Double in Tinder

Double in Tinder

John had a chance to go to Washington DC for a conference on Shakespeare, so he took it; he lived in Kentucky, and he didn’t get out much. His older brother, Robert Clement Stone III, lived in D.C, and he could stay with Robert while he attended the conference. His car was running well and, leaving Kentucky early in the morning, he arrived in D.C at about 8 in the evening on a Monday. His brother texted him that he was at a Georgetown sports bar, and gave him directions. It was early fall, and the weather was pleasant, but the roads were confusing and traffic was terrible. By the time John got to the sports bar he was rattled by the traffic and relieved to be able to get out of his car.

He found Robert and his friends at a large table in the back of the sports bar. It was a large place with many televisions and lots of noise; plenty of people filled almost every table. Most of the people in the bar were facing televisions that had the Redskins on them, but John and his friends were near a television that had the news on it; no telling whether this was deliberate. A first glance, it seemed like very few people in the place were watching any of the televisions, even though it was the Redskins.

Robert had four friends, Mark, Terry, Kirk, and Franco, who were at the table. John was sitting between Terry and Mark. Across the table his brother Robert made sure he would receive chips and salsa, and a drink. Terry and Mark ordered doubles, but it wasn’t clear what they were doubling, or whether it actually made them drunk.  The waiter, a tall guy, would come by, and they’d say, “Another double!” and this went on most of the evening. There was evidence that most of them had eaten if they had wanted to.

All four, it seemed, and Robert too, were obsessed with using social media to find and pick up women. Tinder was their favorite app; they sat and scrolled as they talked, and to John it seemed like following Tinder, or whatever they were doing, was a constant habit, whereas it was conversation, or interest in their environment, that would come and go. For minutes at a time they would be on their phones, scrolling, reading carefully, texting, seeing what was happening. Perhaps they wanted something to happen tonight.  John asked Terry and he showed him Tinder, and how he would swipe it, to look at woman after woman who was available, he said. “You can see how this could be addictive,” he added. Swiping right was approving them; swiping left made them disappear from your life. On the other side of him, Mark, more serious, swiped left more often, but looked at them more carefully first.

The news on the television above them showed refugees coming into Europe from the war-torn countries. They were interviewing people in France about taking in the migrants. Occasionally, between bites of dinner or drinks, John would hear what they said or read the captions at the bottom of the screen. Some people stated openly, based on the closed-captions, that it was good, that they would welcome migrants; others said it would be bad, and they were opposed. The Eiffel Tower was in the background; they had positioned the camera to catch it so it was very clearly Paris.

The footage from Paris reminded John of a time he had visited Paris briefly, and, in the four days he was there, met a woman who he’d become very close to. She lived there in Paris; her name was Marie. Both Marie and John had made extraordinary effort to cross cultures and get to know each other, but it wasn’t easy; there were a lot of differences between cultures. They’d become quite close in those four days; they’d spent much of their free time together, and she’d shown him a few of the sights. But when his time came to go, he’d gone, back to the U.S. Perhaps it was better that he’d left; he’d miss her forever, but it probably wouldn’t have worked. Maybe she’d visit Kentucky someday? That was highly doubtful. He was an English graduate student, unable to show her the good time she deserved, or even be as good a host to her as she had been to him.

Back in the sports bar, the friends were talking about their various sexual conquests. Somehow, based on what they said, they’d meet these women, text with them for a while, and go to bed with them, with very little in the way of dating, getting to know each other, the traditional kinds of things. His brother Robert seemed to be just as adept at it as the others. The city seemed to be full of women who were willing to do this; they’d make a profile; they’d answer texts; they’d see what was interesting, they’d swipe their phones as often as the guys at this table would. They’d see what came up, and pretty soon, they’d be in bed with one of these guys. John was somewhat amazed. Life wasn’t really like this in Kentucky; he’d just broken up with a long-term girlfriend, one whom he’d met after going to France, and he wasn’t really out on the singles market anyway. These guys, Robert’s friends, were on a full-scale hunt, based on what he heard them say. They were active participants.

From across the table, Franco, obviously a weight-lifter, explained it to him a little: “I’m busy,” he said. “I work all day, I go to the gym, I have the career thing going, I don’t have time to set up a domestic situation. If I were married or had a steady girl, it would take up too much time and energy; my career would suffer. This way, I look attractive to them. I have money and a car. They give it a try, and so do I. It’s just that I’m less likely to fall for them, I have no motive to settle down.”

