Sects in the City

NSFW

Unexpected No. 1 Part V

"Need to get you one of those vibrating thermoses for christmas" he writes.

I had texted him about my trip to Salem to see the exhibition on the witch trials, which he had said he'd love to see. I mentioned how, on the long car ride to get there, I had to keep my coffee thermos between my legs so I could keep my focus on the road. I get his text as I am walking around the rest of the Peabody Essex Museum, and the timing is perfect.

"Looking at these pieces right now" I write, and send him a photo of the display I am standing in front of: a row of stones varying in color, shape, and size. They all have smoothed surfaces, but have each been uniquely carved, some rounded and others with pointed ends. Some are short, some are long. Some are bulbous or thickly ribbed. Although the wall text describes them as Indigenous axes and utilitarian tools, my mind only sees the strange phallic comparisons.

"Might need to stop in the gift shop before...

Match No. 63 Part V

"Wanna have a movie date?" he asks. "It's pretty easy we just hit play at the same time and then dissect the movie"

Then: "You can even wear your shirt"

He is referring to the shirt I've mentioned I've been wearing lately, which is of the same franchise of the movie he is suggesting we watch together while apart in our separate homes.

But I only see sex in everything now, even if I am not wanting to cross into that territory with Match No. 63 yet. Not while I'm unsure where I want things to go with him, how I feel. Do we want the same things? What is he even looking for? All I know is that I do enjoy flirting with him and talking with him, and kissing was fun too. But our next in-person date is still so far away, and I'm not convinced yet that I can trust he'll still be around for it.

And yet, sex.

"Instead of not wearing my shirt?" I ask. I am shameless.

"Your movie shirt" he clarifies, adding a face-palming emoji.

I send back a smiling...

Unexpected No. 1 Part IV

One of my colleagues has brought in their dog for the day, and someone in the office produces a bag of what I am assuming is dog treats. Seated at their desk, they lean down, offering the opened baggy to the dog as the rest of us are talking and watching the animal.

I stare at the dog going into the clear bag. Its tongue, flashing a bright pink and seeming far too big for its head, is long and wide, and dips into the bag in a curve, scooping up some kibble, and darting back into its mouth. Again and again, almost too fast to watch, the dog eats from the treats just like every dog that has ever eaten a handful of food.

Watching the dog's pink tongue dart tirelessly into the bag, I unconsciously cross my legs as tightly as I can and turn back to my desk.

And then I put my knuckles in my mouth.

What is happening to me is all I can think.

"I feel like Im becoming a vampire or a werewolf or something" I write to Unexpected No. 1 later, when I recount...

Unexpected No. 2

"This is maybe too weird to say but I'm just going to say it" he says. "I think I maybe was you in a past life."

I am standing face to face with him and we are parting ways. My coat is on, my bag is on, my shoes are on. We are trying to hug goodbye, which usually happens followed by extended words, followed by another hug, meant to imply "really leaving now." This may go on beyond two rounds. Saying goodbye always feels a little sickly, as if a shadow of finality is watching and waiting to darken over everything. Or maybe it is the question, lurking ever close to the surface of our thoughts, of When will I see you again?

For longer it was When will I hear from you again?

And now, as he says this to me, I smile and nod. I know what he means, even if I don't actually know what he is referring to; I think I know the idea. I have, more than once, told him how I sometimes only feel real when I hear from him, that I had not realized how passively the world...

Match No. 63 Part IV

"I was thinking of going to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem this weekend, to see the end of this exhibit they've had up about the witch trials" I write to him. The museum is, of course, in Salem, Massachusetts where the 1692 tragedy took over the village in hysterical paranoia, along with neighboring settlements along the coastline. Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible, adapted into the 1996 film of the same name, is based on the origins of the witch trials, but while watching Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder on-screen is deeply enjoyable, Miller's version of the historical events is well-known to have many fabrications in order to create the fixed, more commercially appealing narrative. I've been wanting to visit the Peabody's exhibit to see what kind of objects and documents they're putting on display to tell the history, and this upcoming weekend, Thanksgiving weekend, will be the closing days of the show.

