Swipe left, luv. Then, maybe, swipe right.

On the ethics of dating, popovers and the new rude.

8.25.22. Last night I had a quick dinner in the West Village with one of my best gay male friends and my daughter—the youngest. He is like family to us: my girls adore him. He and I were super close in the 90s, partying all the time, and then taking care of our good friend John Cook, who was very ill with AIDS and went blind for a year before he died. The war years sealed our bond. So did many evenings of dancing and going to ACT UP together.

While I was living on the West Coast for 20 years, he went through major life changes I didn’t know about. He got sober, because, I learned, he fell into heavy drinking in the aughts and tried almost any drug a middle-aged gay man can fall into after managing to avoid AIDS forever. It was a survival trauma move and he’s hardly alone in that. A lot of gay friends from that time ended up AA or NA or sex addiction recovery—or all three. For the guys, it was coke and crystal meth; for some 90s lesbian friends of mine, heroin chic. Almost all are clean and sober now, amazingly. My friend pulled himself together, got a biz school degree, and has a great job now. He also took up cooking and has become a whiz bang wannabe little cheffie.

During Covid, he got into baking, which, he says flatly, is more satisfying than dating. Like so many of my older single lesbian friends, he’s also Tinder and Grindr-wary. Weary is the better word. I’d add war weary after too many ho-hum dates. My lesbian friends return from their dates like soldiers from a lost war, exhausted from trying again. I’ve been getting an earful of it lately. All they want is to meet a nice girl, maybe get a girlfriend, but at this point, they’d settle for a great date or two. They’re not meeting anyone they like.

At night, they troll the dating sites, ambivalent. It’s swipe left, swipe left, swipe left, and maybe, okay, swipe right. I’m so over it, one girlfriend after another confesses about the latest blah date. Why is it so fucking hard?

I could tell her all the reasons, including that we’re no longer in our 40s and once you hit the big 6-0, like moi, over half the dating world or more disappears from view. Or rather, you disappear from their view. Ageism is real. Also, the dating pool in New York is way bigger than the dating pool in New Orleans or the Bay Area, which is where she lives. Once you narrow your interests more, it’s even smaller. She favors older butches, a rarer species. We often stumble upon our friends on these dating sites. That’s how we know someone’s finally gotten over the last break up, or regained their courage to have a little hope. Everyone I know is a bit jaded. It does take some faith. Everyone seeks connection, and Covid has made this desire more acute. Friends are great, but a little shag, a little snog, would be wonderful, too. We seek sparks. At some point in the day or week, we may sign back on to see who’s around.

Up in the country, my friend picks fruit and makes jam like a proper country lesbian. He’s moved onto breads. When I visit there, he greets me in the morning with fresh popovers and coffee. He gets up early, as I do. We read quietly together before the fire, and gossip, and get lost in a silent drama outside his big window, where a trio of bird feeders attracts a frenzy of small birds, as well as larger, stalky squirrels. I could stay there for days. It’s a slice of bliss. Wallace and Gromit on a weekender. When I think about what I want with a girlfriend or partner, apart from sexy fun, it’s the bits like this: someone to share my coffee in the morning, and reading side by side. Birds squabbling at the feeder. That’s my domestic happy. His too.

At dinner last night, he had a little confession. He has an ethical problem. He recently went to a party and met an old friend who happened to be on a date. To my cheffie friend’s surprise, he felt himself drawn to his friend’s date. The feeling of possibly liking someone was so unfamiliar, he confessed, he had to ask himself, wait, do I feel something here? It’s been that long.

What do I do? he asked me. He wasn’t going to hit on his friend’s date. But what if they didn’t have a connection? How could he find out? This one’s easy, I told him. He should call his friend, tell him how happy he was to have met again, and ask, how was the date? If the answer was good, then it’s case closed. He does nothing. If not, the door is open.  Call the new cute guy.

Agreed, he said, but in that case, there was a little hitch. He doesn’t have the cute boy’s number. Ah. So, you might have to tell your friend, I said. It’ll be okay. And I thought, this is a good problem to have.

