The Transmuted (Chapter 2)

They’re many lies that I was told when I was growing up, but the most egregious of those is that everyone would love me just the way I was. That isn’t to say that anything was necessarily stopping me from portraying myself exactly as I was at all times but to truly do that would have extreme social consequences. This is why, like most humans, I’ve gone around trying to constantly promote my best self without trying to reveal my true self, like a salesman trying to sell a cheap novelty to an unsuspecting family before it falls apart. This is the basic premise that Tinder and the other thousands of dating sites run off of, that with 4 or 5 pictures and a 150 character autobiography we could make a decision of whether or not we wanted to be with a person. This was to be done by looking at a certain person, flipping through their pictures, and swiping left or right on them. Swiping right to signify an interest that waited with a pregnant hoped to be reciprocated and Left to banish that person onto a towering heap in oblivion. Needless to say, first impressions are everything.

This fact combined with my physical appearance made Tinder a self-deprecating machine bent on destroying my self-worth. With every right-swipe that went by unanswered -and there were many- I could feel myself falling deeper and deeper into my inner hole of ridicule and loneliness. So the app wasn’t any real good to me or modern society as a whole but I stayed for the reason every man stays, for the romantic chimera lurking just behind every right-swipe. That idealistic vision kept me crawling back to the app when I was low and in some sad part of my soul, I was certain that today would be the day I found her, the mystical woman to pull me out of my hole.

I checked my message box to find no new matches and scrolled absentmindedly through the older connections. Most were born out of the quiet heartaches of late nights when I would stare up at the ceiling and contemplate my situation. This was the time I was at my most dangerous when every moment felt like a defining one and the only thing stopping me from happiness was indecisiveness. So in those moments, I tried to vanquish my demons with activity and this warpath usually started with swiping right on every girl I saw on Tinder. “Saw” is probably the wrong word, I would more catch a general image of their face in the interval between thumb swipes. With that sheer number of swipes I would eventually match with some girls, talk to them without being truly interested, and the conversation would fizzle out in the morning. The rest of my connections were more hopeful, swiped when I wasn’t drunk on sorrow by a much more discerning eye. However, like most hope, it was eventually dashed, either on Tinder or another communication medium. One of the particularly memorable matches was with a girl named Raven. She was a very attractive girl with jet black hair and dark but inviting brown eyes. I scrolled down to the conversation and opened it, “Hey beautiful.” (This was my routine, hackneyed greeting for most of my matches.)

“Hi.” (Already a sense of detachment.)

“What’s up?” (I ask cheerfully.)

“Nothing.” (Disinterest is clear.)

“Oh cool, same.” (She surely must’ve forgotten to ask me what I was doing, surely)

Silence ensues. 5 minutes later,

“Well, I think you’re really attractive and you seem cool, do you think you’d want to hang out sometime?” (I’ve gathered so much about her from our delightful repartee.)

“No.”

“Oh, so you’re in a relationship?” (Presumptuous.)

“No.”

“Oh, so you’re just looking for friends? That’s fine with me.” (My mind was already composing a beautiful love story: we would become friends, she would open up to me and I to her, it turned out she was badly hurt in a previous relationship, I slowly nurse the wound to health (never crossing any lines mind you), I take her out to the river one day, and at last she tells me that she’s ready and our lips meet under the stars. Easy enough.)

“No.”

“Then why did you swipe right?” (Anger, indignation, fury, rage all put pumped into 6 words.)

“I thought you looked funny.”

The switched off of the messages and to the game itself, a 19-year-old girl named Shane welcoming me back. The first thing I noticed about her was her nose ring and then pulled perspective back to see her whole face. She was wearing a staged and somewhat frightened face and her lips pouted like that of a well-behaved child trying to beg for a toy silently. I fell for the gambit though and decided that she was pretty. I flipped through the rest of her profile and she seemed fair and decent so I swiped right with some hope.

The next girl, Jamie, 19, was sporting a black cat filter on her opening picture. I decided to check the profile,

“I love anime, and music. Let me enlighten you. It’s really all fun and games until I find me an Asian man xD.”

Naturally, I swiped left; anime girls didn’t like me.

Next was Maureen, 18. Her picture showed a contemplative woman sitting down on a cracked stone step looking into my soul while her hand cradled her head overlaid by a black and white filter. Her winged eyes and softly closed mouth gave off a worldly look as if she knew her future but was bound to play it out against her will. Those sad and knowing eyes made her an immediate right without the need to see anything else.

Right and left the pendulum swung as I ran through a few more before Anthony approached, pulling me out of the game.