Tucson Tayler

Vol. 2: That time I popped my dating cherry with a homeless guy

While I roast to death in this tiny tuna can, I’ve decided to break my days up by putting old shows on that I’ve already watched and don’t really have to pay attention to. Last week I blew through Yellowstone for the fifth time. So yesterday as I scanned the titles, I was surprised to see Sex and the City, which HBO almost never lets out of their vault. You see, S&C and I have a long history. In it’s heyday, I was an 18 year old girl and simply couldn’t relate. Then again in my twenties I watched it, and at least understood the context. Watched it several more times in my 30’s, when I was the same age as the characters and found it to be utterly depressing. But last night, starting it for the Nth time, I realized I’m now the spinster from the pilot episode. I’m the 40 year old woman who doesn’t look like a model but who also won’t have meaningless sex with fat guys so I’m faced with the probability that I will die alone in my apartment and my cat will eat half my face (that’s the gist of it anyways). So I sat here and pondered the quandaries of life and love through the whole first season.

I haven’t touched on the dating segment of this blog much lately because I’ve been overcoming all the other hurdles that homeless unemployment and trailer life has to offer, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have fresh content for you. Quite the contrary. If you’ve been a reader for awhile, you know one of the main sagas in my life was the challenge of finding decent men to date in a town full of drunks, drug addicts, and gambleaholics. I vowed to myself that as much as I always think I’m not ready to date, this new chapter in my life would be bathed in fresh disappointments. I will admit it was hard getting started. I was on the road about a month before I put my Hinge profile together. But once I got back on it, it was like riding a bike again (albeit one with two flat tires). In case our male readers don’t know, matching with eligible bachelors online is like fishing with grenades. Everyday you have fifty more choices to choose from and to be fair in the selection process, we have to take many things into consideration, not just a few decent profile pics. For example, I won’t even match with anyone who specifies what their pronouns are (you either have a dick or you don’t and you’re already far too woke for me), talk about politics, or say something fucking stupid like “If you don’t look like your photos, first rounds on you.” (This would be a good time to read 5 Guys to Swipe Left On just so you’re all up to date.) Which brings me squarely to phase two of the process: personality. How do you determine in just a few exchanges if this person is funny, cheeky, sarcastic, interesting, or simply has a face you’d like to sit on? And as you know, I firmly believe that a person’s physical appearance changes drastically when you add mannerisms because statistically more than half the guys I’ve fucked in my life would never make it past the first round of dating app do’s and don’ts. It’s quite the quandary.

So after swiping through half of the Tucson area, I finally matched with someone that I thought would at least be interesting. His texts were easy and somewhat interesting without being overbearing. He just came off a year of doing the #vanlife thing and we agreed to get together and exchange travel stories. I thought this was the perfect intro dick back into the dating scene. No pressure, no expectation, and at the very least a couple of laughs. He chose a coffee shop almost 40 minutes away and I’m not going to lie, I seriously considered cancelling. I’m old school in that the man, most importantly on the first date, should make the effort. Bitches are supposed to show up in their best form on the first meet, and this takes considerable time. Let’s say 1.5 hours for hair and makeup, add almost an hour of drive time, and you’ve just carved out an eighth of my whole fucking day, just to meet some guy I’m not even going to like (yea, that’s still my dating mantra). It was the 11th hour and instead of cancelling, I decided to go ugly: wet hair, no makeup, and a jumper from Old Navy because I was running out of clothes. Still better than not showing up at all.

I get in the truck and begin to make my way all the way downtown to a seedy little coffee shop right near the university. I don’t like crowds, kids, or anything trendy, so I can tell this is a bad start. As I comb through the parking lot of “compact” spots just snug enough for five hippies to park their Priuses, I realize there’s no fucking way on Earth I’m getting through this electric hybrid maze without sideswiping something with the one ton. I park down the street near a laundromat I’d flagged, hoping maybe I could kill two birds with one stone, when a police car opens fire on some guy in a Civic and a full scale gunfights opens up in the street. I look back on this moment and know this was when I should have left, but commitments never been my problem and since I was there, I’d wasted the time and gas to get there, I was fucking ripping this band-aid off come hell or high water.

