THE END OF THE WORLD, AND OTHER BEGINNINGS

This is not how I imagined my first relationship would go.

I told myself that when people asked how we met, I’d lie. It’s so embarrassingly cliché, another timid foray into the weird world of Tinder success stories that get passed through the grapevine as mythos. There’s the disclaimer that hangs awkwardly (Yes! I know it’s, like, so unrealistic) between recountings of park dates and confessions of coffee orders and other mundanity that feels profound under the cover of darkness and late-night intimacy. I’ve got it down to a science. Eye roll here, head nod there, and of course, the obligatory blush. Honestly, it’s emblematic of what my mom might chastise as a sad symptom of our “changing times,” which I’d hear (and subsequently ignore) while swiping in a bored, Tinder-induced stupor. But, alas, here we are. Just me, and my horrible, no good, very bad inability to lie. 

We matched at the height of the pandemic, in the last week of April, back when quarantine was just beginning to lose its sparkly facade as a new and temporary spectacle. May sprung under the onslaught of April showers—a thick thunderstorm that broke and never stopped breaking. My family had just moved from my childhood home into an apartment that still didn’t quite fit right, I was miles from my closest friends, and online classes felt like a cruel and unusual punishment specially crafted for me. I was depressed and tired and lonely (and clearly quite the Tinder catch). 

I was desperately searching for “normal” interactions, and as such, Tinder was the normal that found me. My friends and I spent more nights than I’m willing to admit indifferently swiping through dating apps during quiet moments between parties or on the walk back to our dorms. Plucking petals from the metaphorical flower. We match, we match not. For starters, it was easy and made easy conversation. We’d pass around phones to gawk at particularly great or unfortunate profiles (but, really, let’s be honest here—it was usually the bad ones that got this special treatment). Or if there was a lull in conversation, I’d type something saucy to get conversation flowing with a person I had no intention of meeting. Gone are ye olden days when pick-up lines had to be delivered in person. Now, I was at the receiving end of “ur beautiful” texts—a modern age love profession, if you will—while loading laundry into overpriced university washing machines on a Tuesday. I missed drunkenly trading phones with friends to swipe on the other’s Tinder, and bragging about who was the better match-maker aficionado. The endeavor was always fruitless and stupid, but also weirdly touching. An act of trust in its own right to say, “Here, find someone for me.” So while my dating app expeditions during quarantine were still based on a platform that hinged on its “online-ness” when everything was online, it felt larger than the isolation that bore it. Being on Tinder was a passive rebellion against a seemingly endless quarantine—a hope for a different tomorrow bundled up and released in the most familiar way I knew how. Every swipe right was endowed with a silent wish for normalcy. 

And, honestly, I couldn’t even tell you what his profile looked like. I know most of his photos were of him on family vacations, and I deduced that he must’ve been into photography, but, like, in a chill way. They were high quality photos, mostly of him with friends (a good sign), but he didn’t have headshots or anything (immediate red flag). What I can tell you is that he was cute and I was bored enough to make questionable decisions (swiping right on any man qualifies as a questionable decision in my book). He messaged me, and then we kept talking. And talking. All through the spring, the summer, the fall, and counting. 

For all those keeping records out there, I had never been in a relationship. Not once throughout the entirety of my twenty years of being. I never had a kindergarten boyfriend to chase around the playground, or a date to prom who held me while we cried to an overplayed Shawn Mendes ballad. In high school, I was mostly known for being a try-hard who’d rather go bald before breaking the rules and risk not getting into her top choice college. I was pigeonholed into a stereotype that was both true and false (as most stereotypes go), and while it meant most people left me alone, it destined me to teenage years void of hand-holding and first kisses. 