I'm bringing this up to Match No. 63...

Unexpected No. 1 Part III

"Very much enjoying your bonus teaser" he texts me. "Thanks for the treat"

A few days earlier I had mailed him my copy of The God of Endings and had thrown in a Blow Pop which for some reason had come into my possession. Around the wrapper I had taped a piece of paper on which I had written bonus teaser in red cursive, and drawn a luscious mouth. It can be fun to flirt.

I receive his text on my train home from Date No. 7 with Match No. 63.

The conversation turns to movies since I had earlier told him that I was watching Tim Burton's 1989 Batman for the first time, and wasn't terribly impressed by it.

"Im on my way home from the city right now. I was on a date, we saw this movie called Saltburn which was actually very good" I write. "Fucked up, but highly recommend"

"Saltburn does look pretty good" he agrees. "Howd the date go?"

It's a good question. How did the date go? I had a good time, dare I say a great time: it was comfortable, casual,...

Date No. 7 (Match No. 63 Part III)
12pm-9pm
Central Park, the back of a movie theater, the train platform.

"You're real" he says, when I walk up to him outside the cafe we have chosen as our meeting place.

Although I'm still in the waning days of having been ill for a week, and I have the remains of a raspy throat and occasional cough (particularly when I am laughing) to show for it, Match No. 63 and I are meeting in person. It is probably one of the last reasonably warm weekends in the northeast, and we are heading to Central Park. My history with dates assumes we'll spend a few hours chatting, maybe take a walk, and then I'll head home with a chaste but kind hug and a farewell of "I had a great time, sure maybe we can do this again." I like Match No. 63, but I don't warm up easily to people just for the sake of a second date, and historically one or both parties have been disinterested in a follow-up after meeting in person. But I'm curious about Match No. 63, who has...

Match No. 63 Part II

I've gotten home from an odd day at an event in the city, full of serendipity and surprises, some hidden gems of small-scale treasures, and being recognized by someone I haven't seen in years, someone I did not even know I had ever met. I left feeling great, although also starting to physically not feel so great. At home, I notice my throat is a little off, a little cold.

I text Match No. 63 that I'm technically available now, and step away to get a glass of water.

But my phone immediately rings. It is Match No. 63 calling me, for our first phone call.

I pick up, foregoing the water for the time being, and launch into telling him all about my day's unexpectedness. His voice is calm and yet I can hear him smiling here and there; he has a gentle eagerness that I almost strain to hear more of, but am just glad to be having a good conversation with him. He is easy to talk to, as if we always have Sunday night phone calls. He often starts a sentence with a...

Skipped Match No. 5:

"One of the more interesting profiles I've encountered" he writes about me when he sends me a like. "I'm in."

He is at the older end of my age range, which only recently has begun to turn me off from profiles. Not for any reason other than the fact that I have, for the first time, been finding many matches closer to my own age, which is something I'm curious about trying for once. All of my exes have been older than me, from 7 to nearly 17 years apart, which never bothered me or seemed like a tangible difference in any way. In contrast to where I am now that I am 31, the idea of dating guys my own age when I was in my twenties had filled me with anxiety: they seemed more likely to be judgmental about forms of intimacy, or expectations about what my body should look like, residual insecurities I carried subconsciously from high school.

I remember, for example, when my French class took a trip to Québec for a few days. The girls' room I shared with several of...

NSFW

Unexpected No. 1 Part II

"Howd you feel whenever you woke up sunday? hows the week been?" writes Unexpected No. 1. This is the first time we are in contact with each other, five days after our all-nighter in the city. "looks like i might be coming up the first weekend in dec."

We haven't discussed if, when, or how we'd see each other next. But I'm assuming we have a desire to make it happen because I'm also assuming we have an expectation of what would happen during a next time.

