Double in Tinder

Double in Tinder

John had a chance to go to Washington DC for a conference on Shakespeare, so he took it; he lived in Kentucky, and he didn’t get out much. His older brother, Robert Clement Stone III, lived in D.C, and he could stay with Robert while he attended the conference. His car was running well and, leaving Kentucky early in the morning, he arrived in D.C at about 8 in the evening on a Monday. His brother texted him that he was at a Georgetown sports bar, and gave him directions. It was early fall, and the weather was pleasant, but the roads were confusing and traffic was terrible. By the time John got to the sports bar he was rattled by the traffic and relieved to be able to get out of his car.

He found Robert and his friends at a large table in the back of the sports bar. It was a large place with many televisions and lots of noise; plenty of people filled almost every table. Most of the people in the bar were facing televisions that had the Redskins on them, but John and his friends were near a television that had the news on it; no telling whether this was deliberate. A first glance, it seemed like very few people in the place were watching any of the televisions, even though it was the Redskins.

Robert had four friends, Mark, Terry, Kirk, and Franco, who were at the table. John was sitting between Terry and Mark. Across the table his brother Robert made sure he would receive chips and salsa, and a drink. Terry and Mark ordered doubles, but it wasn’t clear what they were doubling, or whether it actually made them drunk.  The waiter, a tall guy, would come by, and they’d say, “Another double!” and this went on most of the evening. There was evidence that most of them had eaten if they had wanted to.

All four, it seemed, and Robert too, were obsessed with using social media to find and pick up women. Tinder was their favorite app; they sat and scrolled as they talked, and to John it seemed like following Tinder, or whatever they were doing, was a constant habit, whereas it was conversation, or interest in their environment, that would come and go. For minutes at a time they would be on their phones, scrolling, reading carefully, texting, seeing what was happening. Perhaps they wanted something to happen tonight.  John asked Terry and he showed him Tinder, and how he would swipe it, to look at woman after woman who was available, he said. “You can see how this could be addictive,” he added. Swiping right was approving them; swiping left made them disappear from your life. On the other side of him, Mark, more serious, swiped left more often, but looked at them more carefully first.

The news on the television above them showed refugees coming into Europe from the war-torn countries. They were interviewing people in France about taking in the migrants. Occasionally, between bites of dinner or drinks, John would hear what they said or read the captions at the bottom of the screen. Some people stated openly, based on the closed-captions, that it was good, that they would welcome migrants; others said it would be bad, and they were opposed. The Eiffel Tower was in the background; they had positioned the camera to catch it so it was very clearly Paris.

The footage from Paris reminded John of a time he had visited Paris briefly, and, in the four days he was there, met a woman who he’d become very close to. She lived there in Paris; her name was Marie. Both Marie and John had made extraordinary effort to cross cultures and get to know each other, but it wasn’t easy; there were a lot of differences between cultures. They’d become quite close in those four days; they’d spent much of their free time together, and she’d shown him a few of the sights. But when his time came to go, he’d gone, back to the U.S. Perhaps it was better that he’d left; he’d miss her forever, but it probably wouldn’t have worked. Maybe she’d visit Kentucky someday? That was highly doubtful. He was an English graduate student, unable to show her the good time she deserved, or even be as good a host to her as she had been to him.

Back in the sports bar, the friends were talking about their various sexual conquests. Somehow, based on what they said, they’d meet these women, text with them for a while, and go to bed with them, with very little in the way of dating, getting to know each other, the traditional kinds of things. His brother Robert seemed to be just as adept at it as the others. The city seemed to be full of women who were willing to do this; they’d make a profile; they’d answer texts; they’d see what was interesting, they’d swipe their phones as often as the guys at this table would. They’d see what came up, and pretty soon, they’d be in bed with one of these guys. John was somewhat amazed. Life wasn’t really like this in Kentucky; he’d just broken up with a long-term girlfriend, one whom he’d met after going to France, and he wasn’t really out on the singles market anyway. These guys, Robert’s friends, were on a full-scale hunt, based on what he heard them say. They were active participants.

From across the table, Franco, obviously a weight-lifter, explained it to him a little: “I’m busy,” he said. “I work all day, I go to the gym, I have the career thing going, I don’t have time to set up a domestic situation. If I were married or had a steady girl, it would take up too much time and energy; my career would suffer. This way, I look attractive to them. I have money and a car. They give it a try, and so do I. It’s just that I’m less likely to fall for them, I have no motive to settle down.”

Another guy, Kirk, was into being rough, and he described it a little; it was a little unsettling, because John could tell, through the stories, that the women were not necessarily into rough. But it seemed that Kirk didn’t care about this. He’d text them, and get into bed with them, and he barely knew them. How did he know whether they liked it that way? The only way to find out was to do it. If they didn’t like it, he wouldn’t do it again; he’d find someone else. He seemed to be taking out his anger on a string of strangers. Actually knowing them was never really part of the bargain.

