#170: Swipe

Grace sat on the couch. All the lights were off and no one was home. She clicked on the last button and a new world opened up in front of her.

She knew this was just a dopamine hit, but she was feeling lonely. Teaching psychology to teenagers gave her some perspective, but it didn’t give her immunity to succumbing to the pitfalls of being human.

The first man to appear looked too much like Peter. Not physically, rather it was the anger in the way he posed for the camera. The fish he held aloft was just a proxy for the powerlessness he felt in every other aspect of his life.

This would not go well, she thought, if she was going to psychoanalyse every man she came across.

She held her finger on the screen and tentatively swiped the photo. A large tick appeared on the screen, so she quickly swiped the other way.

By the time the glass of Shiraz was empty, she’d figured she had swiped through all Tinder offered, but the men kept appearing. She had swiped right on a grand total of two men.

As neither of those filled her with confidence in humanity, she deleted the app. A short-lived experiment in the online dating world.

With her loneliness gone, she went to bed.