I’ve been meeting people via dating apps since Tinder came out in 2012. That meant that I’d been in the game long enough to notice that the apps all seem to ebb and flow in terms of the quality and suitability of the people you meet.
But while I had inexplicable hot and cold streaks on Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble, OKCupid – despite having been long-relegated to the second tier of dating apps – always seemed to put me together with the most appealing, interesting people. That’s how I met Gavin a few days before Halloween in 2015.
After our first date – immediately after vigorously boning me – he asked when he could see me again.
“Oh. Sure. Okay.” I offered. “What are you doing next week?”
“Next week?” he said in disbelief. “I have to see you before that!”
That made me a little nervous. I generally like people to stay at arm’s length for a little while so I can figure out if I actually like them.
But Gavin was very likable. He was very British. One of my best friends – and an ex-boyfriend from many years before – is also British and had very strong opinions about his fellow limeys, but Gavin won him and all of my other friends over in short order.
We became serious quickly. Far quicker than I wanted. Pretty early on – within the first few weeks of going out – I told him about this fantasy I had.
I’d dated couples before, but I’d always thought it would be fun to be the couple who sometimes dated another woman. Funnily enough, most of my previous boyfriends had responded to this idea with varying degrees of “No” and “Ew.”
Gavin, however, was extremely interested. So interested that I had to explain that if this was ever going to happen, he needed to be cool about it.
“Can you be cool?” became a running joke in our relationship.
A few months after we met, for our first Valentine’s Day, Gavin told me he had a surprise planned. He said there would be food and it would be sexy.
I was excited and, when the day rolled around, I got dressed up. Tits front and center, pencil skirt – high heels; Classic. Slut. Attire.
It wasn’t a sex party so much as it was a sexy party – a Valentine’s event for swingles to meet, engage in “light play”, then take it off-premises.
There was plenty of nudity, lots of hot bodies, and a good number of people who looked like they’d probably attended Renaissance Fairs, ComicCon events, Burning Man.
Hors d’oeuvres were arranged on the stomachs of women lying on pillows on the floor, which sounds sexy until you’re wearing a pencil skirt and heels and have to figure out how to crouch down to eat a chunk of yellowtail off a stranger’s abdomen.
So I didn’t eat much.
Gavin, being English, drank at a pace that was faster than mine. He’d finish his drink, go get another, and bring me one too, even though I was only halfway through the first.
So, I drank more than usual.
At some point we decided we should find a woman to hook up with.
I remember telling Gavin we should each pick out several women we thought were hot, then actually talk to one of them and see if we could bring them home with us.
He pointed someone out.
“Okay,” I said.
She walked toward an area where people were doing body painting, so I followed her. Not in a creepy way. At least I don’t think it was creepy.
She opened her shirt to be painted.
I was pretty tuned up by this point and thought, yeah! I want to do body painting too!
So I took my shirt off.
Immediately, I heard a woman nearby say something that would live rent-free in my head forever.
“Those are the kind of boobs I want.”
Aside from a hazy vignette in which we left the venue, then had to come back because Gavin had left his credit card behind the bar, that’s the very last thing I remember.
The next morning, Gavin was angry with me. I could hear him stomping around the apartment as I regained consciousness.
Apparently, I had spent much of the party naked and covered in paint. I kept rubbing myself against Gavin and getting paint all over his very nice shirt.
I had also made out with the woman we’d picked out.
Unfortunately, I had also made out with a man.
Gavin was less upset that I’d kissed another man than confused by my selection.
According to him, the guy looked exactly like Mr. Tumnus – the half-man, half-goat character from C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Even in that confused and vulnerable moment, I remember thinking that this was such a British point of reference.
As Gavin explained all this, I had the vague feeling that I’d time-travelled. Turns out, I’d experienced what they call a “blackout.”
I certainly had no memory of the goat man. Gavin sure did. In fact, he described his anguish as he saw the fawn honk my big, technicolor tits with reckless abandon. He didn’t like it when I laughed at the scene he’d dryly painted.
When I explained that I had nearly zero recollection of anything that happened after I took my shirt off, Gavin’s anger turned into concern. He’d been married to an alcoholic before.
“You really think I blacked out?” I said.
“Sounds like a classic case,” he replied.
I was genuinely surprised. As far as I knew, I didn’t black out. I’d never blacked out.
I immediately realized there was a fairly obvious flaw in that reasoning.
How would I know?
Somehow, none of this put us off. Gavin and I would eventually find other couples on Feeld, hook up with some of them, and even make it to an actual sex party together.
So I guess he proved he could be cool.
It just took me a little longer.