As I slipped through the door and was greeted with the overwhelming smell of entitlement and patchouli, I get a text that my “date” is waiting upstairs. Fantastic, throw some cardio in there for good measure. It was, after all, 9 o’clock at night on a Tuesday and with as many stimulants as I’d already had, decided against a coffee. I ordered an Italian sode and after socialist tax and tipping, my $5 soda cemented that this guy wasn’t getting pussy tonight no matter how charming he was. I made my way up the circular stairs and found, perched at the top, my first date in over two years. He looked like a fifteen year old newspaper boy with a faux policeman’s mustache and Hawaiian print hot shorts. If I can see more than an inch above your knee, your shorts are too short my friend, and I should’ve known that the dating scene had changed considerably since I’d made my exit and this was only a taste of what’s to come (see Leveling Up for the shorts saga). He’s skinny, like young boy skinny, and I suddenly feel like those croissant rolls when they bust out of the paper wrap container after you hit them against the countertop in your moms kitchen. I settle in and notice he’s already been down to the bar for his own coffee and snack, so clearly paying for my $5 soda was out of the question. No pussy, check check. The table is small like a child’s teacup setup with chairs just big enough for two porcelain dolls. I’m feeling exposed and uncomfortable as my ass cheeks spill out on either side and the wood gives a low groan. I feign interest and commit myself to only staying long enough to get this soda down, and then I’m out.

He immediately jumps right into his old days of the van life living. In my mind, he had just gone on a yearlong trek across the country and settled back into real life with a job and new apartment. I’m thinking he must have a creative skill as I do that allows him to work on the road. Instead, I find that he is an out of work welder, non-union, and he was actually in between jobs, and homes, when he linked up with some chick on Facebook who was just moving into a van of her own and decided to make it official (again, I can’t get a guy to commit to a third date but this homeless broad is poaching dudes to live with her in her Sprinter van, smh.). So he continues his story about how they were out in the Phoenix desert, living out of their van, driving into town once a week for mail and a shower (I have even more questions now) when they abruptly broke up and he found himself with no van, no car, and no job. Somehow he landed in Tucson, renting a room from some guy off Craiglist. He animatedly tells the story about how he just hasn’t returned to work yet because “there’s so much cool shit to do here on the weekends” and as I stare at him in some shock but mostly brutal acceptance, because I’m a fucking magnet for homeless dudes myself, I make the gruesome discovery that his fingernails are coated in gel polish. I wasn’t a fan of the bull ring in his nose or the stringy strands of dirty mullet peeking out from the back of his cap, but the polish on the tips was just too much for me to handle, so I loudly slurped the remnants of my soda and announce that I have to go. He follows suit with a sob story about taking the bus 45 minutes to get there and after having just witnessed the crime scene outside, I offer to give him a ride home against my better judgement.

Outside and in my truck, the vibe has changed and this underage millenial is sizing me up. I can see from my peripheral that he’s calculating how much juiciness is a handful and doing the long math. I quickly realize that a good deed has somehow become an invitation to sex and I’ll need to make a clear and concise exit without accidentally running him over during my departure. I pull up to a little house off a dirt road and immediately spit out “Thanks, it was so nice meeting you” (gag). He opens the door and the cab light comes on, illuminating his more than feminine appearance and I think for a split second maybe he doesn’t even like girls and I’m being ridiculous. He leers at me another moment and says “I’d like to invite you in but I understand if you have a long drive ahead of you.” This was a loaded question, not a statement. Do you want to come in and fuck me on the floor because all I have is a comforter to my name kind of question and the answer was no from the moment I walked in that millennial trap coffee shack. For the first time in my life, I’m overjoyed that I drove and I stammer Oh yeah, really far, gotta go as I lean over for a one armed side hug. He’s still hanging onto the door handle as I peel off into the darkness, no idea where I am or what direction I’m going except away.

I immediately called my bestie, the one who met her husband online on her very first Bumble date and still surreptitiously believes I’m going to find something other than constant disappointment, and recount the details of my freshest fuckery as I scan Google for the closest In ‘n Out burger because after a night like that, the only meat I was trying to get stuffed with was a Double Double. On the plus side, In ‘n Out was open, the date was done, and I’d just overcome the biggest hurdle: entering the dating world as a 40 year old spinster who doesn’t fuck fat guys or dudes with nail polish.

xoxo, The Bitter Bitch