A Dozen Donuts and Tinder

I had been craving donuts for at least two weeks. I kept bringing it up in my day to day conversations whenever there was a lull in conversation. I think I may have sent a few texts out regarding my desire for donuts as well. “Cake donuts with sprinkles are delicious.” “What’s your favorite donut?” “Doesn’t a glazed donut sound good?”  Finally, after a work day that began at six in the morning and ended at five in the evening, and in a slight delirium, I sat in my car ready to drive home, when my pupils dilated and the devil inside spoke. I’m going to get my freaking donuts. I paused before starting the car. Am I having a…yolo…..moment? Ugh. Yum Yum Donuts is apparently a less classy donut place to fancy donut connoisseurs, but to someone, me, who is used to buying sugary fried confectioneries from ABC Chinese Food and Donut on North Cahuenga Blvd, Yum Yum Donuts is an exclusive donut boutique.

When I walked in, the little man, who could barely see over the counter, eyed me suspiciously. It was just a pair of big, suspicious looking eyes over a glass case of glistening fried dough. Sure, I was wearing workout clothes, and sure, donuts are naughty, but I instantly knew I had to show this man I wasn’t messing around here. “How much for a dozen donuts?” I asked him, my eyes wild. “Eight dollars,” he said. “Ok, I’ll have three of those ones, two of those ones, one of that kind, two more of those cinnamon bun things, wait how many is that? Do donut holes count as a donut? Can you sprinkle them in between the other donuts? I’ll pay extra.” He stood there not moving. “Um, let me get the box, one second.” As he handed me the surprisingly heavy box full of fat and sugar, I ran to my car. My friend Breck, when he would text “laughter” would always write “hehehehehe.” It drove me batty, because I would imagine him sitting across from me saying “hee hee hee hee hee,” and that whole image just unsettled me. “Don’t say hehehe, say hahaha! God!” Now, in this moment, as I was rushing to my car in the dark with a box of donuts, all I could think about was hehehehe. And I was unsettled with myself.

When I got home I sat at the kitchen table and opened the box. It smelled so good I almost dropped dead in euphoria. As I stuffed my face, I took my phone out and opened Tinder. I first found out about Tinder when on a Friday night before going out to bars, my friend’s guy friends were “Tindering” on their phones. “What’s Tinder?” I asked. “A dating app.” “Dating app,” means Tinder links with your Facebook and uses the GPS on your phone and connects you with other people in your area. I think it’s mostly a hook up app, one that helps you find a person in close radius who may want to bang you based off only a picture of you. But of course, my insatiable curiosity and blood stream pumping full of sugar from the dozen donuts I was consuming, told me that if I was going to investigate, now was absolutely the best time.

The first picture I came across was Nick, he was 23 and the picture was him playing the violin passionately. I say passionately because his eyes were closed. Aw, that’s nice, I thought. Under his picture was an X button and a heart button. I looked at the picture closely. There was no other information listed about Nick, and the violin picture didn’t offer much about what he really looked like, his eyes were closed and he was kind of far away, probably so that the entire violin would fit in the shot. Eh, I don’t know, he’s too young I guess? Can I nope him but send an encouraging message about following his musical passion? Tinder doesn’t offer the possibility to “nope” someone and also tell them why, so I just “noped” him. The next picture was of Tom, everyone’s first Myspace friend from the pre-Facebook days. Nope. The next was Zebastian, who was 25. His picture was a portrait of his face, he had shoulder length hair and was wearing a hat. He wasn’t smiling in his picture but instead had his finger in his mouth seductively. Zebastian and I had one common interest according to both our Facebook profiles, we both liked science. Nope. The next picture was of Austin, who was 22 and his picture made me choke on my donut. He was siting on a horse in the middle of crystal blue water, no land in sight, just him and his horse. The horse was almost all the way submerged, it’s legs were all completely underwater. Fueled by sugar, I began to laugh so hard that tears began to roll down my cheeks. I hearted Austin obviously. Austin appeared to be an adventurous man who may get me and who one hundred percent enjoys doing the same life activities I do.

Suddenly the screen changed and both my face and Austin and his horse appeared next to each other. It’s a match! Yessssssssssss. I high fived no one and a message from Austin popped up. “Hey.” I paused, thinking. What should I say? I ate a donut hole and then responded. “Hey, I like your horse pic.” Right after I sent it, I realized I sounded like such a bitch. I sent another message, I like horses too. Where are you there? The water looks so pretty. I suddenly did not want to talk anymore because I realized I wouldn’t want to talk to me with that opening. Keep it simple Jenn, just say “hey.” I left the chat and went back to browsing men. The next one was Mike, whose picture was a ginormous fake jack o’lantern that took up the whole dimensions of the photo and down at the very bottom, by the jack o’ lantern’s gap toothed grin, was a man’s tiny head, I could barely make out the face. There was some information about Mike, he had a tagline that read “I love America.” Nope. The next picture I came across was Danny, who was 31 and who was sitting in a hot tub alone in front of a very large mansion. Nope. Following Danny was Justin, who was 24 and was not the only one in his main picture. He was standing with two other boys in front of a poster that read The Altar Boyz Welcome You To Tent Theater. “Tiiiiiimmmmm!!!!!” I shouted to my brother, who was in the kitchen. “Come here!” I ordered him. He entered the room and took one look at me, slouched over a half eaten box of donuts, my face tear streaked, and holding my phone. He turned to leave. “No, no come back, look at this!” 

