Swoon

Earlier this week, one of my fellow blog friends, Sabrina from The Perils of Urban Courtship, wrote a short post about an app called Tinder.  This is basically an app that shows you a series of pictures of people in your area, and you say yes or no to them based on your attraction level.  If they also say yes to you, it's considered a match and you're given the chance to exchange messages.

I was intrigued because I love throwing myself into every possible ridiculous way to meet people, so I googled it to see if there was an Android version.  There is not.  However, in my googling adventures, I found that there was a similar app available for Android, and it was called Swoon.  Ha!  Logically, I signed up, which involved basically nothing but importing my pic from Facebook.  And we were off!

I let Swoon populate with all of the possibilities and then started going through the pictures.  About 20 pictures later (with only 2 yes pictures in there), Swoon informed me it had run out of people in my area.  AWESOME. 

I basically felt ripped off, and decided that Swoon was an inferior competitor to the obviously shinier and better Tinder app. 

THEN.  On my commute home I get a notification that I had a mutual match, and shortly thereafter, I get a message from said match.  We shall call him Swoon, partly because it's funny and partly because when I later added him to my phone for texting, I put him in as "Swoon [Real Name]".  So we were messaging through the app for a few hours off and on, in basically an IM kind of setup.  However, the app would fail to tell me when I had a reply from him half the time so we eventually moved to text.
We exchanged another picture each, and though his pics were hard to see much from, he seemed like he had potential.

We talked about meeting up, and the more we talked, the more I wanted to.  So we agreed to meet up tonight.  We ended up texting until 3:30 am.

Side note and complicating factor #1:   Swoon lives in RICHMOND.  Sigh.  Accordingly to Google Maps, he's about 91 miles away from me.  Awesome.  We decided to meet in Fredericksburg, which is roughly a halfway point between us.  I'd never been out that far in that direction, so it was an adventure.  We met at a Chili's there at 9 tonight. 

We talked.  We laughed and shared dating stories and life stories and other assorted things.  He was much cuter than expected, and his personality made him cuter.  There was chemistry.  We made out in his car after.  I did not expect that.  We had gotten in his car to drive around to find somewhere to go after Chili's, but Fburg is not a giving place.  Fredericksburg FORCED me to make out with this beautiful man for awhile, and it was rough, let me tell you.

COMPLICATING FACTOR #2:  Swoon is 30.  Just turned 30 in December.  He's a former frat boy.  He's an athlete who plays football, soccer, etc.  He said he's generally been a long term relationship type, but I have no idea what he's looking for now.  That's one of the things about that app...you have no info but a picture, a name, a location and an age.  That's it.

Part of me is feeling a little bit twisted up about this.  In high school I was terminally shy with guys.  I was invisible to them for a long, long time.  This man is like the grown up version of the high school football player all the girls want.  He's cute, he's charming, he's wholesome looking.  And he's got a body that is worthy of admiration.  And touching.  Once we'd kissed, I couldn't stop touching his arms.  This guy makes a t-shirt look like a work of art.  I was obsessed with those arms.  So, so pretty.

So it's a little bit of a rush, having this guy who represents all the things I thought I could never have in my younger years interested in me.  Beyond that, I saw myself the way he saw me tonight.  It's not PC to admit, but the appreciative gaze of a good looking man does wonders for the ego.  I've felt so checked out of myself for awhile now, so turned off to the idea of sexual attraction and feeling sensual, and tonight I felt all of that turning back on.  I walked with a little swagger in my step, a little shimmy in my hips.  I knew that when I went to the bathroom before we left he was checking me out, and I relished it.  It felt good to be noticed again, and it felt good to like the person noticing, and it felt amazing to feel sexy again.

No idea what will happen here.  I think I will see him again, but you really never can tell.  I'd like to see him again, but who knows.  I just know that tonight I had fun.  I laughed.  I got to bring out my flirting game, which had been gathering some dust.  And I got to make out with a beautiful man and feel his hands on my face, and entwine my hand with his, and smile stupid blushing smiles, and fill the gaps in between kisses with nervous random chatter the way I do.  Totally worth the drive.  :-)