Once-in-a-Lifetime Tinder Date

So this was a big week, for a few reasons.  Biggest of all would have to be that uh

I WENT ON MY FIRST TINDER DATE.

Wanna hear how it went?  Well…

The date itself was… normal.  Yeah.  I know.  Shocking, right?

It’s what happened AFTER the date that left me stunned.

So despite months (two) of trying to get a SINGLE FUCKING DATE on Tinder, and then NOTHING ever following through, I finally did it.  I landed a date.  And what’s crazy is we made those plans on the same day we met.  “Met”.  I mean, “not met.”  “Matched.”  Yeah, gotta get them Tinder Terms™ right.

So we matched while I was driving back to LA from an interview in another LA, Los Alamitos, and then I met her a mere two hours later.

Tomomi, 33.

I can still remember that profile perfectly.

A Japanese girl, so I already had clout.  Also, a pescatarian.  So I said,”Girl, let’s go to this nice Mexican restaurant by my house.”  Except, I didn’t say the “by my house” part.  I knew they had fish and shrimps and shit, so she could fuck with it.

When I met her waiting outside, the first thing I realized was that she was strikingly similar-looking to one of my past girlfriends, a girl named Vy from Vietnam.  Like, for a split second, had me thinking this was a ruse played on me by Vy, to catch me going on dates with girls, years later.  But it wasn’t Vy, and I can tell you that with 80% certainty.

When we sat down we had a good cadence to our conversation.  I made her laugh multiple times before we had even ordered.  She told me she couldn’t drink a lot so I told her to just get one, and she went with a Michelada for some reason even though I told her that shit nasty as hell.  Food wise, she got a vegan burrito (which, to be fair, wasn’t horrendous), and as a sign or RESPECT to her pescatarian ass, I decided to forgo my standard asada/barbacoa choice, and get tacos de camarones (shrimp tacos).  The shrimp was excellent, but way too big for the tacos, so the shit was tearing apart and everything… but it was okay, I reminded myself, because I was doing this for her.

A few things were revealed in our conversation.  She was from Kanagawa, Japan, and she did accounting in Tokyo for 6 years, before quitting her job to move here and do something-something UCLA extension project?

Also, she lived in the exact same neighborhood that I live in now: Palms.  Which is kinda a crazy coincidence, considering we matched when I was driving home on the highway, miles away from our area.

Keep in mind that everything is going well.  We are sharing food and everything… yeah, it’s going good.

And then we finish, I ask for the check, I pay for the meal, she thanks me, and then we get up to leave.  I look at the table one last time and realize that she’s only drank like 1/3 of her Michelada.  Hey now.  What’s going on there?

I ask if I can go home to change out of my work clothes before we make our next move, and she’s okay with it.

We walk up the hill to my house, 5 minutes away, and then we are there.  We walk inside.

She sits down, and I ask her if she wants a drink.  Water, she replies.  I get her her water and get a Negra Modela for myself.  And then I go into the bedroom and change.

When I come out, I sit down across the mini-table from her and start throwing out some ideas for what we could do that night.  According to how everything had been going to that point, I was under complete conviction that she wanted to go out with me.

But then I look down and see that her shoes are still on.  And then she yawns.

“I’m sleepy.”

I look at my phone.  It’s 9 godfuckingdamn 30.

“Well, what do you want to do then?  Can you physically stay out?  Do you want to try?”

“I’m going to go home and sleep.”

The f-f-f-fuck??

I’m not too upset, because it’s so early in the night, I could still go out and have a fun night.  But this shit came out of nowhere.

I walk her to the door, we agree to do it again, we share a hug, and then she’s gone.

I immediately go to my phone and call Yayu, my Japanese hair-stylist friend.  I’ve known him since I first moved to LA 4 years ago.  He’s a cool dude, and I knew that he could help bring some clarity to this situation.

I invite him over, and then he says, “What the fuck happened to your date?”

Oh yeah.  I literally wrote him a text an hour ago, in Japanese, saying “I’m on a date right now, it’s going well, can’t hang out tonight.”

Looks like I had some explaining to do.

Yayu was over within 1/2 an hour.

He has a fanny pack apparatus, and from inside he takes out like a thousand smoking devices.  Weed, joints, a vaporizer.  He starts rolling a joint and I begin to tell him about the date.

“I don’t know what happened.  I thought it was going to be a longer night.  The girl said she gets up early in the morning, but going home at 9:30 on a Friday night?  The shit??”

“Dude what’s she look like?”

Of course.  How could this story make sense if he didn’t even know what she looked like.

I reached in my pocket, took out my phone, fired up some Tinder, go to the message logs, and…

Nothing.

There was nothing there.

Well, there were messages there.  Messages with other girls.  Minus one.  Hers.  Her and my conversation was just not there any more.  It should have been right there at the top.  But now it wasn’t.

“Dude, did… did she fucking delete me or something?”

Yayu just responded by saying, “Ooooooh, that fucking bitch!”

Wait though.  What the fuck?  Did that really happen?  There had to be an explanation for that shit.

But I couldn’t think of anything.

Just she just erase our one means of communication?  And… within 30 minutes of her leaving my house?

Like, was she in that big of a hurry to get rid of me?

Wait, what in the FUCK??

As Yayu just continued to call her the b-word, my mind searched frantically for an explanation:

Did she fall so much in love with me that she decided to renounce Tinder altogether?  No, since that would be our only way to talk to each other.

Did she… did she discover something in my house?  Like, a sign of my ex- or something?  Or like, the meat in my fridge?

Wait a minute… did she… did she fucking steal something?  She totally did, right?

But, even if she didn’t, she still scammed me.  She fucking scammed me!  She made me take her our for a vegan burrito and then just cut ties with me!

Is this what they call “ghosting”??  Oh fuck!  It totally is!  The shit that normally happens to girls; IT JUST HAPPENED TO ME!

So yeah, that was my first Tinder date.  Truly, a once-in-a-lifetime date.  You know, because there will never be a second one.

Whatever that chick’s deal is, I will never see her again.  Tomomi, 33, thanks for fucking nothing lady.  And you just caused me to be cynical as fuck.  And all of those other girls that I was going to take on dates and buy their dinners?  Well, that ain’t happening anymore.  And they can all thank YOU!  I hope you are proud of yourself, Tomomi!  I hope you are real proud.

Also, if anyone can help me make sense of what happened here, hit me with a comment.

And please; watch out for ghosts.