Tim tried not to, but he started laughing at the sight of the Altar Boyz, and then sat down next to me. “Donut?” I asked him, sugar from my last donut all in my hair and smudged across my cheeks. “No thanks,” he said. “Huh?” I stared at him. “What’s the next picture?” he asked. I grabbed my phone and held it between us so we could both look. The next one was two, shirtless, muscular guys wearing sunglasses and backwards hats at a beer pong table. “Noooope,” Tim and I said in unison. The next one was Victorp. “Victorp?” I looked at Tim, who shrugged. Victorp was a little Asian guy who was posed smiling next to a bust of an unidentifiable person of significance. “Who is that a bust of?” I asked Tim. He looked closer, “I have no idea,” he said. We looked at Dustin who was wearing a chicken costume, Randall who was forty, Paul whose picture was of him kissing a blonde girl, Ajay who was petting a lion on what looked like the plains of Africa, and Carlos who was flipping the camera off. “People meet people using this?” I asked Tim, appalled. “Have you talked to anyone?” Tim asked. “Only Austin on the horse in the water,” I said, and looked back to see if he had responded. He hadn’t. “I think I got rejected,” I told Tim. Tim was not shocked like I was.

I thought of my parents. They didn’t have to deal with this shit. I suddenly became overwhelmed with anxiety for my children. Will this be dating for them?  I looked at Tim. “Tim, you will meet your person, the girl who will make your life brighter..not on Tinder.” Tim smiled. I kept going, “Hearts are no longer tender, they are…tinder…” Tim got up. “Jenn, delete Tinder,” he said and then left. But my mind had filled with a million questions and thoughts. Tinder is just another advance in technology and social media that grants everyone access to an influx of people they would most likely never ever come into contact with in their life otherwise. Someone could be sitting on the toilet, casually browsing through pictures of people who are geographically, mere miles away from them, with the added ability to strike up a conversation with a stranger in the privacy of their own bathroom. The creepiness of that thought was enough to end my curiosity once and for all and I deleted Tinder. Goodbye Austin and Austin’s steed. I had three more donuts left, but I closed the lid. I could feel fat forming on my thighs and I stopped worrying about the state of authentic human companionship and began using skewed logic that reasoned calories were somehow burned via laughing over Tinder pics, an ab workout, enough calories in fact, to somehow cancel out all the donuts I had just eaten.

Before I went to sleep that night I did one last Internet search. I Googled “Tinder deaths.” The first article I got was titled, How Tinder Lured 70 Guys To A FroYo Shop In Search Of Dream Girl. I had nightmares that night. The next day I walked into work and my manager was standing there with a box of donuts. “For you!” he said grinning.

The Specials

I was giving a tour of Equinox the other day and when I got to the women’s locker room, I had just gotten to the middle of my shpeal- “and here is the steam room where you can relax in an enclosed space with large amounts of high-temperature steam. Nothing rids the body and soul of harmful life toxins quite like spending some time in a high-humidity environment. Possibly why Florida is so popular among those who have reached a certain age in life?” When the door to the steam room opened and gusts of what looked like smoke from a raging eucalyptus forest fire poured out. The woman I was giving a tour to, Lisa, and I both stepped back, startled, watching as a figure emerged, silhouetted against the smoke, much like the opening of a Lady Gaga concert, until the smoke cleared and the overhead lights spotlighted the star- a middle aged slightly out of shape woman, completely naked and glistening, just standing there in the doorway, staring at us. I turned to Lisa, and nudged her gently in the arm, what great timing! I planned this as part of the tour so you can get the full ambiance of it all! I was now internally struggling. I wanted to fall to my knees in a fit of laughter- please God, grant me the grace to control myself so as not to embarrass this innocent, vulnerable, naked woman who was just trying to sweat it out in the safety of the women’s locker room. I turned to Lisa, grasping my hands together as if I was about to curtsy and begin to do-se-do with her. “Do you enjoy Zumba?” I asked her, trying not to stare at Lady Oh My GaGa’s large sagging melons, her stomach also sagging halfway down to her knees. Lisa and I turned to continue through the locker room as Lady Oh My GaGa followed us, shaking out her hair and strutting through the locker room like she was Gisele Bundchen opening the Victoria Secret fashion show, her melons swaying in the air conditioning.