Another guy, Kirk, was into being rough, and he described it a little; it was a little unsettling, because John could tell, through the stories, that the women were not necessarily into rough. But it seemed that Kirk didn’t care about this. He’d text them, and get into bed with them, and he barely knew them. How did he know whether they liked it that way? The only way to find out was to do it. If they didn’t like it, he wouldn’t do it again; he’d find someone else. He seemed to be taking out his anger on a string of strangers. Actually knowing them was never really part of the bargain.

It occurred to John that they seemed to live in a world where they met women in bed first, and then found out a little more about them little by little. This unsettled him a little, and worse, it reminded him of Shakespearean England, a world he now studied, but a world just different enough that he hadn’t quite known what to think of it at first.  Also unsettling was that here in the bar, there didn’t seem to be any other women around them at all; the waiter was a man, and there were no women even at the nearby tables. This lent an air of locker-room brag to what they said, as if, who would even know if they were telling the truth?

At one point he got up to use the bathroom, and walked through the bar. Again he noticed that the Redskins were on, throughout the bar, and not a single person seemed to care anywhere. What kind of town is this, he wondered.  This was the local team. It was Monday night, and they’d be on in front of the world; didn’t people follow their own local team, even a little? Apparently they didn’t.  Staggering a little with exhaustion, he returned to his table. Mark, who was sitting next to him, was a historian of Washington D.C. itself, and happened to know a lot about the French influence in its building and development. Perhaps he had been provoked by the news of Paris above him. He was saying something about the Frenchman who had designed the road patterns. John could see blaming the French for the trouble he had with the roads coming in. Across the table, Robert, who had made sure that John had a dinner coming, cast a rueful look, as if, who cares about the French? Two other friends, similarly, had taken the opportunity of a break in conversation to swipe their phones. More right swipes, a few left swipes.  

Terry seemed to be explaining to Kirk about how he had ghosted some woman that he’d been seeing. This apparently meant simply cutting her off, not answering texts, removing permission to call or view, pretending like someone doesn’t exist – this was what you did if you had no use for someone, or if their being there, on your phone, bothered you. Just cut the connection. Remove permission for them to view your profile. People were describing situations where they’d ghosted various women.

Suddenly, John was jolted out of his thoughts when he happened to see Marie on the television right above him. She was explaining, in French and in partly broken English, how the Parisian people would do the best they could with the situation they had at hand, namely the migrants. She seemed, at that moment, incredibly innocent, and sweet. John’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe that it was Marie, but it was, unmistakably. And within minutes, she was gone; the news moved on to another person.

John stared at the television for a while, hoping to catch another glimpse of her, but she was gone without a trace. The television moved on to more comments about the migrant situation, and about Europe in general, and its ability to stay together under the circumstances. John noticed that among his brother’s friends and the people in their area, Europe had no more popularity than even the Redskins. People were self-absorbed. The friends had their Tinder; they’d look at their phones in between times that they’d talk to each other. The waiter would come; they’d order something, then look at their phones as their friends ordered.  No sense talking to the waiter, for example, about what was happening in D.C.; what was happening was directly on their phones. The other people in the restaurant were the same way, except that, from what John could figure, they were more political than John’s friends; it was, after all, a government town. Politics was everywhere. Everything was political. Franco, at one point, said, “Get used to it. It’s political if you order chips and salsa. It’s political if you don’t. This is D.C.”

Mark, who had been expounding about the French, now told another story. He had apparently been ghosted by a woman he’d slept with. She told him she was pregnant first, then totally cut him off. He admitted to being a little worried. He couldn’t remember clearly how well-protected their sex had been; for all he knew, it was possible that she really was pregnant. But Kirk jumped in and said that was common practice, and it was rare that it was true. They were pretty sure women just did that, and, yes, it was an act of hostility, but that’s what you get.  They tried to make Mark feel better. Robert said it had happened to him as well; he still didn’t know how it turned out. The general conclusion at the table was that women, if they had no use for you, would rather leave you with something to worry about, than simply leave you.

