Swipe Left: A Sad Singles' Saga

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I played a real life version of Netflix’s Perfect Match with my guy best friend

One of the most irritating experiences of your twenties and thirties is when your friend who’s been dating Doug for five years wants to swipe on your Hinge as a fun treat.

To her, it’s an exciting novelty. She’ll bashfully clarify which way you have to swipe and then teehee, “omg, this is like a game!” as if she’s the first person to ever make that unfunny joke.

There’s a small part of her that wishes she could be single for the night, to relive the glory days of putting on dark jeans and an off-the-shoulder top to meet a Sigma Phi guy for watered-down vodka crans at the campus dive.

She’ll swipe through a couple of sixes, then encourage you to give Kevin, a 31-year-old product manager with a Fight Club reference in his bio, a chaaaaance. Easy to say when she’ll be snug as a bug making chicken piccata in her 2-bed 2-bath with Doug.

This is why, when my friend Andy* (names have been changed to protect the identities of the victims) texts me an invite to a sad singles event, I actually say yes, agreeing to a Friday night subjected to the unique humiliation of wearing a name tag as an adult.

The event was being held by a company/organization/mob front called Matchbox, which I had seen before on TikTok in between videos of nutrition influencers reminding me that eating cereal is the worst thing you could ever do to your body.

Their advertisements usually featured some swanky, living room-feeling Tribeca loft, clearly seeking to mimic the charming dinner parties that only exist in romcoms.

The premise of our event was “meeting through a friend,” where all attendees had to RSVP as guy-girl pairs, ensuring that A.) the party didn’t consist of 48 well-dressed women swarming a couple of loser dudes in checkered Vans, while B.) mitigating the Saw III-level horror of attending alone.

The run of show was that you would arrive at 6PM, take a compatibility questionnaire, then enjoy cocktails in a private backyard where you and your pal could mingle with other depressed nobodies at your leisure. At 8PM, using a mix of “AI, relationship science, and Nobel Prize-winning economics,” your optimal match would be revealed.

I decide to wear a black, linen mini-dress from Abercrombie — I felt like the linen of it all was classic yet casual, very desk-to-dinner as 90s girlbosses used to say. I’ve been doing a new, cherry stain-inspired lip color where I take the smallest amount of a reddish liquid lipstick, then blend it out with my finger, so I can achieve that just-bitten hue while still adhering to the no-makeup makeup philosophy that caters to the male gaze. I probably haven’t worn anything deeper than a mauve since 2019 — I’ve always felt like reds just make my lips look even smaller, and more importantly, who wants the baggage that comes with being a Red Lipstick Girl (derogatory). Like, we get it, you ran for student council in high school.

Before leaving, I receive correspondence from Andy that he’s “sauced” from four aperol spritzes at his company pickleball match, and to “bring my A game.”

We pregame with two G&Ts (and a coffee-flavored ZYN for Andy) before arriving at the venue around 15 minutes late. Despite their “strict no late entry” policy, this is fine, especially because the tiny elevator up to the fifth floor only holds four people at one time.

A QR code directs us to the aforementioned compatibility survey, which asks around 15 questions that you score yourself on from 1-10. Some are more mundane (“I always get up with my first alarm”), while others carry weight (“I want to have children”).

I answer honestly on the kids question, giving a 1 out of 10, but maybe I should have hedged with a 3. It feels like every guy I meet says he wants kids, but I can’t tell if they actually want them or they’re just saying they want them because they haven’t really thought about it.

The line for the bar (which only carried vodka, tequila, pineapple juice, and soda water — a twink’s paradise) snakes around the room, and we use the time to check out other duos — the overall attractiveness varies, but the average is probably a tad higher than your typical selection on a dating app (not that that’s saying much. . .my “likes” section is usually comprised of men who look like they just fled a religious cult with questionable breeding practices).

As we near the front, a man walks up to me and Andy and asks, Bachelor-style, if he can borrow Andy for a minute. Not me. Andy. By all means. . .

Apparently, he’s too rich and important to wait in such a long line, so he offers to Venmo Andy $20 to get him and his friend their drinks when we get to the front. Major small dick move. He doesn’t even follow through on the Venmo.

Armed with a vodka soda that should’ve been a margarita, I start chatting with a guy named Brian. He’s friendly, and we find out we know some people in common, but before the conversation advances beyond that, another girl pops in to take over. I let her, because I’m not about to humiliate myself fighting for the attention of a guy who lives in Astoria.

While I scour Resy for a debrief spot, a rather unsightly duo approaches for a chat. This is when I am so glad that I came with Andy, who is much more gifted at navigating social situations than I am, because he cuts off Beavis and Butthead after five minutes and says we’re going to go do a lap. One of the reasons I hate parties with people I don’t know is because I am 1.) so bad at leaving conversations and can get trapped talking to flops for half an hour and 2.) always worried that the person I’m interacting with feels that way about me, and is mentally calculating how they can escape to find someone cooler to talk to who knows B-list DJs.

After a few more dead-end convos, our phones collectively buzz. “I’ve got a TEXT!!!!” we all yell in Love Island unison (just kidding).

The messages instruct us to find smaller groups, numbered 1-5, that include our optimal match. Brian and I are in the same group, so we catch up again, but he doesn’t ask for my number. His groupie from before comes up to him and whines that she “doesn’t have a group!!!” (?) as a ploy to reintegrate herself. Further proof that as long as you’re a white man with an affable demeanor, you have the same rights as Brad Pitt.

My match is revealed to be a boy named Dominic. I say boy, because despite the event’s description of being geared towards those in their late twenties to late thirties, Dominic is 23.

I talk to him for a minute or two to be polite, and he also seems put off by the fact that I’m 27, since the first question he asks me is my age (to clear my name, I have glass skin and use Retinol nightly, so, respectfully, get fucked).

Remember when I said that the event was held in a private backyard? That was lie number two — we’re essentially all crowded in a wide, dark hallway, and once everyone had to clump together for the match reveal, the volume in the room is like a school bus full of seventh graders who just had Pixie Stix for lunch.

I can barely hear anything Dominic is saying, and since I doubt either of us are interested in the other in the slightest, I offer my Instagram to put a cap on interaction before saying I have a dinner reservation to get to.

Andy meets back up with me shortly after — I’m drinking an $18 pear margarita alone at a random bar. Unsurprisingly, he’s found success: not only does he have a date planned for next week with his “optimal match,” he also walked away with more guys’ phone numbers than me, with a bro hang on the books to boot.

• Watching: Trap

• Listening: Hysterical podcast — this is about a group of high school girls from 2011 who all develop Tourettes at the same time. . .or do they???

• Reading: “Did the U.K.’s most infamous family massacre end in a wrongful conviction?” (The New Yorker)

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