A 25-year-old woman’s Tinder date might have soiled himself in McDonald’s

My name is Sam. I’m 25, and I work in the magazine industry.

I’ve tried online dating before but, up until this spring, it was always through OkCupid. Like most people, I have mixed feelings about it. Some of my dates have been lovely. Others have…not.

In late April, I went on my first Tinder date. He messaged me, and he seemed cute and friendly. He was Irish, a few years older than me, worked in insurance. He had nice curly hair, and we liked the same bars. When he asked me out, I said yes.

He suggested grabbing ice cream at a nearby McDonald’s. I thought that was strange, given that there were plenty of other options in the area, but I agreed. I figured that since the weather was nice, we could take the ice cream to the park or something. If things went well, maybe we’d grab a beer.

We met up. I immediately found him attractive. We introduced ourselves outside the McDonald’s, gave each other a friendly, albeit slightly awkward hug, and then he said, “My pants are dirty, so don’t be looking at them.” I said, “Okay,” and immediately looked at them. They seemed fine. Jeans.

We went inside, ordered McFlurries, and I asked, “Do you want to take these to the park?” He said it was too cold. I said that it wasn’t. We went back and forth for a minute, but he won and we sat down.

From there, things started going well. He was friendly, asking questions about my job, my family, how I ended up in Toronto. I asked him about his work and he was like, “Do you know what insurance is?” Being a real person in the real world, I do in fact know what insurance is. I gave a sarcastic response. He shrugged it off, and we moved on. Every first date has its not-so-smooth moments, right?

That’s when it happened. Fart Number One.

It was bad. This was not your run-of-the-mill little toot. This was a true silent-but-deadly zinger, an impressively mean scent, the most obnoxious date crasher. I knew it was him because there wasn’t anyone else sitting near us. Out of politeness, I pretended not to notice and kept talking, determined to soldier through. Fart Number One wafted away, on to ruin someone else’s fast-food meal. I thought we had made it through the woods.

We hadn’t.

Five minutes later, the fart’s bigger and meaner older brother showed up. Fart Number Two was a doozy, just really powerful. I didn’t know what to do. It derailed my train of thought and lingered in a way that Fart Number One hadn’t. I tried to babble my way through, poorly faking obliviousness. But I just couldn’t. It wouldn’t go away. I stopped talking. I started to wonder if this gas was accompanied by something more…solid. Was Fart Number Two actually a Number Two?! This all-consuming thought was extremely disturbing. I didn’t know if I should ask if he was feeling okay, or if I should just ignore the big ele-fart in the room.

I chose the latter—it’s the Canadian way. We just stared at each other. Then he said, “Right. Let’s go.” So we did.

He got up and I glanced at his pants half expecting to see…I can’t even bring myself to say it. I suddenly had to wonder if the reason he’d asked me not to look at his pants was connected to his predicament, but no signs of anything brown. I felt bad about it—he’d specifically asked me not to look at his pants.

We left and started walking toward my house. On the way, he talked about his walk home from work. “I like checking out hot bitches,” he said. I said “Hmm…yes,” in an absent-minded kind of way because, well, my mind was very much absent. He was acting like the farts had never happened and like “hot bitches” was something normal people say.

We reached my house and said goodbye, concluding our whopping 40-minute date. Within 30 seconds, he was home, too, because there’s one thing I neglected to mention about this man: he’s my neighbour.

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