But John wasn’t so sure, and he studied his brother a little. For all his bravado, he might not have been sure either. Did they only do this to certain guys, and if so, which ones? There was no telling; it was a new world they were living in. On television, they were now interviewing a migrant; between worlds, life ravaged by war, unable to enter one country, not welcome in the previous one, and with kids in tow, they, also, appeared to John to be in a world he could barely understand. His head spun as he watched.

Robert, in any case, was being a good host; he ordered whatever John wanted; he made sure John had a good dinner and a few beers. He was serious about his role as big brother, and kept asking John if he was ok. John was. He was dazed, tired from the long drive, and overstimulated by the heavy traffic, but, once he had dinner and a couple of beers in him, he was ready to face the world. They would go to his brother’s small apartment, and he would lay out some blankets on the couch, and fall sound asleep, knowing he would be going to that Shakespeare conference, first thing in the morning. From one world to another he would go; fortunately, he thought, there were no children, yet, to share this story with.

At the Gate

At the Gate

At the gate, Gate 13, they still hadn’t changed the sign that said where the next flight was going. It was going to Lubbock, and so was Ronald. He sat facing the sign, rather than looking out the window at the wide Texas sky, because he was getting nervous, and he wanted to see when they changed the sign. The flight was only about a half hour late, and the attendants kept assuring everyone that it would take off as soon as possible. And the flight to Lubbock was leaving out of this gate, as soon as they could board it. But the seconds, the minutes were becoming longer and longer. He could almost no longer bear it.

To his left, a television went on about the presidential race; there were way too many candidates, at this point, and he could barely focus. Occasionally this particular news channel would switch to a bombing or some violence somewhere else in the world. Ronald wasn’t used to television, and its constant blather irritated him as well. Off in the corner of the gate area, a poor mother was trying to control three young children; the youngest, a boy maybe two, was pawing away at a garbage can, while his older sister, about four, argued with her mother about the way she had changed the daughter’s hair. The third child, also a sister, was a bit older, maybe fourteen, and cast a disparaging look at everyone, but didn’t do much about the little boy. The boy’s hand was now reaching into the garbage can, leaning it over, while he climbed on a nearby seat. He was about two or three, very active, perhaps more than the mother could handle. The mother, in her thirties, very pretty but completely exhausted, kept calling the boy and telling him to return, but to no avail. He seemed determined, in his own way; if anything, he was determined to find out what was in that garbage can.

Ronald was a wind energy consultant. His specialty was knowing how various kinds of winds interacted with the various blades of the modern wind generator. He’d gone to Canada to help with a project on the high plains of Saskatchewan, but something had bothered him on the return trip: a man who, for whatever reason, had been allowed to leave Canada, but not allowed to enter the U.S. The man, a good-looking young fellow of indiscriminate national origin, had somehow convinced the Canadian authorities to let him try to enter the U.S., but he didn’t have a backup plan for what to do if rejected, and basically, Canada didn’t want him, once he was rejected. His luck had run out. He was stranded in that nowhere land between customs agents, arguing for what seemed to be an eternity, and it seemed like forever even to Ronald, who at that point was just standing in line. Ronald wasn’t sure how such things worked; what if the guy couldn’t go anywhere else?

Now, at the gate, another young man sat picked a seat next to Ronald and sat down, and started talking to Ronald about various topics: the flight, the delay, the weather.s He was pleasant, well-dressed, about twenty five or so, and had a few lines of worry on his face. As often happens, the conversation somehow drifted to the topic of eternal salvation, and the loving power of this young man’s savior. Ronald noticed at the same time both how likely it was for this to happen, and how thoroughly incapable he was of diverting the topic, or even just shutting it down. He was bored; he was being friendly; it just seemed like a normal conversation at first. Now he was considering bringing up the truth – that he really didn’t believe in heaven, at least not the heaven of everything being good, everyone happy. If there was a heaven, then what was this, purgatory?

Now people got off another flight, coming into the airport, which was in Dallas, and this was a good sign; the flight to Lubbock would be departing soon, probably with that very plane. The flight attendants arrived with their luggage and talked with the man at the ticket counter. Ronald was relieved. Progress was being made. The sign still hadn’t changed, but there was every indication that there would truly be a flight to Lubbock, and Ronald would get home.