But I am going to be out of town the weekend he's proposing he'll be back, which I promptly remind him about, and my stomach crashes slightly at this missed connection between us, again.

"Ah ok" he writes, "yes i forgot. Seems like ill miss you that weekend then"

Years ago, after I had broken up with Ex No. 2, for neither the first nor the last time, Unexpected No. 1 had been out of town for a week or two. By the time he had returned, I was already involved with Ex No. 3 in what would...

Match No. 63:

He sits on a stool in a studio, in front of a light brown drop cloth that extends to the floor, creating an illusion that's hard to parse to figure out where the horizon line is, the background or the angles of the space he is in. It is a self portrait he has taken, according to the caption. He looks like he's been caught while speaking or as he's finishing speaking. I like that he isn't smiling, that his expression is difficult to name. I mostly find myself drawn to the background though, as I cannot figure out what kind of material it is made from in its pleasing shade of sand tone. And then I realize what it reminds me of.

"Self portrait inside a paper bag" I write to him when I send him a like.

"If the room isn't biodegradable, the vibe is off" he replies when he matches back with me a couple of hours later. "How are you?"

I usually chafe at this question, as it is both a simple device for being able to speak about anything, and yet is also a societal reaction...

Match No. 62:

"Are those images really you? You look different in each."

He is referring to the images I have on my profile of a drawing I made as a toddler, and a drawing made by Charles Dana Gibson.

"Yes" I reply, "both really me. Caffeine has an incredible effect sometimes"

"Damn that's wild"

And then I head out to the Kesha concert, where I meet up with Unexpected No. 1 for what turns into 25 hours of wakefulness. In my stupor of sleep deprivation and high-on-life buzz still rattling through me after the weekend, I return to this chat, wondering if I should be open-minded and give this person a chance. There's nothing off-putting about him on his profile, and I always appreciate someone who reaches out first, even if it's a corny attempt. He has not said anything more, but has not disappeared either, although by now I know too well that not disappearing (or "unmatching") means nothing, really. It's a surface-level presence that is mostly just a shell.

"Are you FaceTiming...

Unexpected No.1:

"What are you doing tomorrow night? Wanna come see Kesha in the city?" he asks.

I've known him for many years and consider him one of my closer friends, although we've been at a physical distance for most of this time. I had texted him to ask when we could talk about a movie he had recommended to me, which I had a long list of criticisms about. I had watched the movie weeks ago and my decision to text him in this moment was entirely random.

Now I'm not only being surprised that he's in town, but am being invited to see a show I would never on my own take the time to go see. The only thing that comes to mind when I hear "Kesha" is when she had gone by Ke$ha and released "Tik Tok" which I still know some of the words to simply because of being unable to avoid hearing it so often. But I couldn't imagine going to a whole show for her. I want to see my friend, but maybe I'd be a kill-joy.

"Tonight is a little uncertain but I'll be in the city tmrw for plans I have in...

Match No. 60 Part IV

I am at Yale giving a presentation on performance and psychic mediums. It's part of the Machine as Medium Symposium: Matter and Spirit which was inspired by the questions posed by Alan Turing, namely "Can machines think?" There is a lot of crossover with the theatre school here, with a rock opera performance about Turing's life, aided by AI writing, ending the day's symposium events. On my way to the bathroom I see a CDC sign for washing your hands, which reads "Lady Macbeth got one thing right: Keep your hands clean" and features a graphic of a red hand with a yellow dot in the center saying "Damn Spot." It makes me laugh out loud, this use of her famous line from Macbeth, hand-wringing with madness: "Out, damned spot!"

I snap a photo of the sign and send it to Match No. 60, since Macbeth had come up in one of our earlier conversations. It's been a few days since our last communication, when I had sent him a "fun fact" I had come across in my research...

Skipped Match No. 4

He has sent me a Rose, the digital icon that the dating app lets you use to signify when you really like someone. You only get one free Rose to send per week, unless you buy others. I have only ever received one or two Roses, which doesn't surprise me given the little information on my profile.

