35 - Blind Date with Reality

“Let me be clear: I don’t want to have sex with you.”

Finally — a man with standards. Or at least with an unusual sales strategy.

Naturally, I kept texting him. You never know where not wanting might lead. Our shared love of Japanese poetry, Nietzsche, and complicated relationships connected us. Maybe also the fact that we shared a certain kink—which I’ll kindly leave you in the dark about.

For months, we exchanged messages about everything except real life. Occasionally, a subtle erotic hint slipped in—always understated. It was one of those conversations that are clever, stimulating, and just a little mysterious. At some point, I wanted to know what this man actually looked like.

His profile photo only showed him from the lips down: sitting on a leather couch, white shirt, vest, dark trousers, and polished shoes.The kind of picture that leaves plenty of room for imagination—and I’d had half a year to fill in the blanks.

When he mentioned that he sometimes went to my climbing gym, I started to feel a little thrill. I began smiling extra kindly at every man in his fifties—stubble, matching frame, that quiet air of confidence. I nearly let a few strangers tie me up—purely out of investigative curiosity, of course. But apparently, everyone at my climbing gym is open to new partners, so that didn’t bring me any closer to my faceless pen pal. It could have been exciting—he knew what I looked like. I, on the other hand, would’ve been on a blind date. The concept had potential.

We arranged to meet by the Seine—a strictly sex-free date, picnic and wine included. I arrived a little early, escaping the all-male party back home, and sat reading in the sun—headphones on, as usual—when a man approached me.

Obviously my date.

Only… I wasn’t sure I wanted to be his.

Instead of the charming, well-dressed, athletic man from the photo, there stood a pudgy hiker in scruffy jeans—with two backpacks. Who shows up to a date with two backpacks? One would’ve been enough to carry my expectations away. I was surprised—and felt slightly deceived.

Just a week earlier, we’d talked about how friendly I was to men his age at the climbing gym—obviously based on the profile picture.

That would’ve been a good moment for him to say:

“By the way, that’s just how I see myself. Reality may vary.”

So: another date, another unexpected twist.

We got along well and had a pleasant evening. We talked a lot about open marriages—a topic that, as you know, fascinates me. But the man of my damp daydreams he was certainly not. The man in my head, unfortunately, wasn’t the one sitting across from me. Especially since the sexual tension that had filled our written conversations was nowhere to be found in person. I couldn’t reconcile the two—fantasy and reality collided—quite literally, when his hesitant goodbye kiss was unable to decide where to land. It hovered somewhere between cheek and lip and ended up exactly in between.

I, however, knew exactly where I wanted to go: home—to eight familiar men and a round of beer pong. My husband had already told them I was on a Tinder date. And everyone thought:  Don't ask – we might end up with unsolicited alternatives.

So polite, so perplexed, so insecure.

If it had been a group of women, they’d have wanted the details right there in the parking lot.

The men just drank their beer —

and silently hoped that reality wouldn’t prove contagious to their women.