Bumble Fails #1 Living on a new but yet strangely familiar continent for over 3 years now has brought me so much joy and exciting new adventures. Learnt many a lessons about life, made several mistakes, riddled myself with anxiety in the process, all the while living my best life. Some of best and worst moments have come from my dating experience. I have had several unfortunate but very deliberate experiences of bad Tinder and Bumble dates. There have, however been a few that have stood out to me in all their embarrassing and uncomfortable glory!
Hedgehog guy So I started chatting with this guy who seemed quite interesting over texts (as they always do). Quite frankly the only interesting thing about him was that he had a pet hedgehog. So I meet hedgehog guy in the city centre for our 6pm 'drinks in the pub' date. First impressions – he didn't quite look like his pictures on Bumble. I mean I could tell it was the same guy but also that the pictures were much older. Anyway, I am telling myself, 'hey! you'll have a few drinks and maybe a decent conversation and then head on home.' And so we went to a couple of pubs, had a conversation about his hedgehog and about how he would love to go work in America (yawn!) and during the course of those hours the reality of text vs IRL interaction slowly sunk in. Surprise surprise he didn't have anything interesting to say besides stories about his precious hedgehog (who was pretty cute in all fairness). And so we ended up in our final pub for the night, having our last drinks while I waited for him to politely finish his drink so I could call it a night. As I take the final few sips of my Jameson on the rocks, hedgehog guy hits me with a curve ball. He asked if I thought about us having sex the moment I saw him! I mean I almost spat out my whiskey as I burst into a chuckle. I just squealed no!!! and then one of the biggest regrets of my life, I asked him if he did. And he went into extreme vivid and graphic details of what he wanted to do to me, against what surfaces and in the oh so many ways that I dare not think about again. I was left speechless to say say the least, horrified, stupefied and quite frankly just alarmed at his audacity and general lack of any sense of boundaries. In hindsight, I figured he must have been under the impression that I had a few too many drinks which may have lowered my inhibitions. Of course it was far from it. As my fellow queens would attest to, there are moments when you are drinking but do not feel the buzz as much, especially if you are in a compromising or otherwise uncomfortable situation. Apart from feeling on edge, I had not had more than three drinks so I was feeling quite offended and uncomfortable to continue the interaction. After making him stop talking (literally!), we decided it was time to head home. He mentioned wanting to take a taxi and as I was walking in the same direction, I offered to walk with him. Not a minute later that we had stepped out of the pub, he asked for a kiss, I don't know why I said yes to a peck which only made me more uncomfortable. As we continued walking he asked if he could come home with me. I politely refused. At this point I noticed a shift in his behavior, he went from relaxed to annoyed within a few seconds and started asking me why we couldn't, obviously assuming that the graphic description of a one sided tryst meant that I was open to sleep with him! I began to get nervous as I wasn't sure how he would react. I kept refusing and even offered to help him get a taxi, all the while hearing him moan, grunt and beg for me to take him home. Thankfully, there is a happy ending to this story. I eventually put him in a taxi, watched it drive to a reasonable distance before I turned around and walked home. My paranoia set in that he might just get out of the taxi and follow me home. However, I got home safe with another regrettable Bumble experience, swearing I would never do it again. Oh how I proved myself wrong and that my will was not so strong.