This bachelor is explicitly interested in me for our shared interest in antiques and flea markets. He writes me an enthusiastic message with his Rose, including many emojis. He introduces himself by name.

He has the same name as Ex No. 4.
He has the same glasses and hat as Ex No. 4.
His lifestyle aesthetic is the same style as Ex No. 4, even writing in his profile that yes, he does dress like this every day.
His main hobby is Ex No. 4's full-time line of work.

I am very weirded out.

There are some differences, of course: Ex No. 4 is a few inches taller and has different hair, a different face behind the glasses. Skipped Match No. 4 is more comical, and includes in...

Interlude

It has never been my intention to reveal anyone's identity in this "Sects in the City" project. If I do end up seeing someone in a relationship, I plan to simply stop these entries altogether. I don't need to wrap up any matches with cute happy-ending cliffhangers, or bluntly declare who the bachelorette gave her final rose to here. This channel is (primarily) about one person's (mine) experience of using an app to meet people to date, not about the play-by-play of an actual relationship. This project is looking at how people (including myself) communicate with potential romantic partners, or how they don't communicate with potential romantic partners. This project is a study in what it means to date online today, although the project's parameters are set invisibly by my own gender, sexuality, age range, and location, alongside my own preferences and interests, which oscillate between being visible and not.

Of the matches with whom I've shared my real name, which happens...

Match No. 60 Part III

The day has come for our loosely proposed plan to finally meet. We have had to reschedule several times, which historically has been a very big red flag to me: if we postpone our first meeting, it seems to me, we will never actually meet. I am hoping that Match No. 60 is different. For some reason I cannot understand, there is something about him that already feels natural to me, as if he reminds me of someone I know, or as if we had been talking for a much longer time already. This is confusing to me though, since out of all my matches thus far, he is the most bro talker (which may or may not be insulting to him). Clearly I'm not put off by it here, probably because of his theatre side, his ability to quote stage directions from various Shakespeare plays. He has made me laugh, and as much as it's become rote to use the phrase "witty banter," there is something like that present too. He has been attentive and kind, from what I can tell. I'm interested in...

Match No. 61:

He's 6' 7" and my knee-jerk reaction is to ask "Really?" but think twice before messaging him something so inane.

I'm more attracted to how, in his profile, he writes that we should make sure we're on the same page about Last Year at Marienbad.

I don't message him to say that last year I wrote a small piece on Last Year at Marienbad. The 1961 film, directed by Alain Resnais from a script by nouveau roman enthusiast Alain Robbe-Grillet, is a love triangle with no confirmed plot details and therefore no conclusions: the premise is staged at an unnamed resort in high baroque design (with funereally glam costumes by Chanel), and hinges on one man's conviction that he had met a woman last year at Marienbad, an actual Czech resort town. The woman cannot, or does not, remember. The film follows the man's persistent insistence in trying to convince her, himself, us, all of the above, or nobody at all, since it has often been suggested that the film is a dream...

Match No. 60 Part II

After he gives me his mobile number, I reciprocate by texting him an image of a puppet doll I had seen the day before at a shop, with a hand-written sign on it that read "HAUNTED."

"I was one of those kids who bought goosebumps but never read them" he writes back.

"Wow you really show your cards early on" I reply. "So were you always a poser"

"Honesty is the best policy"

"Have you read any of the books in your apt?" I ask, knowing only that he's been reading for school.

"Actually yes, but way less than half" he replies. "But that's only because a lot of them are from my grandma's old house and I just wanted to preserve them. The ones of hers I have actually read tend to fall apart"

This is deeply intriguing to me, but as we're talking I don't get to ask more about it. What kind of books are they? Why is he preserving them? Where was her house?

He sends me a video of the dog he's watching for two weeks, which prompts me to ask what I'm hearing on the tv...

