It gets worse: The DM in question was in response to a decidedly untasteful cleavage shot masquerading as a question about what to wear to a work Christmas party. But as sleazy and superficial as this all sounds, it somehow led to the most fulfilling and feminist! And it all happened after I gave up actively dating. When I turned 34 around this time last year, I seemed to suddenly and definitively reach my lifetime tolerance for bad male behavior. And that behavior loomed largest in my dating life.
Every woman I know has a horror story about this. Beyond that, I disliked what felt like the time-killing soullessness of the face-swiping apps that had replaced more traditional dating sites.
Yet those apps seemed to be the only realistic option left for people who ever hoped to find a partner. I sometimes did the mental math. This resulted in the occasional date with someone I met organically while out in the world imagine! I went out for a few months with a writer acquaintance after we started flirting over Twitter. And in a bit of foreshadowing? I had drinks and later a respectful sexual encounter with a friend of a friend who started following me on Instagram one day.
My Instagram, in particular, was set to private: To even follow me you had to literally request permission. And if you abused the privilege? But with the sexy selfies came a certain amount of sexual attention. Which, in an environment where I felt such a sense of agency and control, it turned out I did not hate. And so I began several interesting flirtations through Instagram. They all showed up in my DMs, summoned by the siren song of me posting my cleavage on the internet.
In the weeks of DM-ing, and then texting, and sometimes both simultaneously that followed, B. The only catch was that he lived in Chicago while I was in New York. Instead, B. That was almost eight months ago, and after many round-trip tickets between New York and Chicago, and countless hourslong phone conversations, B. He now lives a subway ride instead of a plane ride away. When I think about it, I can hardly believe that a guy in Chicago who wrote me a message on the app people use to show off their lunches ended up being THE GUY and that that app brought him to me.