It occurred to John that they seemed to live in a world where they met women in bed first, and then found out a little more about them little by little. This unsettled him a little, and worse, it reminded him of Shakespearean England, a world he now studied, but a world just different enough that he hadn’t quite known what to think of it at first.  Also unsettling was that here in the bar, there didn’t seem to be any other women around them at all; the waiter was a man, and there were no women even at the nearby tables. This lent an air of locker-room brag to what they said, as if, who would even know if they were telling the truth?

At one point he got up to use the bathroom, and walked through the bar. Again he noticed that the Redskins were on, throughout the bar, and not a single person seemed to care anywhere. What kind of town is this, he wondered.  This was the local team. It was Monday night, and they’d be on in front of the world; didn’t people follow their own local team, even a little? Apparently they didn’t.  Staggering a little with exhaustion, he returned to his table. Mark, who was sitting next to him, was a historian of Washington D.C. itself, and happened to know a lot about the French influence in its building and development. Perhaps he had been provoked by the news of Paris above him. He was saying something about the Frenchman who had designed the road patterns. John could see blaming the French for the trouble he had with the roads coming in. Across the table, Robert, who had made sure that John had a dinner coming, cast a rueful look, as if, who cares about the French? Two other friends, similarly, had taken the opportunity of a break in conversation to swipe their phones. More right swipes, a few left swipes.  

Terry seemed to be explaining to Kirk about how he had ghosted some woman that he’d been seeing. This apparently meant simply cutting her off, not answering texts, removing permission to call or view, pretending like someone doesn’t exist – this was what you did if you had no use for someone, or if their being there, on your phone, bothered you. Just cut the connection. Remove permission for them to view your profile. People were describing situations where they’d ghosted various women.

Suddenly, John was jolted out of his thoughts when he happened to see Marie on the television right above him. She was explaining, in French and in partly broken English, how the Parisian people would do the best they could with the situation they had at hand, namely the migrants. She seemed, at that moment, incredibly innocent, and sweet. John’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe that it was Marie, but it was, unmistakably. And within minutes, she was gone; the news moved on to another person.

John stared at the television for a while, hoping to catch another glimpse of her, but she was gone without a trace. The television moved on to more comments about the migrant situation, and about Europe in general, and its ability to stay together under the circumstances. John noticed that among his brother’s friends and the people in their area, Europe had no more popularity than even the Redskins. People were self-absorbed. The friends had their Tinder; they’d look at their phones in between times that they’d talk to each other. The waiter would come; they’d order something, then look at their phones as their friends ordered.  No sense talking to the waiter, for example, about what was happening in D.C.; what was happening was directly on their phones. The other people in the restaurant were the same way, except that, from what John could figure, they were more political than John’s friends; it was, after all, a government town. Politics was everywhere. Everything was political. Franco, at one point, said, “Get used to it. It’s political if you order chips and salsa. It’s political if you don’t. This is D.C.”

Mark, who had been expounding about the French, now told another story. He had apparently been ghosted by a woman he’d slept with. She told him she was pregnant first, then totally cut him off. He admitted to being a little worried. He couldn’t remember clearly how well-protected their sex had been; for all he knew, it was possible that she really was pregnant. But Kirk jumped in and said that was common practice, and it was rare that it was true. They were pretty sure women just did that, and, yes, it was an act of hostility, but that’s what you get.  They tried to make Mark feel better. Robert said it had happened to him as well; he still didn’t know how it turned out. The general conclusion at the table was that women, if they had no use for you, would rather leave you with something to worry about, than simply leave you.

But John wasn’t so sure, and he studied his brother a little. For all his bravado, he might not have been sure either. Did they only do this to certain guys, and if so, which ones? There was no telling; it was a new world they were living in. On television, they were now interviewing a migrant; between worlds, life ravaged by war, unable to enter one country, not welcome in the previous one, and with kids in tow, they, also, appeared to John to be in a world he could barely understand. His head spun as he watched.

Robert, in any case, was being a good host; he ordered whatever John wanted; he made sure John had a good dinner and a few beers. He was serious about his role as big brother, and kept asking John if he was ok. John was. He was dazed, tired from the long drive, and overstimulated by the heavy traffic, but, once he had dinner and a couple of beers in him, he was ready to face the world. They would go to his brother’s small apartment, and he would lay out some blankets on the couch, and fall sound asleep, knowing he would be going to that Shakespeare conference, first thing in the morning. From one world to another he would go; fortunately, he thought, there were no children, yet, to share this story with.