So You Found Your Ex on a Dating App
A note to an ex after seeing them on a dating app
First of all, you hate camping.
That you would begin the invocation of your digital dating personality with such a confession of what a perfect romantic evening would be (in your words, “kissing in a tent under the stars”) is absurd. We bought a tent last summer (or maybe two summers ago) and never used it. I gave up asking you. Before we got to together, I spent my summers backpacking and living outdoors. When we were together, we huddled inside a dimly lit suburban apartment with the air con on. I couldn’t get you outside for anything. The tent, among much of my former life, remains in our storage closet, festering in the dim.
To your second point — this notion of recreational kissing. I can’t remember our last kiss.
Do you like to kiss, actually? It never really was for us. The notion that you would be found doing this, or any sensual activity for that matter, in a tent under the stars in the untamed wilds of some nearby wood with some other woman baffles me.
But I remember our first kiss, and don’t you? How you drove me home after the movies one October and I turned to leave and you grabbed my scarf and pulled me in. How you said my name close, sniffed my cheek, and held me in the front seat of the car.
Your physical aggression first turned me on, then terrified me. Rough sex became broken glass became terrifying fights. Amazing how love evolves with time.
I wonder how much of us you distill into your new relationships. Your new digital flings. How they take the shape of me or who you wished I would be.
Your virtual composite of who you want to be and what you are looking for, your “I’m a straight male, 30s, seeking short term and long term relationships and friends” — I see peppered with us, our memories of the last five years and this summer, of last night even. Every camping trip we never took— and whoever will message you their well-crafted pick up line as an entry way to your life, during her own lonely hours i know so well — won’t know that your bio is a composite of our vignettes.
A composite of us.