Dear readers, I have been in a relationship for some months – yes that’s why the blog posts had halted. You reading this indeed means I’m single again. Yes breakups are hard, but that’s perhaps for another post. Fun part is that I am back on the dating apps.

 

Getting to the date is perhaps half the experience already. The nerves, the slight doubt if the outfit is right, and that awkward feeling of what if I don’t recognize her. Sitting in the 325 bus towards Double Bay, I overheard a conversation between two girls, one clearly upset, the other trying to be the nice friend.

 

“I was like, I thought we were in this together. But then suddenly he wanted to leave. Such a douche.”

 

Hmmm… sounds like someone is going through a break-up as well. But then I overheard the next glimpse of their conversation:

“We agreed on two weeks notice. and well then the rent is still payable, even if you leave early, right? And he didn’t even clean up! I had clean the entire bathroom!”

OK at this stage I agreed he was a douche. then a few moments later, her friend responded:

“So you are going to the Golden Sheaf, right? Good place for a date”

 

It somewhat soothed the upset girl, but her voice still sounded annoyed. She was one row behind me. This could very well be the girl I was about to meet. How awkward would it be to find that out now, just after her fall-out story with her now ex-housemate.

 

The 325 stopped in Double Bay. I swiftly got out, hoping that, if she was the girl from Bumble, she wouldn’t recognize me from the bus to start on a clean slate. But no, she looked me straight into the eyes at the bus stop, for a split second I thought she must be the one from the app. After all, who’s going on a date at the Golden Sheaf exactly at 8 pm?

 

She could be my date, but I wasn’t sure if it was the case. Sometimes girls look a lot different on the app than in real life. As the split second felt like minutes, I could eventually read in her eyes that she wasn’t considering me as her date. Pfew.

Walking in the Chief the bar, dancefloor and signage was Bumble Branded. Funny, as I picked the place randomly. My date was late, so I started talking to two girls in Bumble shirts on this sudden event.

” Yeah it was a card in the app, you know, you’re here for the Bumble party too?”

“No I was just on a bumble date and happened to pick this place”

“That’s so awesome, that’s so awesome” they were ecstatic, their activation totally worked without me as their target audience even knowing.

“Just take a seat somewhere. Oh this is so awesome. We’ll come say hi”.

Then my date arrived.

“Why is this all branded bumble here? Is this why you picked the place?”

“No I just thought it would be a cool bar, so well I didn’t know either Bumble was throwing a party”

“Yeah sure”

I figured she would never believe me.

 

From the corner of my eye I could see the girl from the bus, still waiting for her date. She was refreshing her phone frantically, her annoyed state of mind about her ex-housemate being late with moving out was transferring to her annoyed state of mind about her wannabe-boyfriend being late showing up.

 

Going on app-dates again after a brief relationship, I painfully got reminded of the one pitfall of online dating: you are meeting in person for the first time, and that ‘click’ is there or it isn’t, really. Nothing cool pics or a funny opening line can do about that. For me the click wasn’t there.

 

Then the ‘it’s so awesome, it’s so awesome’ girls from Bumble walked by.

‘You guys look so cute together! Here are some drink vouchers just for you being awesome. Enjoy the night!’

 

And I did enjoy. I knew she wouldn’t become my future lover, but the conversation was fun. Meanwhile the date for the annoyed girl from the bus showed up. Needed to say, she looked a bit like my date, but he did not look like me at all. Totally made sense that I was a tad confused with her at the bus stop but she wasn’t.

 

After a while, we both noticed more and more people walking in the Sheaf, much younger than us, all there apparently for the Bumble party we didn’t know about. It was getting around 10 pm, it started to get bedtime for me. My date and I are in our mid-30’s, I suddenly felt old amongst the 20-year olds taking over the dancefloor as I was thinking about getting some sleep.

 

Outside the line was humongous, all the way to the bus stop. If you have ever been to the Golden Sheaf, you probably know that the entrance to the bar to the busstop is a bit of a distance. Guess Bumble had a great night, and it looked like Ms. Annoyance had a great night too. I had a great night with all the coincidences, but not with the reason I went on this date. Lovely girl, but just that click that makes a date tick wasn’t there for me. It was for her I guess, as she waited for the bus with me and suggested to go on another date soon via text. It’s hard to say no. But it is better to do so instead of ghosting. Luckily she understood and was ok with it.

 

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The Author wishes to make known that he doesn’t receive money or other benefits for writing this post about Bumble’s party, and this post is journaled entirely based on the author’s experience. Everything really happened, though! The people featured in the pictures are not the people in the story.