/lit/ - Literature

Ha! no takers I guess.

Are women good writers?

>My next IRL date had just moved to New York by way of Europe and was a collector of small stories and observations. Our chats took the form of long blocks of text. Anecdotes swapped and interrogated.

>But these stories became grotesque in real life. My date spent most of our dinner conversation monologuing about how Americans were “very fat”, which made it difficult to enjoy my chiles rellenos. But when we went back to his apartment for a drink, it was beautifully decorated: full of plants and woven hangings and a bicycle propped against a shelf full of novels. He was smart and handsome and sort of an asshole, but perhaps in a way that would mellow over time in a Darcy-ish manner. We drank some wine and eventually I said I should go home but he got up and kissed me, kissed me well, so I told myself this was what online dating was like, and I should carpe diem and have an experience.

>During sex, he choked me. Not for long, and not very hard, but his hands manifested very suddenly around my throat in a way I know was meant to be sexy but which I found, from this relative stranger, totally frightening. I had not indicated this was something I liked, and neither had he. I know people are into that. I could even be into that. But not as a surprise.

>Afterwards, he chatted to me as I counted the appropriate number of minutes I needed to wait before making an exit that wouldn’t seem like I was running away. He said that he was really interested in mass shooters and the kinds of messages they left behind and, still naked in bed, he pulled out his phone and showed me a video from 4Chan. It was a compilation of mass shooters’ video manifestos, but set to comically upbeat music. It’s hilarious, he asserted. I said I had to go. The next day, and a few times after, he messaged asking why I had run away and gone dark.

Source
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/dec/07/small-talk-purgatory-what-tinder-taught-me-about-love