I sat on my parent’s deck last week reading How Fiction Works by James Wood.  My sister came out the back door, spotted the red slip of a book in my hand, and said “huh. Sounds interesting.”  Registering the sarcasm in her voice, I looked up to assure her that it’s actually one of my favorite books – a tiny power house of literary dissection written by arguably the greatest book critic of our time.  I turn to Wood often for perspective and inspiration, but last week I was mining for a passage to inspire my AP students to greatness in their first essay of the year – a close analysis of a character of their choice from any one of their summer reading books.

In an oft-quoted excerpt from the book, Wood argues against the categorization of “roundness” of fictional characters, asserting that this idea of roundness “tyrannizes us – readers, novelists, critics – with an impossible ideal.  [It] is impossible in fiction, because fictional characters, while very alive in their own way, are not real people.”   Since pulling that quote, along with several other insightful paragraphs for my AP seniors to read, I’ve been turning it over and over in my mind. 

As you all know from my last blog, I’ve recently experienced a surge in male attention.  Two men from IRL, and two from the app, The League.  The first date I set up with one of these budding beau’s was planned for this past Saturday, but even before the date and time were set, I was feeling nonplussed with Dillon. I’ve been trying to keep as open a mind online as I have kept IRL, but Dillon tested my limits.  He appeared to abhor punctuation of every variety, wrote in monosyllabic spurts, and demanded rather than questioned: “I would like to get coffee w u,” and “What’s ur number,” are messages I received from him, and he never actually asked me out. He simply responded to my statement that I might have time for coffee on Saturday with “that could work. What time r we meeting.” Nothing about our exchanges suggested I would enjoy his company, but I was still considering giving him a chance when asked, “do you have an instagram?”  It’s the only question mark he used.

I feel the need to share that Dillon is a twenty-eight year old, second year MBA student at the University of Chicago with a standing offer at a company in New York at the end of this year.  One might imagine he would be capable of a slightly higher level of communication, or could even muster some sensitivity to tone in a rhetorical situation where I am his audience, and his purpose is to get a date.  After running a simple cost-benefit analysis in my mind, I decided I simply did not want to spend an hour drinking coffee with Dillon.  His online presentation of himself and his scant communication with me had convinced me that doing just about anything at all would be preferable to our coffee date.  I canceled it.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I haven’t had an online date offer since February, and in my hiatus, my memory of what drives me crazy about relying on dating apps has dulled.  Interacting with Dillon, those feelings flared like an arthritic knee before a rainstorm.  Perhaps Dillon is a gifted conversationalist. Perhaps he has a smooth baritone voice and delivers one-liners as his eyes crinkle with joy at the possibility of making his date laugh.  Perhaps he would hold the door for me, tip the barista, and share a story about a cross-country road trip he took with his big brother when he was sixteen.  Perhaps he is courteous and kind, smart and selfless.  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.  But I won’t know because even though we are real people, not fictional characters like those Wood writes about, it is impossible to present ourselves as such on a dating app. 

We, the dating public, are “tyrannized” by the “flatness” of dating apps.  In the absence of a full picture, we are left to fill in the pieces of the real people we endlessly swipe left or right on – for better or for worse.  Every woman has read a profile and exchanged a few messages with a man and begun, against her best judgment, to imagine a future with him – even if that future is just a killer first date.  He may even deliver on that great first date, but he is never what she imagined him to be.  None of us are.  We are not flat characters.  We aren’t even round characters. We are real people driven into a reductive dating paradigm that drains our interaction of real connection and tantalizes us with the fantasy that our next best date is just a few swipes away.

I’ve dipped my toe back into the online dating pool and shivered as the monster in the deep slithered across my skin.  I fear it might grab my whole foot and drag me into the depths of interminable swiping.  I still believe there is a way to responsibly or even joyfully use dating apps, but I’m not there yet, and that’s ok.  I’m turning my attention back to talking to strangers… in real life.

 

Until next time…