Hiking with Strangers

Vol 4: That time I accidentally liked someone

In this new modern world we’re all living in, online dating has prevailed. Gone are the days of meeting through mutual friends, at social events, and certainly of casually bumping into someone at a bar. Now people are vetted through a couple cute pics and stupid thoughtless statements and to the most memorable line the spoils go. While I’m of an older generation where we didn’t meet people this way, I’ve found myself in the same predicament and have unfortunately had to learn to adapt to the swiping and stupid rhetoric also. Cest la vie, that is the way of the world.

Older but probably not much wiser, I am also a bit more cynical/standoffish/hesitant to immediately click with someone I haven’t run a full background check on; however, I find I’m, alternately, still just as stupid, trusting, and naive as the next 20 year old. After the initial stress and terror of a first date wears off, it really only takes a modicum amount of Ted Bundy-esque charm to disarm me. Nice teeth, a friendly dog, and intermediate verbal skills are enough to make me think Oh, he’s ok, he’s not gonna kill me. And of course I take the regular precautions: shared location, a trusty firearm, and a photocopy of his drivers license emailed to my mom. Sounds radical but let’s be honest, even that is rudimentary at best. These things aren’t actually going to save me as the nice new man with pretty teeth throws my phone in the water and uses my own gun to force me into the trunk of a car after "allegedly” losing his driver’s license on a hike. Sounds like fiction? I don’t think so! And yet, being just as full of stupid bitchisms as the next girl, I recently found myself on a hiking trail in the middle of nowhere with a guy I only knew by first name, not once but twice!

I matched with this guy on Hinge and the initial conversation was very easy. He responded in entire sentences which immediately won me over so I set up a date for 12 hours later. Statistically the longer I have to think about how shitty it’s going to be, the more likely I am to find a way to cancel and disappear. The next morning, right on schedule, I was convincing myself, as I usually did, that this guy was going to be a complete dud and, therefore, should not waste my time. First of all, he was “self-retired” which flagged him for potentially unemployed. Then there was the fact that he was attractive, which gave me a little PTSD from my date with Superfit. All of his profile pics were shirtless, drinking with bikini clad chicks, and I was really not in my fuckboy phase anymore, but simply for the sake of pushing ahead (emotionally), I reluctantly went. I took a shower and went sans makeup with wet hair and stretch pants. We were meeting at a coffee shop first, and I felt confident that if my initial appearance didn’t scare him off, 30 minutes of talking to me would.

I was late. I half expected him to be late as well when I entered the near empty dining room. Then some dude popped up out of nowhere, and I immediately knew it was him. Surprisingly, this was the first date I’d ever met that actually looked exactly like his pics. It was as if he put real pictures of himself up… that were current (mind blown). The wildest part wasn’t even that though. The wildest part was that his demeanor was excited: he was excited to see me. It was immediately obvious. He wasn’t disappointed. He was receptive. He was easy to talk to. And I knew at that very first meeting, we were just going to be friends. But an hour later and on an empty stomach (because you know I had no intention of going hiking in the first fucking place), I found myself going to a remote area with a total stranger.

The hike was a little more rugged than I’d anticipated and bringing a 12 year old dog as backup proved to be a challenge. My dog Cutie, who suffers from fits of crackheadedness from time to time, decided that she wasn’t doing this shit. Period. So as we traversed the river bed for awhile, looking at prehistoric fossils in the bedrock, I carried 14 pounds of asshole on my chest. But near the top, the trail became slippery and being the “avid” hiker I am, I fell face first on a rock while holding her. I was hurt and both of our anxieties were peaking (me and the dog). I was afraid if I set her down, she’d run (she has before). That’s when Stranger Steve offered to hold her until we got to the top, and promised not to let go, no matter how full crackhead she went. With literal tears in my eyes, I agreed and let go. I scrambled to the top of the embankment and waited the longest minute of my life. Eventaully he came up a few feet away, little crackhead in hand. I was so relieved, so grateful, and so surprised that I let a little bit of like seep out.

The coffee that became the hike eventually became the month I lapped around New Mexico with Stranger Steve. We spent a lot of time together as he showed me around and after awhile, beat down by the endless compliments, the acts of service, the tiresome chivalry, he wore me down and I did the unthinkable: I liked him. And even worse, I let myself like him. He was funny, not funnier than me, but still pretty funny. He knew a bunch of shit about stars and wild animals from Namibia, and I dig all that useless knowledge. He was smart and witty. His phone had satellite service and his credit check came back aces. He was the real deal. And so, bombarded by all these shiny things about him, I opened the floodgates and let all the like out, all over the place. I went from he seems like a cool dude, we can be friends to I wanna hold his hand in the movies in a matter of a week. It was a fucking mess.

I’m currently enrolled in the Bitter Bitch therapy course where, instead of getting any real kind of mental help, I just do everything the exact opposite as I usually would and hope it works out. I decided I wanted to get to know him better, thinking perhaps I could stay a few extra days and use it as a stepping stone. Maybe we’d discover we’re better off friends, maybe we’d never speak again, but maybe there was something there, and I really wanted the chance to find that out. The old me would’ve kept fucking him for five years without so much as an acknowledgement of said like but, instead, I tried a new approach and decided to be an adult. So I swallowed all my pride and put myself out there with this guy that I was never supposed to meet and never even wanted to get to know, and I told him: I like you. To my greatest surprise yet, after years and years of being met with lukewarm feelings and half assed answers, remaining friends that fuck in secret situationships, he told me he felt the same way too bahahaha, no. He said wellllll, no, um, that’s cool but I get claustrophobic and blah, blah, blah. I was floored. I was shocked. I was…supposed to leave? Yeah, he said I was supposed to leave.

You thought this was going to be a feel good post, didn’t you? Ahh, you know better.

Well, leave we eventually did, but not before feeling like a complete fucking idiot. Stupid bitch 101. I let myself fall for someone I didn’t even know and that like became just another wound to add to the countless others that will probably never fully heal, a little pock mark on the full metal jacket of my heart. So now this bitch is at an unfamiliar precipice in her journey and faced with a choice to make:

Now that I know what like could be like, do I go down the rabbit hole of Hinge and Bumble swipes until I find the right one worth liking again or do I let this experience of being vulnerable for five seconds crush me and make me even more bitter than you thought I could ever be?

Quite the conundrum kids.

Stay tuned to find out!

xoxo, The Bitter Bitch