Chick Habit: Yonny
WORDS BY Johnathan Arellano & Dalton Feldhut
I started the new year with my heart broken and tattered; 2023 was quite the year. I was at my lowest with only a phone and a recently lost love interest. “Indian Love”, is one characterized as occurring in every man’s life – just once – but leaving them with a cavity too deep to recount in its entirety. To be completely honest, I’m still digesting the loss. But then, with winter break, anything but snow came down; mostly boredom. I decided to download Hinge. The bright screen and seamless UI acted as a night in Vegas, leaving me speechless at the endless possibilities that ended up becoming more a routine of opening the app, liking a couple of people, and closing up shop for the night.
Nights continued like this, pointless and repetitive – I could only ask so many people for their Spotify – until I got out of class and saw this message from a girl I didn’t remember liking, yet somehow had matched through the power of the psyop in my phone. Maybe this was India repaying me for the hit I took at the end of 2023. I thought she was pretty, and after very minimal exchanges, she seemed eager to meet me. The only problem was this girl was looking for the time of her life on January 4th, and was mostly finding any way to make our hangout one full of narcotic discoveries, which ended a million different terrible ways in my head. What do I look like having a girl sleep over at my apartment on the first date to have drugged-up conversations?
It was 11:52 PM and she was on her way. I’m crazy and I don’t know what I was thinking. This was a drastic change of pace. Still, I remained calm and rehearsed meeting her for the first time. I was home alone and forgot to let my roommate know in case I had accidentally let The Killer know of my whereabouts. So many possibilities in my head, but it ended with none I had imagined. She came over and we used her comfort to understand each other. We both exchanged how we had used the app and the experiences we had before meeting up to this point. It was weird, but sincere. She recently got out of a relationship with her “crazy ex”, something I would get used to hearing about in our year of getting to know each other. The strange comfortability was exciting. To know she came over just to talk and sleep over on my bed as I took over the couch for the night was… somehow, nice.
The initial sincerity had me holding on for much longer than expected. We met each other’s friends, I met her family, and even talked about her coming to my college graduation. She went as far to visit me in New York after spending 2 months in Miami on a girl's trip (studied abroad in Prague). We did so much in the couple of months we could have. I still feel the constant pressure of having to find someone like her, but I can't find someone crazy enough to be willing to lose their bet on love by showing their cards so early; the house rules this table. I suppose I'll move on, as that’s all left in the itinerary. I can’t help thinking of all that came and went in the past year. I saw the crazy ex in all of her actions, as if a toxic man was inhabiting my girlfriend's body – my bisexuality once again prevails. In that sad, lightning quick scenario, I had to be perfect on the first go while she could make infinite, unknowable mistakes, taking no damage through the plot armor I gave her in my infatuation. This all came crashing rapidly when I got back to California. The distance of being back at my parent’s house after graduation was too much and the expectation to be within walking range was unrealistic — our off-and-on adventures could only last so long.
To my hinge wife, who showed me why the divorce rate in America is so high.
Dalton’s Commentary:
Coming oh so close to that ever elusive forever relationship can be killer. I only wish I didn’t have to admit that I may have been on the wrong side of history for a situationship or two. The clearest that jumps out of my brain’s ancient, dusted memory files is my most recent misadventure in the world of hinge relationships (shocker).
Upon my return from the Big Apple and without the cherished company of my fellow Bum Diary members, loneliness consumed me completely. Having been devoid of any human connection for a few weeks, I decided to take another spin at romantic roulette in the hopes that my dame in shining armor would rip the revolver out of my hands and ride us off into the sunset.
As unlikely as it may seem, I scored a bar date with a missus who most definitely should not have been entertaining an evening with me. One date led to another, and we eventually found ourselves at the inevitable question that can either boom or doom it all in one fell swoop: “What are we?”
In the (sadly, proven false) words of the legendary Britney Spears, “my world collapsed,” as did any hopes of a relationship, as my apparent fear of commitment only served to strengthen her desire to hang up the facetime and move on with her life. And rightfully so. Another one bites the dust. But in the (hopefully true) words from the famed Miranda Cosgrove, I'll just live life, breathe air, and know somehow we’re going to get there.