Welcome to Tinder Tales, Mamamia‘s series about disastrous dating app experiences.
Unpleasantly assertive snogging? Handsome foreigners who speak a lot sexier than they shag? None of the Bond girls ever had to put up with this bullsh*t.
Casual dating is total, sloppy, awkward chaos – especially when you’re meeting people on Tinder. But it’s worth doing so for the stories. The worse the date, the better the story.
That is to say, when I go on a shocking date, I’m doing it FOR YOU. Eating, drinking and shagging other human beings (and talking about it afterwards) is essentially MY GIFT TO YOU, people in relationships, friends, and strangers. I am nothing if not selfless.
We will start with the Spaniard.
He was young…er than me. By about 6 years. We met on Tinder, when we both skipped all the usual courting rituals by “swiping right”.
His main photograph was clearly taken during an impromptu steamy beachside photo shoot with some other girl, or awkwardly willing friend. I don’t know how Spaniards do things – perhaps it was his mother who snapped him walking out the surf, flicking his wet hair to one side, and placing his hand suggestively on his ripped torso. He was wearing the type of swimmers you can only reasonably get away with in Europe, so one can only assume this was taken on the beach right before the entire nation shut down for a collective siesta.
Look, judge me for agreeing to go on a date with someone who presents himself to the world like that if you like. For one, I don’t care and for another, I can’t hear you from here.
So, we meet.
I step out of the cab, all moisturised hairless legs and low expectations, and he’s on the phone, speaking Spanish so fast and so passionately, it’s entirely possible there was nobody else on the other end. For all I know, he was reciting an erotic acrostic poem he wrote earlier that day, just to impress me with his torrid foreignness.