In college, things were the same, but also not. I’ve always been intense about things I care about, which ranged from the benign, like school, to the more eccentric, like being an active proponent of a “crane party” to worship the crane situated in a work zone on campus. I’m used to scaring people off, especially those of the male variety. The difference is that now I wear makeup and style my hair, so my penchant for theme-park video essays and comedy sketches about gun-wielding squirrels is endearing. My quiet nature is mysterious and my bitchy resting face actually makes me a full on femme-fatale. And that’s the thing about not receiving male attention and then suddenly getting a lot of it on Tinder—I entered the online dating scene skeptical and weathered, with a half-smoked cigarette hanging from one hand, like I’d seen some shit you’d never imagine. I’d spent too many years being the girl that got asked out as a dare, or scoffed at by guys more popular than me, to be surprised by the way men act when given free reign to women’s profiles on the internet. If anything, I took pride in matching with muscular football players with no necks, and chatting with guys who I knew would never give me the time of day if it wasn't for the pink eyeshadow that distracted from the bags beneath my eyes. It was never serious and I was never emotionally invested. I mean, who had the time? 

You can imagine my surprise when I fell in love. It happened slowly. I’m cautious by nature and so is he. We met, socially distanced of course, in September, and drank wine in a park that I can no longer go to without thinking of him. I see him in the tree that we sat beside, in the sunshine that glistened off the bottle that we passed between shy hands and timid get-to-know-you questions. And when he finally kissed me on the fire escape of his apartment after we cooked dinner together (and engaged in more alcohol-related activities), I wanted to do it again and again and again. 

I’ll get the obvious out of the way first: being in a relationship and seeing each other in person in times like the present is a privilege that’s not lost on me. I’m grateful to be where I am at this moment, in a pod with people that I love, some old and others new. That said, falling in love during a global pandemic has to be on the top ten list of the most inconvenient timings for a first relationship, to put it lightly. It’s easy to fixate on the people you love and have to fend off intrusive thoughts about being loved simply because you’re there. He doesn't have the option to date around. That opportunity is a thing of the recent past, something my friends talk about nostalgically the same way they do freshman year dorm parties. Especially when I’m seeing so few people in person, there’s also this constant overhanging threat of prolapsed individuality, of merging into an uninteresting mush of the worst parts of each other. I’m prone to overthinking, and this past year has lent itself to plenty of alone time to really let these thoughts marinate. This is not how I imagined my first relationship would go. That being maskless around one another would be an unspoken symbol of trust and vulnerability. In my mind, I had this moodboard of museum dates, and stumbling home at 3am while our fingers find each other and interlock, of casual lunch dates at dining halls, and scouting bakeries in search of the best chocolate chip cookie Providence has to offer. 

In reality, we see each other mostly once or twice a week, and FaceTime quite often. We bake together on the weekends (we’re currently making our way through Claire Saffitz’s Dessert Person), and share our favorite shows and comfort YouTube videos. I learned that he’s much more type-A than he lets on, especially in the kitchen, and would make a great househusband (yes, he does the cooking; yes, he does the cleaning). And I want to keep learning him, to hold him while we sleep and whisper proclamations of love as a hope for someday having each other in a different, more normal tomorrow. 

Somehow, he managed to erode the Tinder-related defenses I had created and held on to throughout most of my time at Brown. I’m more than accustomed to ghosting guys without a second glance and always remaining an arms length away from anything resembling an emotion. And with the added threat of the world as we knew it reaching a standstill, it seemed like a natural conclusion for my own dubious Tinder habits. I’m naturally more inclined to fold into myself during times of emotional duress, and while I still have that impulse at times, I ended up surprising myself with how much I wanted to try being someone worth falling in love with for him. 

Over winter break when my sister asked how we met, I cracked a smile and rolled up my sleeves to settle in for the next hour or so. I told myself that I would lie, yet as soon as the question leapt into the air between us, charged with excitement and sibling camaraderie, I knew I was going to say true things, Tinder included. It’s embarrassing. But it’s ours. 

AUTHOR: Rose Diaz is in her third year at Brown and is constantly wondering why it rains so much in Providence. She’s studying literary arts and enjoys spending way too much time pursuing random bookstores in her small, completely unheard-of hometown of NYC.

ARTIST: China Saxton