He Knew It Would Work Out
A look at our first Bumble messages and INSIDER INFO about our first date debacle.
My husband is very intuitive. Off-the-charts intuitive actually, but like many people with overactive, highly analytical brains, he often discounts his inner knowing by intellectualizing the reason for having known the things he knows.
For example, R. had a vague knowing that his dad was going to die before he did. When I asked R. about it, though, he gave me an abundance of logical reasons for believing that his father was nearing the end. There was the talk of a will, a recent hospitalization that didn’t look promising, the desire to reconnect with sons he hadn’t spoken to for years and years.
But from my perspective, none of that really adds up to certainty. All of these things can be used in retrospect to explain something that R.’s gut told him intuitively. On this, my husband and I agree to disagree. He remains unconvinced.
The topic of R.’s inner knowing, however, extended beyond this one situation. Our dispute on this finer point was part of a larger discussion about his intuitive abilities overall. I’m invested in getting him to acknowledge these skills because it would be amazing to see what he could do if he made a concerted effort to use them. Spoiler alert: Magic.
So, to convince R., who makes my tendency toward skepticism look minor league at best, I had to come up with a better example. I needed to recall a time when R. knew something that he couldn’t have possibly discerned from logic alone. Then, it came to me…
“What about when we first met?” I pressed. “That first date was a total disaster. You couldn’t have possibly thought that things would work out after that. “
R. always thinks I’m exaggerating when I talk about how much of a train wreck I was on our first date, but I will forever contend that it was, in fact, that bad. More on that later. But the other thing R. has always said when I ask about why he wanted to see me again after such an oddball first encounter is that “there was just something about you.”
Now, I had him. “There was just something about you” is an intuitive statement. It’s a feeling. There’s no logic to it, otherwise you would know what the something is. Totally defeated (yea, OK, my words, not his), that’s when R. dropped another bombshell. He had that feeling about me even before our first date.
And when you read the messages from our first interaction on Bumble (more on that below as well), you’ll KNOW that he was being intuitive because I don’t even recognize this stranger who was communicating with him. For one thing, this insane, grotesque monster of a human uses SO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!
I’m getting ahead of myself though. According to R., a friend of his, L., asked him who he matched with on Bumble in the days ahead of our date. L. had been married for a long time at this point, so R. was his opportunity to date vicariously. R. mentioned a few bitches (kidding) he matched with (including the one typing this newsletter), but when L. asked if there was anyone R. was really excited about, he pulled up my profile (suck it, other bitches).
Here’s approximately what this profile said: My name is Karli, and I’m a freelance writer. I love cocktails, spin class and watching the Browns lose every single week. I have a dog named Frodo. I don’t know anything about Lord of the Rings.
It’s honestly pretty hard not to swoon. I’m clearly putting out soulmate vibes right there, which is probably what R. was picking up on. That’s why he swiped right. Once we matched, the ball was in my court. Bumble, for the uninitiated, requires the woman to make the first move by sending a DM within the first 24 hours of matching.
Given this high-stakes environment, how would I rise to the occasion, kick off the conversation and prove myself worthy of meeting IRL? Would I attempt witty banter? Would I write something earnest using information I’d gained from R.’s profile? Would I compliment this sexy-ass man? Hold onto your panties, friends, because THIS is what I went with:
Yep. “Hello Randy.” Just the no-fucks-given intro of a woman who is either so confident that her potential suitor will find her charismatic and charming from photos and profile alone that she doesn’t have to put forth even a minimal amount of effort OR so disenchanted by the dating pool that she doesn’t care what happens. I would describe myself as the latter. You can tell by how flippantly I throw shade following R.’s thoughtful response to my first message.
Ready for more? Here are the rest of the messages R. saved from this initial exchange. [Side note: Isn’t it so sweet that he kept these?! I love that about him.]
Some thoughts here. 1. I’m not sure how we ever made it since R. was still double spacing after periods in fucking text messages in 2015. I have since shamed him out of this habit. 2. Who is this bitch yelling “Insider info!”? 3. How cute is it that I asked my man out? 4. This is the only time I can think of when R. was a guy who said, “You got it!” more than once/ever at all.
