To borrow a phrase from Steve Hofstetter, I’ve never flown a helicopter, but if I saw one in a tree, I could still be like “dude fucked up.”

I can relate to getting frustrated with nobody cuddling you. I recently started seeing someone after being touch starved for what seemed like a really long time, and it’s such a relief to finally have someone you can be intimate with, even if it’s only platonic (if that makes sense, which I think it does). Makes a huge difference. People say you need to learn to be happy with yourself because no one else can make you happy, but if the reason you’re unhappy is because you’re starved for physical contact, then…

Last Saturday I went on a casual first date at a sushi place with a girl from Hinge. I liked her and hoped we would meet up again: she was cool to talk to, which was the most important thing, and also, while I don’t exactly have a type per se, I do like some nice boobs, and sweet mother of mercy, did she have some. But she apparently didn’t enjoy our date as much as I did, because she ghosted me afterwards. I sent her a few more texts over a couple of days, but alas, no joy was forthcoming.

I spent a couple more days feeling like twice-eaten dog kibble and being acutely aware of how touch-starved I still was, but I had another Hinge match I hadn’t talked to in a week because of the first one, so on Thursday, after reality had set in, I hit her up (while… admittedly not being fully truthful about why I hadn’t done so earlier, which I do feel kinda bad about even being reassured by a friend that I shouldn’t) on the offchance I hadn’t totally screwed myself by leaving it that long, and to my utter astonishment, she responded! And it turned out she was dealing with some serious shit at work (not wanting to be too specific, let’s just say that since I had last talked to her, she’d walked out of the job and her therapist advised her to sue).

So I drew on my experience of having a prosecutor for a dad and gave her some tips for how to prepare a case, and then drew on my experience having had painful and traumatic experiences and offered to take her to a cat cafe in the city on Saturday, which she immediately accepted. Unfortunately, I got unlucky with transit, so by the time we actually met up at the cat cafe, they were minutes away from closing, but we were in the city, so we just went bar hopping instead: we got to know each other over wine, then once my not being a murderer had been established, relocated and got significantly stronger (and less expensive) margaritas.

We get into our cozy little booth in the bar, we get the social lubricant going, and after a while her hand is in mine, and I start giving her a hand massage. Most people carry a lot of tension in their hands and wrists, particularly when they’re dealing with a lot of stress: if you’ve never gotten your hands and wrists properly worked over by somebody who knows what they’re doing, do it, it’ll change your life. And lucky for her, I’m a professional musician specializing in piano, so I’ve had it done to me enough to know how to do it, and I have the hands to do it very well. So she’s saying how good it feels, and as we’re talking I can feel her whole body relaxing next to me, she does the “why do you like me” thing that women I date seem to like asking me, and I tell her that I like her because I’ve been enjoying her company, because I think what she does is interesting (I won’t specify, but it was a really interesting job hamstrung by lawsuit-worthy management), and also because I find her attractive, and then she says “Would you please kiss me?”

Sweet mother of mercy.

Well, long story short, we made out in the bar until a really bad smell wafted in, then walked around the area a little bit kissing each other some more until we both needed to get home, with her at one point starting to ask me something and then forgetting what it was because I was “too distracting.” Then eventually we wound up back at my transit stop to go home, she called an uber to get herself home and then we kept making out until the uber arrived… about thirty seconds later, because fucking of course it would show up immediately the one time you kinda wanted it to take a while (she also expressed annoyance at this).

We have already made plans to meet up again in a few days, and will actually go to the cat cafe this time.

TL;DR Went on a date, got ghosted afterwards. Felt like shit. Then had an abrupt reversal of fortune, got another date, and made out with her at a bar. Also, cats.

Having a consistent sexual relationship. And not “consistent” in my current sense, where I am consistently not having any.