The boy had now fallen into the garbage can, head first. It was the kind of garbage can where the hole in the top was smaller than the can itself, so that once he was in it, he couldn’t get out very easily, even when it was tipped over or sideways. His mother had seen it, at the last minute, but she had been unable to prevent it, because it happened quickly. Her anguished shouts upset the boy, and one could hear him crying and shouting out inside the garbage can, though because it was metallic there was an echo and it just raised the general noise and confusion, without solving the problem. The problem, really, was that he had two legs and two arms, and he wouldn’t be still enough for them to remove him, legs first, and they couldn’t seem to take the top off of the can in order to make the process easier. She had help now, as some bystanders saw the problem and came over to help, including someone from the airline. The boy kicked furiously, inside the can, hoping that would make a difference; it made the situation worse. Ronald considered helping, being naturally good at keeping his composure and taking apart things such as garbage cans, but he didn’t; screaming kids made him uncomfortable, especially anywhere near airplanes and confined spaces, and he didn’t want to be any closer to them than he was already.

The young man sitting next to him, dressed up, intent on discussing the joys of heaven, was similarly aloof from the situation with the boy. Ronald again almost blurted out his disagreement with the concept of heaven; he was, after all, a scientist; but instead he asked the young man about the particulars of his flight. He was coming back from Africa, he said, where he was on a mission. But it was more than a mission; he was training African missionaries, so that Africa could have more African missionaries, and they would be more thorough and efficient in covering the world with missionaries.  Ronald, hungry all of a sudden, excused himself and stepped out into the hallway where there was a McDonald’s.

In the hallway of the gate, there was a steady stream of travelers, with suitcases and packs, traveling either way, either toward the lower-numbered gates, toward the SkyTrain, or perhaps toward the bathrooms or the flight information boards. One person with the silver star of the Dallas football team on his dark blue shirt, struggled with a few extra bags. Ronald longed to be back in his office, where he studied computer models of wind flow and the behavior of certain kinds of wind-generation systems in response to variations in the flow. He couldn’t even begin to discuss it with the average airport traveler, so he kept it to himself. But occasionally, lost in a sea of humanity, especially people moving in a hallway such as this, or many people going the same direction in all different speeds, he’d think about his research.

At the McDonald’s, the big question, of course, was whether he could actually get something quickly enough to eat it before, at the gate, they would be boarding. He had now run out of time, and knew that he had to be back at the gate in minutes, perhaps ten or twelve.  At McDonald’s there were three separate lines, each with three or four people, but some man was complaining loudly that he had been given a hamburger with cheese, when he had explicitly said no cheese. McDonald’s workers were scrambling to accommodate him, trying not to lose track of their other orders.

The memory of the guy who was stranded at customs led Ronald to try getting something to eat, no matter how bad or how quickly eaten, and he almost stepped in line. But in the end, he chose against the food; it would be easier, and healthier, to simply wait, and not take the chance of missing a flight. When he got back to the gate, people were lining up. The pressure on the boy to hold still and let himself be removed from the garbage can was intense; finally, they had figured it out, and he got out, bubble gum in his hair. He was telling the airline attendant about the kinds of garbage he had experienced in there, in the darkness, as the grownups around him tried to make him presentable for the flight.

To the side, another airline steward was counseling the older sister of that boy, the one who had cast such disparaging looks at everyone when Ronald had first seen her. This girl, who was about thirteen, had apparently exploded in a rage against her mother, just as Ronald had stepped out of the gate and gone down the hallway. Her face was red, and she was shaking. She was at an age, apparently, when everything around her was faulty, nothing was as it should be. She couldn’t really describe how she had become so angry and exploded, or even how she was feeling now. They tried to restore her composure as well, so that the family could board the plane.

The young man who had sat next to Ronald, the missionary, had now realized that he had lost his cell phone, on some connecting flight; after a good amount of frantic searching, and even asking Ronald if he’d seen it (he hadn’t), he was now alerting the airline attendants to the problem. But it was pretty clear to Ronald, as he watched this, that the airline attendants had better things to do. The young missionary, apparently missing his wife and children, who had given up on Africa and returned to Texas earlier, was now in a panic; he was going to have to go without that phone for a few days, and that was quite a hardship, in the modern era, even if you were a missionary. Ronald noticed that they had changed the sign, and lined up to board the plane, grateful that he was moving on to the next step.

(8-15)