real desire beforehand.” He seemed to disagree, citing a recent and gratifying chapter of promiscuity. “There’s a lot of great sex out there,” he said. I wondered if his partners shared this opinion. (They probably did, and I was just projecting my own conservatism onto other women as a way to feel less alone.) He was a tolerable conversationalist except for these odd interludes when I would finish saying something and, instead of sharing a relevant anecdote or asking a follow-up question, he would let it drop completely, so I would have to keep coming up with new topics lest we lapse into uncomfortable silence. (You have to trust me when I say that I know my way around a good conversation, that this one was not working, and that I was not to blame. Yes, that’s a lot to believe about someone you’ve never met—which is why I’m asking my real-life acquaintances to back me up in the comments. Thanks, guys!) We made a plan to see each other again. The next morning, he texted me with a proposition: did I want to come over to his place later? Say, 9:30 p.m. I was flattered. I kind of wanted to go. Or at least, my body did. But in the ensuing exchange, it became clear to me that he was one of those modern lovers who, in performing sexual freedom and insisting upon the same in others, ends up more sexually constrained and convoluted than any of us normies, who can simply act upon our desires without first codifying and notarizing them in acronym-studded manifestos. As with the previous app guy, this guy was adamant about not wanting a relationship. He described his ideal arrangement as: “exploring connections through the physical, which I don’t see as exclusive of any other factors, quite the contrary.” So, in other words, dating? But no! This was totally different! It was a novel form of intimacy, bearing no resemblance to any historical iteration! His desires were simple: spend hours walking along a canal, learn each other’s hopes, dreams, and histories, then establish via text a set of mutually-agreeable intimacy parameters, then convene in his bed, where he would guiltlessly penetrate the very envelope of my physical being over and over until he experienced the highest and most ancient form of pleasure known to man (do I need to tell you that I myself would not attain such pleasure?), after which we would lie there and negotiate new boundaries and expectations—should we spend the night together? have breakfast the following morning? stay in touch? see each other again?—and this whole operation would be fun because he insisted on its funness, because he wouldn’t have it any other way. And if it wasn’t fun for me? Well, that was my problem. “I see sex as an outgrowth of intimacy,” I wrote. “And it sounds like you see it the other way around.” He didn’t reply. For the next few days, every time I looked at my phone I thought the word coward.

6. I got invited to a house party. There was an attractive man there. He was alone, standing in a corner, looking uncomfortable. Just my type. I went up to him and said I didn’t know many people there. He said he was in the same position. We had a pleasant enough talk. There was no romantic connection. We shook hands and wished each other a pleasant evening.

   

   It’s hard to take a selfie on a film camera

7. I was chatting with a friend when I remembered a guy she’d introduced me to the previous month. “Give me his number,” I said. I texted him and invited him to hang out. We met at a bar even though neither of us drank. We talked for an hour then went for dinner. When the bill came, I asked if I could pay him back later. He agreed. We went to another bar and drank soda. It was nearly midnight when we broached the topic of dating. He didn’t enjoy casual sex, said that it was nothing compared to love, and we both hated the apps, how boring and obvious they made things. “It’s so much more exciting to meet someone in real life,” he said. “It keeps you guessing the whole time. After you hang out, you’re asking yourself, what did that comment mean, were they flirting?” I was tempted to say: “Is that what you’re going to do when you get home tonight?” But I was scared. Because I liked him. In fact, I was so scared that I cut the whole evening short. “I’m tired,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t. Out on the street, I tried to turn things around. “The cold is waking me up. I’m feeling energized.” But we were already walking to the bus stop. When we got there, it turned out that his bus was half an hour away. I was about to say, “Why don’t you just come to mine?” when a bus pulled up. It wasn’t listed on the timetable, but there it was. The next day, I sent him a payment link for my half of dinner. He didn’t reply. He didn’t even take the money.

8. I deleted the apps. They weren’t doing me any good. The screentime was violating my principles, the algorithms dictating my desires, the self-commodification exacerbating some highly-specific insecurities (wouldn’t you like to know). I turned my attention to real life. I started hanging out in public, smiling at strangers, wearing skirts to bookstores, sitting alone at jazz clubs, laughing loudly at comedy shows, and on Sunday at 2 p.m. I returned to that cafe to look for the man in the window. He wasn’t there. I went in. I sat down.

So this is where you’ll find me, today, tomorrow, next Sunday and the next, ad infinitum, just me, sitting here, tallying up the disappointments, spinning them into jokey asides.