I went on Tinder and today I met someone

I went on Tinder and today I met someone. It’s not a big deal to say it, but experiencing it is different.

Absorbed in the moment, from the taxi conversation to the instant of the encounter, I could not stop experiencing joy. I placed no expectation in my mind, not even the slightest one that she would physically resemble her image, because philosophically speaking, no one is truly their image. I saw myself stepping out of the vehicle with my stomach full of butterflies, as if everything were real, as if love were already a given. In my mind, I laughed at myself, and that laughter was overshadowed by the sounds of my body, like a band of drunken revelers in carnivals. A tingling in the neck, an atypical heart rate, and a creaking of muscles and fibers in every step I took.

And there she was, in front of me, a beautiful person who possibly, at that very same moment, might have been experiencing my same sensations, or perhaps many more. My greeting and her smile made us go through a moment of embarrassment. Though it may sound strangely odd, in that extrasensory context, one perceives energies yearning to touch one another. It is a permission from our divinity, from where we truly are. The mere greeting unleashes all of this, and it is incredible. And my anxious mind laughed and took notes of everything I now recount to you.

You don’t know what to say, you don’t know what to do. The world brings no instructions for situations like these. I proposed the first thing that came to mind, something that would lead me to the greatest possible comfort in order to observe myself. I wanted to face my fears and insecurities head-on. I sought an internal conversation with them, while I tangled myself in the external conversation with her.

Not engaging in comparative details was one premise, and letting everything flow, the other. I sat at a distance and, leaning back, crossed my legs. My eyes fixed on hers, and my words sought to undermine her emotions. I felt her nervousness. And it was then like a cook tending to two dishes at once.

She spoke and lacked breath. One could feel that she emanated a tremendous heat, and there came a moment when she could not bear it and mentioned that she felt embarrassed. I released her pressure and gazed into the far-off yonder (I confess I had always wanted to use that expression in a piece of writing, and here I am like a fool making the note), but I sharpened my hearing. And the conversation became pleasant, both my internal one and our external one.

The fears, initially meager, became negligible, and the insecurities began to expand, posing challenges.

Her heat subsided and her laughter became uncontrollable. She gained confidence and recounted to me, in lavish detail, many daring adventures. I was very pleased by the ease with which we gained trust. Relationship problems, infidelities, and my imagination flew like a rocket. My creative mind supplied the details to each of her words. Some stories intense and others equally risqué were a source of great amusement for me.

She asked me many things, to which I responded with complete sincerity. Among the questions, as was to be expected, there were some that led me to recall my past relationships. There was laughter, there was embarrassment, and there were some confessions. And, not to make this account any longer, she asked me what it was that I was looking for.