Portrait of God

The download bar crawled toward one hundred percent while a broken dinner plate still lay somewhere in the kitchen.

Leo watched both with equal amounts of regret.

He knew it, he knew it was some of those ‘what if’ situations in his brain. Except usually, such ideas would start appearing after a glass of whiskey, or wine.

Usually, they wouldn’t survive even an hour in his head.

‘Dumb idea,’ Leo whispered, watching the download finishing.

He was married – 20 years and counting. Yes, the marriage was a pile of garbage which began to stink long ago but was still ignored both of them. After 20 years you would get used to living with it, become ignorant to the stench.

His friends seemed non-existent at this point, because every ‘I’m going to go out to the bar with the boys’ would turn into a disaster and shouts, and problems, and he honestly didn’t wasn’t to deal with it anymore. He was just too tired.

Even his lawyer was tired of it all by now; but, as a good lawyer, he stopped making hints about divorce. It was not his responsibility to meddle into his client’s personal life.

What would he think if he saw Leo now?

Because he was sitting alone in the dark living room, opening the dating app he just downloaded. Catherine was upstairs in her bedroom (they moved out into the separate ones three years ago), the TV working with minimum volume just to create some semblance of the space being lived in. As he filled the profile and was finally allowed to see what it had to offer, Leo swiped maybe too fast through the little tutorial window. Sure, it was his first dating app, but he wasn’t a complete stranger to how technology and stuff like that worked.

Just swipe right for ‘like’ and swipe left for ‘no’, no?

Should be easy.

He swiped left once, twice… on the third time something started to look fishy. Where were all the ‘hot girls in your area’?

He checked the settings – after looking for them for good five minutes – found the ‘preferences’ section.

I’m looking for: Chat, Hookups. That was correct.

Meet at: restaurant. Okay, good enough too.

Accepts NSFW Pics. Leo actually paused at this one, again. When first filling the profile up, he chose ‘Yes’, and now he wasn’t so sure already, because the app seemed weird. After some pondering, he clicked ‘Not at First’ option and moved on.

Tribes I’m into. The selection was huge here, making him pause for even longer than the previous one. Tribes? The hell was that?

Looking through what the system itself offered him; he felt his eye twitch when a particular word caught his attention – ‘Twink’.

Oh, hell no.

He was 43-years old, but he wasn’t ancient, and this word was in use even in his young years.

He got back to the main page. One swipe left, another, another.

There was nothing else but men.

Gay men.

He looked through the ‘About us’ section in the app, only confirming what had happened.

‘Idiot,’ he muttered to himself. After years of miserable marriage, he finally got the guts to have an affair with someone, to just feel cared for, even if for a couple of hours, and instead of Tinder, about which he heard some things, he downloaded Grindr.

His confusion and disappointment slowly turned to anger. He didn’t like men; he didn’t want this. And even if it was a sign from the universe that he needed to accept his life and sit tight on his old ass, he still got displeased with it.

If his lawyer somehow discovered he was accidentally signing up for Grindr at forty-three, the man would probably charge extra.

Swiping up to close the app and then deleted it forever – from his phone and his memory – Leo felt his heart stopping.

A notification dinged happily.

‘It’s a match!’

He couldn’t even delete the damn thing properly – when he swiped, the screen glitched for a moment, making him like someone.

‘Fucking-’

Leo groaned, dropping back on the couch and rubbing his face. Fuck. He liked someone. On Grindr.

Great.

His only hope was that the guy didn’t notice, or wasn’t online- ding.

One new incoming message. “Hi.”

Just a single Hi which popped up at the top of his screen, and then disappeared. Yet, Leo found himself staring at his phone like it owed him some answers, because now he didn’t feel like it was easy deleting the app. It was such a simple thing, barely a word, and he felt like someone suddenly, finally, petted his hair and told him they saw him, and that he was good.

It was harmless fun. He could chat for a while and the delete the whole thing without further notice.

Yeah, that would be the best course of the evening – just some chat, and maybe a little of gentleness which he surely didn’t get enough in this marriage.

Before deleting the app, he figured he should at least see who he’d accidentally matched with.