Roughly a week and a half ago, I threw out my back in my sleep.  I have since learned that this is a thing that people do – but it had never happened to me before.  One moment I was sleeping soundly, and the next moment I was startled awake in the early morning hours, arching off the bed as my low back rippled with pain.  The muscle spasms lasted only a few seconds, but the tender tightness lingered throughout the day.  It wouldn’t have been a huge deal, except I had to wear a backpack, sit in an uncomfortable chair for eight hours for the class I was taking, and then drive to the south side to teach a three-hour dance class.  By the end of the night, I was exhausted and my whole body felt strung taught.  I drove to my parent’s house (which is just minutes from my dance studio) to wind down and sleep before driving back up to make my class in the morning.

When I got to my parents, I asked my mom if she would massage my low back.  I got down on the floor in child’s pose, and as she walked over to sink her weight onto my sacrum, she reached out to grab my fingers and told me to unclench my hands.  As I spread my fingers wide, I felt a tangible shift in my body and realized I had no idea my hands were even balled into fists.  My mom leaned into my low back, patiently releasing day’s worth of tension. Afterward, I babied it for a few days, and it is now largely free of tightness and pain. What has stuck with me, though, is my mom’s directive to unclench my hands.  Over the past week and a half, I’ve found myself feeling restless or anxious, only to look down and find my fingers curled tightly around my thumbs – an outward manifestation of my desire to hold onto something – anything – when life feels uncertain.

I’ve realized that my personal crusade to talk to strangers is far more than just a plan to widen my dating pool.  It is the equivalent of unclenching my fists.  To reach out, I have to let go of so many things – of my fear of being judged, of my preconceived notions of who belongs in my life and who doesn’t, of the social pressure to be or act a certain way, and of my largely erroneous judgments of others.  What stops us from opening up to strangers is that we are holding tightly to some part of ourselves or an idea of ourselves we’ve been conditioned to believe in.

Wednesday night, two friends and I went to happy hour at Jazzin’ at the Shedd (the Shedd Aquarium for those of you not from Chicago).  We stayed for a drink, looked at some fish, and then decided to relocate to the Chicago Athletic Association for dinner.  The CAA is one of my favorite places in the city.  Built as an exclusive men’s club in the 1890’s, it reopened a few years ago as a boutique hotel and event space.  The expansive lobby boasts massive library tables and ornate fireplaces and opens into a billiards room complete with Bocce ball courts, pool tables, and fancy craft cocktails served from behind an impressive bar.  The Cherry Circle Room serves top-notch fare, and the rooftop bar, named for Cindy Pritzker, offers the most stunning view of Millennium Park and the lake I have ever seen.  When I’m in the CAA, I feel like I’ve stepped back in time.  It’s the kind of place where, if I drank bourbon, I’d order it neat.

Enough with my love affair with the Athletic Association, and onto the story at hand.  Brit, Jen and I ate more than our fair share of delicious fried snacks in the billiards room, and then Jen called it an early night while Brit and I stayed for a final drink.  We made our way over to the bar and pretty quickly struck up a conversation with two men, Drew and Chris, who were in the city on business from Dallas and Seattle respectively.  Drew had to be at least in his mid-forties, Chris was 39, and they both worked for Amazon and were spending their days at McCormick Place at a convention hosting more than nine thousand Amazon employees.  Both men wore wedding rings, but we quickly learned that Chris was finalizing his divorce, and once he was a few beers in, he asked us our advice on re-entering the dating game via Tinder.

We told Chris that we are both currently off online dating in favor or dating IRL, but we would surely offer our expertise.  We spent at least twenty minutes giving him advice on which pictures to use, what order to put them in, and what exactly to write in his profile.  Among other bits of advice, I urged him to remove “Hello Tinder Universe!” from his bio, as well as “Email me back!” because, well, it’s not email.  It’s Tinder.  We went on to give him further advice on thriving in the dating world beyond just getting a date:  make the first date drinks, and offer to go somewhere near where she lives.  Even if she reaches for her purse, offer to pay for the first date, but raise an eyebrow if she doesn’t offer to pay for something by the fourth date, because she’s raising a red flag.  Tell her about your kids and your divorce, but don’t dwell on it, and don’t call your ex-wife crazy (even if you think she is).  No woman wants to hear you call another woman crazy because she’ll immediately wonder how you’re judging her. We even took a picture of him on the rooftop with the Chicago skyline in the background and recommended that he use it as his first Tinder picture (completely removing the unflattering selfie he had taken of himself at a hotel convention center). 

Chris was incredibly sweet and was falling over himself in gratitude over the advice we offered.  He kept hugging us and telling us how “cool” and “fun” we were.  In looking at his Tinder profile, I realized I never would have swiped right on him as he presented himself.  Not in a million years.  There were too many “non-negotiables” – the overuse of exclamation points, the self-deprecating parenthetical asides, the poor quality photos, and the reference to email that screamed, “I haven’t been on a date since I was 22!!”  Meeting him in person, however, I was able to see that Chris is just an average 39-year-old man who actually hasn’t been on a date since he was 22, and has no idea what he’s getting into in the modern dating scene. 

I realized that if I wasn’t leaning in wholeheartedly to this adventure of talking to strangers – I likely never would have spoken to Chris.  If I came across him on Tinder, I would have taken all of three seconds to swipe left – shaking my head at what I perceived digitally to be massive red flags.  I don’t know – perhaps Chris is a walking red flag, but he’s also a decent human being in need of kindness and compassion during what is clearly a difficult time in his life.  The man is still wearing his wedding ring, for God’s sake.  For me, committing to talking to strangers has allowed me to unclench my hands, heart, and mind.  It’s allowed me to open up to others and see the fragile human that exists behind the embarrassing Tinder profile.  None of us are what we appear to be on screen, not by a long shot.

 

Until next time…