Fourteen.

Behold: the inevitable essay about Grindr.

I went on my first Grindr date in the summer of 2014.

Before then, I'd never used the app. I didn't have a reason to; I'd had a boyfriend for the preceding two years, and prior to that I was just over eighteen years of age. However, being fresh out of a relationship and resigned to the fact that I needed to move on with my life, because life went on even though I wanted it to stop, I downloaded the app and allowed messages from strangers to begin coming my way.

It was the first summer of the rest of my life.

Honestly, I didn't know what I wanted. Grindr virgins (read: newcomers or never-users) have an overly-simplified preconception that its users are on it exclusively for sex and, indeed, some people are, implying that those people do know exactly what they want, but then there are the rest of us whose usage trends towards the philosophical. There are thinkpieces all over the internet about the age-old question inevitably posed to every Grindr user ("What are you looking for?"), and I too had no answer. Like a sizable proportion of the demographic, I was just searching.

Of all the messages that I received, I responded to extremely few. I don't like hooking up with strangers because I have difficulty trusting people, so I ignored all enquiries related to immediacies. Having just exited a relationship, I wasn't really ready to begin another, so I also left unanswered all messages from people who seemed to be too serious. I would open and close the app, akin to absentmindedly opening my refrigerator just to see what's inside despite not being hungry, looking and yet not looking. I suppose, in practice, that I was waiting for something to happen, all the while wondering to myself if this was it, if this was what it was like to be single in the internet age.

The messages to which I did respond were casual. Because they had no stakes, I felt no pressure to perform. I didn't have to be the best version of myself, I didn't have to pretend that I wanted anything from these people, and there were no expectations of me giving anything to them in return. It was all idle chatter, small talk for the sake of saying something, and it was facile. I wasn't quite devastated by my recent breakup, but I was shaken, and I appreciated having something easy, as if I were slowly wading into the dating pool, taking my time to acclimate to the water's temperature. Easy was doable. Easy was familiar. Easy was good. Easy did the trick.

I don't remember his name, so let's just call him Ryan.

When Ryan messaged me, I remember swiping through his profile as I mulled whether or not to respond. He seemed to be an altogether inoffensive guy, but one specific word in his profile caught my eye: Berlin. He had described himself as a native New Yorker who split his residency between New York and Berlin, and that piqued my attention because I had recently spent a summer semester in Berlin, a city that I'd come to love for its formative impact on my life. Thus, when Ryan messaged me, I decided to reply.

After exchanging the customary pleasantries, I began to ask him about his life and how he had come to spend so much time in the German capital. But, he had another idea; instead of a digital back-and-forth, he wanted to converse in person. That suited me just fine—I had nothing better to do with my time, anyways. I asked him to pick a spot, and I later met him on an unremarkable evening at a Mexican bar on the Lower East Side.

As we spoke, I figured that my first impression was right about this guy: he was a fairly normal person and generally easygoing. Dating, especially in New York, often feels like a tiresome series of job interviews—and, yes, in a city with a population of over eight million distributed over three hundred square miles, there's a theoretical abundance of both jobs and men—but talking to Ryan was relaxed because I didn't feel as though he particularly wanted anything from me. Rather, I felt as though I was simply whiling away time, talking to a nice stranger, and I suppose, in actuality, I was.

After we finished our first round of drinks, Ryan asked if I wanted another. But, I too had ideas of my own: being that he was a native New Yorker, would he consent to showing me his favorite local bar? By then, I'd only lived in New York for three years and didn't know the city very well, so I figured it would be a great chance for me to discover something new. I asked him, and he agreed. He paid for our drinks, we left, and we made our way to a speakeasy on Eldridge.

I'm choosing not to divulge the name of the speakeasy in the spirit of, well, it being a speakeasy, but it's not in fact a secret. In 2022, coincidentally marking its tenth anniversary, the bar was crowned "The Best Bar in North America" by World's 50 Best, and went viral on TikTok as New York re-opened itself after the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic. The result is that its popularity has skyrocketed in the intervening years, and it's now virtually impossible to get in.

But, back in 2014, it was just a little bar that had only been in operation for about two years, tucked away behind a nondescript door, and we had no trouble getting seats for two. "They don't have a menu," Ryan'd explained to me, and that seemed intriguing. As we took our places at the cramped bar, the bartender asked us about our alcohol and flavor preferences. Although I didn't—and still don't—know much about spirits, I knew that I always had a good time with tequila, and I detested whiskey after a recent vomit-inducing night of drinking games with my collegiate peers. So, I told the bartender that I would probably be happy with something in the tequila family, and that I tend to gravitate towards sweet-but-not-too-sweet. (I don't recall what Ryan ordered, but it's immaterial. This is about me, after all!) In what felt like seconds after ordering, the bartender set our bespoke cocktails in front of us, explaining each drink's constitution.

I still remember that first drink all these years later. The bartender had opted for a variation on the classic paloma with a mescal base (given my self-professed penchant for the flavors of tequila), yuzu juice, and a candied ginger garnish, all served with a block of ice carved manually right then and there. It was my introduction to both mescal and yuzu, and my mind was blown. The mescal's smokiness tasted sophisticated, layered, and complex, giving me plenty to taste with every sip, and yuzu is a flavor that I immediately loved because pomelos and grapefruits are my childhood favorites.

Whatever Ryan and I spoke about from that moment on, I don't remember because it didn't, doesn't, matter. I was in cocktail heaven. My second drink was just as good—a gin-based beverage with cucumber thrown into the mix—and I decided that this would become my favorite bar in New York, and perhaps in the world, too. Today, as of writing this ("再喝一杯," sings 鄧麗筠 as I type), it still is.

By the end of those two drinks, I was properly tipsy and in a good mood. The night still felt young, and I was open to all possibilities, so I asked Ryan what he wanted to do next. He suggested that we go back to his place, and I assented. It was my turn to pay, and afterwards he led me to his tiny apartment on Chrystie.

I'm also choosing not to find an elegant way of phrasing what happened next because it is somewhat laughably predictable: I let him top me in his bedroom as Lana Del Rey's "Born To Die" played on vinyl. He wasn't well-endowed, so I actually went through the motions while wondering whether it was even inside, and I had just one thought in my head when he finished: "Already?"

Afterwards, I asked whether he wanted me to sleep over, feeling ambivalent about either possibility because I'd just spent the entire night being passive. He said no and I went home, resigned to the very likely possibility that singlehood, on the flip side of my very first relationship ever, would never amount to anything more than a struggle with abject mediocrity. Moving on looked like it was going to be supremely boring.