Ex No. 4 Part V

"I was wondering if we could talk" I say, as he makes his way to leave. Most people have left already, but the rain is causing others to linger around inside. It's still daylight out, although not for much longer, as Ex No. 4 and I approach the entryway to the outdoors. We are both at the same place, but not out of any desire to see each other.

"About what?" he asks. His voice is deeply troubled, his brow is furrowed, but he is not looking at me. I wonder if he is jumping to the conclusion that I am pregnant; our last encounter, another failed "experiment" which I have left undocumented, and which had ended in cruelty, was two months ago. That's two periods I might have missed while he has been proceeding to ignore what happened between us.

But even if that were what I was going to say, why would I do so in the vicinity of these scattered people? How could he be so stupid as to just ask me what I would like to talk about, rather than ask if I would like to...

Skipped Match No. 3:

We met in art school as freshmen 13 years ago when he lived on the same floor as me in the mandatory first-year dormitory downtown. I remember he began dating some girl almost immediately, and together they took nude photographs of each other in his dorm room. In my memory, the photos were developed at an extra large scale, but I don't actually know if this is true. I do know that I was semi-shocked at their photographs and their comfort at being photographed nude. They weren't, as far as I remember, in any kind of lewd positions, they were only posing for mundane portraits. Maybe I am misremembering or forgetting details. But I had not yet become comfortable with my own body, let alone with the idea of a boyfriend or the public seeing my body naked. I was still a virgin, although by the end of my freshman year I was not. He and the girl broke up pretty quickly I think. I have absolutely no idea what her name was.

We have kept in touch through intermittent...

Match No. 60:

Another gothic stud. He sits in front of blood red draped curtains, his hair a mess, a black jacket buttoned up over a high white collar. He could be a self-aware Hamlet, or an Edgar Allan Poe enactor. Or, yes, another vampire. Why do I see so many people who evoke this idea in my mind?

He writes in his profile that he recently discovered that Paddington 2 and Booty Call are the same movie. I haven't seen or even heard of either, but I am intrigued to find out why he has come to this conclusion.

I send him a like and add "Is there an innuendo somehow embedded in saying 'Paddington Two' out loud"

I cannot help it, my mind is always highly wired for finding innuendo, even if it is not clear.

He matches with me a little while later.

"Oh my god grandma Paddington would be appalled. This is a wholesome space!" he writes.

I don't actually remember who he is when I see the notification pop-up on my phone, even though it has only been 45 minutes since I messaged...

Match No. 59:

I had seen his profile earlier but dismissed it, actively hitting 'X' instead of sending a like. Now, he sends me a like in response to an image of a drawing I have on my profile.

"This is such a good profile and I also feel like I've learned almost nothing about you. Did I just learn what art is?" he writes.

He is a writer, he openly wants to have a family, he is engaged in many creative projects. Although he is at the older end of my age range, and I am a little weirded out by people who put their personal websites on their profiles, I know I should at least give him a chance. I accept his like later that evening.

"You have learned exactly that you don't know what art is and that art doesn't know you either" I reply, like an ass, or an idiot, or just someone who doesn't want to uphold the task of being the one to start a Meaningful Conversation.

When he doesn't reply several hours later, I send a softer message.

"But don't let that offend you. What is your job...

Match No. 58:

He has rings on his splayed left-hand fingers which seem unnaturally long, resting against the bare thigh of his very long legs. I like his bright floral swim trunks and his white button-down shirt, in which he is facing off to the side, not to the camera. Behind him is a teal ocean, some dead looking vegetation on the craggy dunes.

He lives upstate. In another shot he is taking a photo with a Polaroid Land camera, in what looks to be the mountains. In another photo he has a large plant taking over a studio corner.

"Don't hate me if I wanna be little spoon" he writes in his profile. "also don't hate me if im not chatty on here... i don't open the app much. but my insta. i'll definitely see your texts on there." He provides his handle, which has to do with a fruit and one of the seven deadly sins.