We chatted about dating ethics some more. I told them about a new low bar for bad dates that a lesbian friend just encountered. What I call the new rude, which is the category that ghosting also falls into. She came into town to have a few dates. Just before going on her date, we realized it was someone I’d gone out with once, which is another peril of the lesbian dating scene. No matter.

When she got to her date, there was a third person there. A friend of the date, it turns out. My friend wasn’t sure what to make of this. She began to question if her date had ever been a real date. She mentally replayed their text banter. Yes, it had clearly been a date. Clearly, she’d been friendzoned before the date even happened. Then she found out the two women had first met on a similar plus-one friend third-wheel date. What the hell, my friend said, reporting back. What is that? She felt like she’d wasted her time. She doesn’t get a lot of weekends in New York.

Uh, it’s rude, I told her. Seriously. What do we even call it? It’s the opposite of a fun throuple.

By now, I feel like a modern Lady Whistledown at the Bridgerton court, hearing an earful of blah dates and bad manners from my friends. Then there’s the issue of bad pictures. I’m only half joking. But someone forgot to give lesbians the memo about how to take a good picture and crop their past completely out of the frame. Why do so many lesbians have pictures showing a former partner’s arm draped over their shoulder? The zombie lesbian picture, as I think of it, from when said lesbian was once-happy, and married, possibly. Such pictures say so much. Also, why do women believe it is attractive to push their boobs up to fill the entire screen, leaving us without a face? They are not sexy and can be a bit scary. I’m telling you, the headless lezzie pictures have to go, too.

Then there are the make-zero-effort pictures, where Jane is wearing her days-old daytime loungers and an ill-fitting T, with morning face and hair. None of it screams Miss Sexy Thing; it screams, I don’t want to be here-don’t make me. If my pictures suck, then nobody will date me and see, I told you, nobody is out there. I truly think, in such cases, there is a deep current of unhappy Jane serious ambivalence on display. Apart from possible therapy, these women need their stylish gay boyfriends to style them and help edit their profile pictures. Updates, ladies. C’mon now.

A lot of them also need to let go of trying to date with their dogs. Sometimes there is only a dog picture. Or similarly, cats. What are you trying to say, darling? Please, leave your pets at home and do not bring them on your first date. Leave them with your possible third wheel friend to furbaby sit. Don’t you want a second date?

Should I go on? I could. But I won’t. I’m just trying to share some of the war stories that my friends share with me late at night. Having said that, look, there are a lot of cute women with great style on the dating apps. All ages, too. And at least we don’t have to suffer dick pics like my friend on Grindr and my straight girlfriends. They have sorry tales to tell, too. I know it’s not just a modern sapphic problem.

On that note, I have a girlfriend in Nola who is bi, a little older than me. She moved there from Berkeley. She’s whipsmart and a pagan and loves to dance. Been married, had her years of wild fun. She’s been dating men of late. Southern older man, she declares, unhappy at her discovery, are a total disaster. They definitely did not get the memo about taking care of themselves after 30. They’re super out of shape, and many are serious alcoholics, she reports. She’s laughing when she says this, but it’s a problem. I imagine a Walker Evans portrait of an older man with a beer gut, day drinking in a dimly lit bar.

My friend has a younger woman’s energy, is fun. She does have younger men who hit on her, and that’s an ethical rub, for her. They’re admittedly hot and she’s tempted. But she has a daughter in her 20s and it feels too…close. I can’t, she says, trying to convince herself as much as me. I don’t wanna be a cougar anymore. Then there’s a pause. Or do I? Another pause. It would be so much easier if I was dating women, she adds, smiling. Women smell good.

Ha.

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that all lesbian dating is hell; it’s really not. I recently chatted with another 90s pal, who just broke up with their girlfriend of a few years. I spotted their profile back up on a dating app. On the phone, they confirmed that the recent break up was hard. But they didn’t sound unhappy at all. That’s because, they confessed, they’d just met someone they really liked. Real sparks like the little rush of an old feeling my cheffie friend feels. Connection.

Hear that, Bridgerton fans? There’s still hope in the ton for all of us. Lotta dance cards out there waiting to be filled. So, yes, swipe left, swipe left, swipe left. Avoid the new rude. Then, at some point, go on, take a chance, swipe right.