I was suddenly struck with a strange familiarity of this woman. How do I know her? Then the memory came to me. I had signed this woman up for her membership. “Now I just need a quick picture just for the database,” I had told her, and she looked like I had just informed her that I was going to take her monthly membership fee and put it towards feeding a family in Africa, and she would have to lift her butt via walking up a mountain instead of using Equinox’s butt blaster machine. “Oh no, no  one told me I would have to get my picture taken today. No one told me I would have to do that. I’m not ready.” I looked at her, her perfectly manicured hair and face, she was even wearing fake eyelashes. What could you possibly do to get more ready? I wondered. “You look beautiful, the picture doesn’t go anywhere, it just acts as an identification for security purposes, like a drivers license. Do you want to see my drivers license I look like such a ca-reep,” I offered, words just flying out of my mouth like water balloons, exploding all over her. She kind of smiled but in a way that suggested she had surpassed being kind of untrusting of me to being one hundred percent, without a doubt, untrusting of me. “Absolutely not, I’m just not ready yet.” She looked at me again and I knew with one leveling of her eyes that if I continued to press on, she would kill me. “Okie dokie!” I said smiling like a naughty oppsom rifling through a garbage can, and I could feel my co-worker behind me hang his head in embarrassment from what I assume was this whole scene, possibly existence in general, and absolutely the both of us. Now, I was confronted with the uncomfortable image of her wandering around a room full of strangers completely naked. Wut? How can she let her melons freefall in front of us all, but not have a picture of her face, the one thing she exposes to everyone and everything, everyday, taken? I’m not a big fan of getting my picture taken, but I also am not a big fan of walking around naked in plain sight and in front of others. My insecurity stays at a consistent level of don’t look at me. 

There’s the don’t look at me insecurity and there’s the look at me look at me insecurity. At a gym you will see muscular men strut around like mating peacocks, and you will also see women wearing push up bras and walking on a treadmill at a pace that will keep their face from melting off, like a timid hamster that’s wearing foundation. It’s confusing. The people at the gym at five in the morning want to feel good, but after nine it’s all people who just want to look good. We are taught that if we look good, life will be better for us. People who look good get to be in movies and fashion ads and they get to be rich and desired by masses of other less good looking humans, they get to be “special.” People who look good feel good right? But I have to wonder if that’s what we the “normals” should be focusing so much time and energy into obtaining or if everyone, even the “specials” just want to feel good about themselves. There comes a point where you have to look at yourself as more than a face and freefalling melons, but as a complex being, entirely unique from others. Sometimes I look at Victoria Secret models and I curse the Lord for creating me as such a beastly troll in comparison. Why aren’t I beautiful enough to get paid to wear heavy fake angel wings and walk down a glittery runway in a million dollar fantasy bra? But what’s the point in thinking that? The better question to ask yourself may be why is somebody paid to do that? I was born who I am and it’s much more productive to spend my lifetime enjoying being me, figuring out what the world needs and what I can offer it, rather than let society’s perceptions mold my own perception of myself.

There is a man who comes into the gym every morning, his name is Tighe, I never call him by name because to me Tighe reads “Tiggy” and I have no idea if that is correct, so I just smile and welcome him as sir (hopefully one day I will know him well enough that he can be Sir Tiggy) and he winks at me. Tighe stands out among the crowd not only because he has long blonde hair like a surfer, and is always wearing baggy jeans tucked into Uggs, a zip up hoodie and a lot of turquoise rings. He stands out because he has a natural charisma and gentleness that endears everyone he encounters to him, you can watch people focus their attention towards him as he moves through the building. People who are unapologeticlly themseleves seem to be the most charasmatic human beings I’ve ever met, probably because they allow others to be themseleves free of judgment. Tighe understands that it doesn’t matter if you are one hundred percent inappropriately dressed to operate an ab machine correctly, no one will truly judge you if you don’t give a flying fuck or if you are kind to everyone you encounter, hopefully a nice balanced mix of the two. I wonder if the “specials” of society, the Brad Pitt’s or the Gisele Bundchen’s struggle with being able to be themseleves because they’ve been developed into an image that creates a profit. Whereas the “normals” are faced with the constraints of chasing this projected image because it’s everywhere and it’s what we are told is what we should be striving to be, but the normals also have the freedom to rise above any and all constraints- on ourselves and on others. No one can give off the right perception of themselves if they are constantly comparing themselves to anyone else, let alone what society displays as the ideal version of what they should be.

It is interesting to me that Lady Oh My GaGa felt like she would be judged by others off her ID picture, her already made up face needed to be covered up even more, but when she was makeupless and completely naked (and in a women’s locker room but still), she felt confident enough to strut around other women, most of which who were in much better shape, unapologetically herself with no mask or clothes to cover up who she was born into the world being.