You bet
The first of three parts.
Tally ho, pets. I’ve had a bit of a creative block recently so I pushed myself to write something — anything, really. A first in Rude Adults history, this trilogy introduces three eligible bachelors who, for various reasons, made me decide to delete my Bumble account for good. Be forewarned that anybody out there using my name and photo in a dating app is a catfish with excellent taste in fraud.
Winston* is 36 years old, and begins his bio with a joke that conveniently mentions he is six foot one. No burying the lede — Winston knows what the ladies want to know. It’s a smart marketing move because I wouldn’t say he was cute, but my god. Six. foot. one. The desert may be barren, but sometimes an oasis comes in the form of a man so tall, he could block the sun from your face. That’s what I call nature’s SPF.
Winston is multilingual, and his interests include gardening, cooking, K-pop and feminism. Oh, he also works as a writer for an environmental agency. “This guy has Wattpad vibes,” a friend said via group chat. (I never got to clarify if she meant that he sounds like a Wattpad character that a teenager made up, or that he sounds like the kind of person who writes Wattpad stories. Can’t decide which is worse.)
I asked him if he likes gardening because he’s an Earth sign. An Earth sign? he wondered. Yeah, a Taurus.
“I’m not a Taurus. What gave you that idea?”
I sent him a screenshot of his bio that indicates otherwise. Winston replied, “That was a mistake. I think I’m an Aquarius, but I don’t really believe in that crock. It’s not like you swiped right naman because I’m a Taurus. Right?”
Well, no… but it helped. It was also strange that he never bothered to amend it, even after I pointed it out. Red flag? Let’s peg it at baby pink for now.
Winston had a stomach bug when we matched, and we spoke on and off for two weeks. When he finally asked me out, he gave me a list of Korean chicken places we could try. Like a good policy writer, his research was detailed: “For soy garlic and yangnyeom, I recommend Kkokko. For honey bulgogi or bourbon barbecue, I recommend Sajang. 24 and Noriter are good, too. But they’re more expensive. I’d feel guilty of robbing you of your money.”
Hold up. I’m paying for this date? Winston reminded me that at the beginning of our chat, he claimed to have the ability to wipe out a piece of chicken “to the bones,” and I asked him if he was willing to bet on that. You know, like a joke. Apparently, he was so sure he’d win that he never forgot about it, and now he’d like me to choose the meal I would be willing to pay for. I briefly wondered if this is how Winston got his last stomach bug, by forcibly eating Korean fried chicken just to score himself a free dinner.
It became an even less of an enticing idea to go out with him knowing how fixated he is about who foots the bill. Consider that all Winston has to do is shower, show up, and be his six-foot-one self on this date. What he doesn’t realize is that even before I walk out the door, I would have already spent a small fortune to look cute. For him. For his undeserved viewing pleasure. With all due respect, I’m pretty sure that however much he would have spent on that date wouldn’t even cover the cost of my mascara. And while it may seem wild to spend that much money on mascara, remember that I’m not the one on trial here today. We are burning a man at the stake.
As annoyed as I was though, I still acknowledged that he wasn’t a complete asshole (truly the barest fucking minimum) so I refrained from expressing my reservations. Instead, I decided to stop replying in order to give him a grace period to review and amend his actions.
The next day, he messaged again. “Soooo, are we still on for that chicken hang?”
I hope my silence was answer enough.
*Not his real name.
hahahahahahahaa