Kiss and Tell: “My Tinder date wouldn’t stop trying to hold my hand”

Welcome to Kiss and Tell, a series about the steamy, surprising and frequently absurd world of Toronto dating. Send your most memorable stories from the pursuit of love and lust in the city to submissions@torontolife.com.

—As told to Juliann Garisto

I matched with Anthony on Tinder during a weird time in my life. My parents were getting a divorce. They had each met new partners and were moving, my mom to Vancouver and my dad to Denver. I was still in university, so I started renting my own apartment in Toronto for the first time ever.

Related: “My date ordered me a salad and told me to get liposuction”

I was excited to download Tinder now that I had my own space. It felt fun to invite dates over without having to explain that I still lived with my parents. When I matched with Anthony, I’d been living on my own for a month, but I hadn’t felt enough of a connection with anyone to justify inviting them back to my place. I getting was impatient. Anthony had a long face with high cheekbones, and we immediately hit it off—it was like my prayers had been answered.

After matching, we found out that we both went to U of T, loved fashion and were weirdly obsessed with professional wrestling. When he suggested that we go to the Scarborough Bluffs, I was game. We met at Kennedy station, each with a bike in tow. He wasn’t as cute as he’d looked in his photos, but he was very polite.

When we arrived at the bluffs, we locked our bikes to a nearby post and proceeded to explore the area. Anthony brought a huge blunt that we passed back and forth, and we got very stoned. It was nice, but then he grabbed my hand. I was thrown off—I thought it was a little strange to hold hands on a first date. I tried to tell myself I was just paranoid because I was high.

We ended up sitting in the sand by the water and talking, but he was the one asking all of the questions. What did I do for work? How long had I been on dating apps? What did my parents do? When I tried to ask about his life, he was vague or evasive. He said he worked in software. I tried to press him by asking which company he worked for and what exactly he did, but he claimed he wasn’t allowed to talk about it.

It was the same for basically every other personal subject: his family situation (his parents were “chill people” who lived in his “home country”); his living situation (he was currently “homeless and couch surfing”); his dating history (as far as he knew, no other girl was as beautiful as me, so nobody else mattered). He’d quickly turn the spotlight back to me by complimenting me, then asking question after question about my life. I probably would have overlooked his behaviour if he hadn’t tried to hold my hand—that was the weirdest part. It just didn’t feel genuine.

By the end of the date, which lasted two and a half hours, I barely knew anything about him. All I learned was that he studied computer science and was working on a thesis. I wondered if his name was actually Anthony. But I convinced myself that the weird feelings were of my own making, and that I wasn’t trying hard enough to get to know him. I vowed that for our second date, I would make even more of an effort to ask questions.

A week later, I invited Anthony over for dinner. He arrived on time but wanted to have a cigarette right away and couldn’t find his pack. I asked if he wanted to go to the convenience store down the street to buy one. He said yes, but only if I came with him because I looked so sexy and he didn’t want to take his eyes off me for a second. I was flattered, so I turned off the stove to walk with him.

Related: “I started dating my best friend’s ex. It ruined our relationship"

But on the way to the convenience store, he tried to hold my hand again. This time, I wasn’t high, and it still felt weird. It just seemed like he was trying to get to a girlfriend-and-boyfriend place really fast, and the fact that he played it off as if it was the most natural thing in the world irritated me.

On the way back from the store, I decided to confront him. “Why are you so obsessed with holding my hand?” I asked. “Do you not like it?” he said, before pulling me into his side and kissing me on the cheek. Then he tried change the topic again—he wanted to know what we were having for dessert.

I tried to explain that whenever I asked him about himself, he avoided the question, which felt especially weird because he was trying to be so intimate and touchy. At first he played dumb, but then he got pretty defensive. He said he was touchy because he found me attractive, and he denied that he’d been evasive. He said he had nothing to hide, but that his life was just boring. He wasn’t very calm when he said these things, though—in fact, he was low-key yelling in the middle of the street. Then he said, “Girls usually like attention, so what’s your problem? What makes you so special?” I started to feel like the second date had been a mistake.

I told him that I didn’t think it was a good idea for him to come back up to my apartment. He complained that he’d taken a long transit ride to get here and that I wasn’t being fair. He even softened up a bit, but I knew I would regret moving forward with him. I gave him a hard no, and he eventually gave up and left.

Later that week, I saw Anthony walking on campus. Lo and behold, he was holding hands with some other girl. She seemed pretty comfortable, which made me wonder if his secrecy had more sinister roots. To my eye, this chick looked like his girlfriend—I just had a strong, intuitive feeling about it. I suspected he’d been cheating on her, which would explain his reluctance to share any personal information. I considered running after them and saying hi, just to see how Anthony would react, but I couldn’t be bothered.

Then, a few months later, I was talking to a student I was friendly with at my teaching assistant job. She told me she’d started seeing someone. She said they’d matched on Tinder, and that he was kind of nerdy but still cute. I asked her what his name was and she told me: Anthony. No way, I thought, but indeed, we confirmed that it was the same guy.

I immediately tried to warn her about him, but she didn’t break it off. A month later, though, she started to see the red flags. She relayed the details of her experience with Anthony: excessive handholding, a severe unwillingness to answer questions directly, secrecy around his personal life. I told her my theory: that he might already have a girlfriend. She told me that one night, he had left his phone unattended for a moment. She couldn’t help noticing an excess of messages from a certain “Nicole.” We tried to find him on Facebook, but we couldn’t locate an Anthony in computer science at U of T. Had he made his name up? I guess we’ll never know.