Matched
When I got the notification from the app that I’d been matched with Svetlana, I thought I’d won the lottery.
Based on her photos, she was a solid 10 out of 10, with a gorgeous face and long, blonde hair. Scrolling through her pics, she looked like one of those Instagram influencers, you know, the kind you see always jetting off to Dubai and getting big-named brand deals.
In fact, she was so hot that I immediately assumed I was being catfished. I mean, why would a girl that good-looking swipe right on me?
I’m not saying I’m the ugliest guy who ever walked the planet or something, but I was just some dopey sophomore at college who struggled to put on weight or get a haircut that didn’t look like something my mom had done around the kitchen table.
Nonetheless, my pulse was racing as I sent her that first text message. I was in agony as I debated what kind of tone to strike. Should I be cheerful and enthusiastic? Or is laid-back and cool the way to go? Or maybe I should just go ahead and assume it was a mistake on her part and apologize for wasting her time.
In the end, this is what I went with:
Hey, glad to see we matched. I’d love to meet up with you on Saturday if you’re free.
My heart was triphammering when I pressed “send,” and then I settled in for the long wait to get a reply, if I got one at all. But just an hour or so later, she wrote me back, saying:
You take me to dinner
Wow! Now that was direct. In fact, it was so direct, that I almost didn’t know how to respond. Most of the time, you’ve got to ease into the subject of meeting up, and then I usually suggest something like a coffee shop just to keep it low key. But hey, for a girl as hot as Svetlana, I was definitely ready to splurge and go straight for a dinner date.
I still kept thinking it had to be some kind of crossed wires situation on her end. Who knows? Maybe her friend had commandeered her phone and they were all having a laugh at my expense.
But if she did want to meet up, then at least I knew I wasn’t being catfished. If she showed up, of course. These days, even girls who are 5s and 6s will ghost you.
After a whole lot more debate, I finally sent her this text:
Jose Pepper’s at 8′oclock work for you?
Again, my nerves were frazzled as I paced around my dorm room, waiting to see what her reply would be. Jose Pepper’s wasn’t exactly the fanciest restaurant in town, but it was the only place I could afford. I was already in up to my neck in student debt as it was, and my folks weren’t doing so well ever since the factory where my dad worked got shut down.
So you can imagine I just about had a heart attack when Svetlana replied just ten minutes later, saying:
Yes
And that was it. That’s all I knew going into our first date other than the stuff on her profile, which, as I said, made her look like one of those hot party girls I could only dream about.
As the rest of the week went by, I was in agony. I kept alternating between giddy hope that I was going to hook up with the gorgeous young woman in the photos and feeling this pit of despair in my stomach that I was somehow being played.
I’m no math guy, but I estimated the chances of her being both a) real and b) actually showing up at less than one percent.
Even if those were her real photos, and even if this wasn’t all some big joke or a scam, she was probably getting hit on fifty times a day by cooler guys than me, so why in the world would she come out on Saturday night to get a free meal at some chain Mexican restaurant?
It wasn’t like we’d engaged in witty banter and formed an emotional connection over text messages, that’s for sure.
I’d heard of guys who had game, who could strike up a conversation with women on the apps and get them all excited to meet up face-to-face. But that wasn’t me, especially not when Svetlana and I had barely exchanged four sentences.
Trying to assuage my fears, I told my friend Billy about getting matched with Svetlana. He just laughed and told me I was an idiot, that she was probably some online scammer trapped in some slave camp in Myanmar who got daily beatings if they couldn’t meet their daily quota of extracting money from foolish Westerners.
I told him that she hadn’t asked me for any money, but he just told me to wait because suddenly something would “come up” and then I’d get some sob story about how she’d had her purse stolen or whatever.
That left me sleepless, tossing and turning all night as I scrolled through the internet, reading about similar situations other guys had been through.
Other parts of the internet stressed that you had to confirm and then reconfirm meet-ups these day because otherwise, people would just plain old forget.
I thought about texting Svetlana and asking her something like, “So, we’re still on for Saturday night, right?” but then I decided not to, to let the fates decide. If I was really meant to be matched with a hottie like her, then it would happen. If not, I’d just go back to my boring old life.
Then my fevered imagination began worrying about even more elaborate scenarios. Like, what if she did show up, but the whole thing was part of some influencer stunt to get footage for her followers?
Like, what if she was just there so she could film me and laugh at my pathetic ass during her live stream, or something like that?