Regardless of the rocky start, R. and I did indeed meet for dranks at Aalto. The happy hour was, as promised, fire. I had a soft pretzel, which is an always-win for me, and we enjoyed a variety of items for approximately $7 total. Many of you have heard me recount the debacle of this first date, so I’ll keep the story relatively short. Here’s what I remember about how it went:
I left my apartment on SE Hawthorne Street early. Trying to identify dates from their profile pics always stressed me out, so I liked to arrive early enough that the poor bastards had to find me instead. I noticed that the back windows were a bit foggy, so I clicked on the defroster, started the car and put my Ford Focus in drive. I made it about four feet before the back windshield began to collapse in on itself.
Glass poured into the back seat without warning and continued to crumble until I found a parking space outside the bar and stopped moving. A hole the size of a beach ball had formed, exposing the interior to the outside elements. If you know anything about Portland, you know that this is less than ideal. Rain is inevitable.
I got out of the car to assess the damage, sending a photo of the crime scene to my dad, who wrote back, “I’ve never seen anything like that in my entire life.” I then called the insurance company to file a claim and probably sounded like a lunatic trying to explain this completely nonsensical turn of events. The claims person had also never dealt with this scenario before, making the entire situation feel all the crazier. I made an appointment to get the windshield repaired early the next day. I ended the call flustered, annoyed and late for my date. I was definitely going to have to find R. now.
But first I had to find the door to the bar. It was tricker than it sounds. Aalto kind of shared a door with the pizza place next to it, and I’m pretty sure I walked by the correct entrance multiple times and went in the wrong one at least once. I was flustered, OK! Finally, I found the entrance and R. flagged me down.
The first thing I did was apologize for being late and show him the photo of the damage. As with my father and the claims adjuster, R. was baffled. He immediately asked if I had something to cover the hole. I had tilted a dog bed against the break and…it had already collapsed by the time we returned to my car. R. offered a number of potential solutions from things found in his SUV, but ultimately, the hole was so weirdly positioned that we settled on a plastic bag that would abandon its post long before the date finished.
After that little side adventure, everything was a blur. I don’t remember being interesting, fun or funny. I don’t recall a single thing I said. I do remember thinking that R. was 1. a kind person and 2. someone who really should have advertised the fact that he had a soul patch before I did the bare minimum to show up and participate on this date.
[About that: Every single one of his Bumble pics include this soul patch. I’m pretty sure I just thought it was just a shadow on his face. My theory is that the universe purposely obscured the regrettable facial hair from my view because the forces that be know I’m shallow enough to pass on my life partner based on this one dumb thing that doesn’t matter at all.]
I also remember that it eventually poured rain, I didn’t have a jacket or an umbrella, my mascara ended up running under my eyes and I likely looked even crazier than I felt. I made R. order two different kinds of fries with our burgers when we extended our date from happy hour into dinner time.
After our date ended—probably with a handshake since we’re Midwesterners and I’m not fond of hugging strangers—I spent an hour in the Fred Meyer parking lot duct taping garbage bags to the back of my car in a failed attempt to minimize the water damage. I also didn’t have any gas, so prior to that, I was forced to have yet another conversation about my dumpster fire of a vehicle with the flabbergasted gas station attendant. The first thing I said to Frodo when I got home: “Welp, I’m never going to see that guy again.”
And yet, I did. In R.’s twisted mind, this date went so well that even L., whom R. met up with directly following our date, could tell that his buddy was a bit infatuated. L. would later tell me this story, saying that when R. talked about me, he had a look in his eye that L. hadn’t seen before. This continues to amaze me. After that chaos of a first meeting, you can’t tell me that a whole lot of intuition was at play.
We often hear the expression, “when you know, you know.” That is what happened here, and that, my friends, is intuition. For some of us—the jaded ones with broke-ass cars, for instance—it sometimes takes a little longer to kick in. So, if you only take away one thing from this newsletter, please let it be this: R. may have been right about me, but I have been right about everything else ever since.
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix