6. Back At It Again With Grindr
BACK AT IT AGAIN WITH GRINDR
There is something about this time of the night that feels like a trap. Like the world has finally gone quiet enough for your thoughts to get loud.
Relapse.
I was lying in bed, lights dim, staring at nothing in particular—and suddenly, there it was.
That feeling.
It didn’t knock. It didn’t build up. It just arrived.
Heavy. Familiar.
The feeling Victor brought.
I closed my eyes, like that might shut the feelings down. Like somehow, if I couldn’t see the world, I wouldn’t feel him in it.
But it didn’t work.
If anything, it got worse.
Because now it was just me and the memory of him, looping in high definition. The way he looked at me. The way he said my name like it meant something. The way I believed him.
And the worst part? I imagined the version of us that only existed in my head.
The one where we didn’t end.
The one where we worked.
The one where we were happy.
My chest tightened.
I already knew how it ended and that it ended.
Still, I knew I was going to cry. Maybe not now. Maybe in ten minutes. Maybe in the shower. But it was coming. I could feel it sitting at the edge of my throat, waiting for the right trigger.
I exhaled slowly, like I could breathe my way out of it.
But I couldn’t.
So my hand moved before I could overthink it, reaching for my phone on the bedside table.
I loaded the App Store and searched for Grindr.
I stared at the download button for a second too long because I knew it was a bad idea.
Grindr wasn’t just an app. It was a pattern.
It was where urges came alive and organic conversations went to die.
Where attraction was reduced to angles, lighting, and who could reply the fastest. Grindr was where people spoke in fragments like “Host?” “Your place?” “Got pics?” “Wanna fuck?” like full sentences required too much emotional commitment.
Grindr simply was a marketplace pretending to connect people together.
I hated it before. I hated it now.
I hated how easy it was to disappear and how easy it was to replace people there.
I hated how, for a minute, it makes you feel wanted—and then as quickly, it reminded you how disposable you are.
But Andi’s voice cut through my thoughts like she was sitting right next to me.
“You don’t need closure. You need orgasms.”
I let out a small, humorless laugh.
“God,” I muttered to myself. “She’s so convincing.”
The feeling in my chest tightened again.
But Victor wasn’t texting me.
Victor wasn’t coming back tonight.
And so, I hit Install. The circle began to fill. Slowly. Painfully slow—like it was giving me time to change my mind.
But I didn’t. I just watched it complete. Because doing something—anything—felt better than lying there waiting to fall apart.
A few seconds later, I opened the app. And I had to admit, it felt familiar, like a place I had outgrown. I had it together before, back when I thought self-love meant no longer needing this kind of validation.
Apparently, self-love had a curfew.
10:00PM.
But this was the part where I could still back out. Delete the app. Go to sleep and cry like a normal person.
Instead, I tapped Sign up. Entered a few fields until I reached the part where I needed to upload a profile picture.
I scrolled through my camera roll for half a second before deciding that I needed a fresh shot of me—something without my face, just my body, something vague and indistinct. I wanted it to be just enough to exist, but not enough to be known.
Exactly how Grindr was supposed to work.
So I took off my shirt, and then opened the Camera app.
God damn! I knew it would sound really narcissistic, but I looked like a million-dollar catch. For a brief second, it shifted something in me, lifting my mood just enough to remind me of who I was.
I wasn’t just someone who got left. I was someone people wanted.
Once satisfied with the photo, I uploaded it on Grindr.
And just like that, I was back.
The first thing I did the next morning was reach for my phone. Not to check the time but to check Grindr.
With just one tap, my lock screen lit up with twenty notifications.
Twenty new messages from random guys.
I blinked, suddenly more awake than I had been all morning.
And then, there it was—the thrill of validation. The quiet, immediate reassurance that I was desired.
I loaded the app and tapped into my inbox, my chest lifting just a little as I scrolled through the messages:
“Can you host?”
“You’re hot!”
“Damn! That bod!”
“Looking?”
“Free now?”
I paused, because they all read exactly how I expected them to be: fragments.
Half-thoughts. No names. No context. No effort.
Just intent.
I let out a small breath, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.
Grindr, I thought. Never change.
Still, I replied to a few, just enough to participate and to feel like I was part of something, even if I knew exactly what that something was.
For a moment, it worked.
The replies came quickly.
Later that day, my phone buzzed again… and again… and again. I didn’t even have to open the app to know what they were.
“Got place?”
“G?”
“Pic?”
“Up for threesome?”
I stared at my screen longer this time, because there it was—the part I couldn’t pretend about.
They were clear about what they wanted. And it wasn’t wrong. That was the whole point of the app. But the more I read through the messages, the more something in me resisted.
Because I wasn’t like that.
Not totally.
It wasn’t that I needed romance, or that I was looking for something deep or life-changing.
I just wanted… I guess… something more human.
Like a conversation that didn’t feel like a transaction. Or a moment that didn’t feel replaceable. Or a person I could actually be comfortable with before the sex part happened.
Maybe that was both the best and worst thing about me.
But then all of a sudden, the twenty messages didn’t feel validating anymore.
They felt empty.
I stared at my screen for a few more seconds before exhaling quietly.
Then I held down the app and the icons started to shake. Then I hit delete. Confirm.
And just like that, Grindr was no more.
I set my phone down on the table, but the silence that followed felt heavier than before.
Because I now knew. It wasn’t that I didn’t have options, it was that none of them felt right. And somehow, that made everything worse.
I leaned back against the chair, staring at the empty restaurant, letting the quiet settle in.
That was when my mind did what it always did when I became idle.
It went back to him.
It happened after sex.
We were lying in bed, the room still warm, with the kind of quiet that felt soft instead of empty. My body was relaxed, my guard down in a way it rarely was. Moments like that had a way of making everything feel certain, like whatever Victor and I were building was real.
Victor was scrolling through his phone beside me. Casual. Unbothered.
And then, out of nowhere, he said, “I still have Grindr on my phone, you know.”
I turned my head to look at him.
He didn’t look guilty. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even look at me when he said it.
It was just… information to him.
“I don’t use it anymore. Just letting you know,” he added, like it was supposed to settle the igniting hurt inside me.
We had been seeing each other for two months.
Two months of dates. Of conversations. Of sleeping together. Of me slowly, quietly building something in my head that felt like forever.
But there it was.
Grindr.
Still in his phone—existing.
That sharp shift in my chest wasn’t loud or dramatic but was just enough to feel everything slightly unstable.
Because to me, Grindr wasn’t just an app. It meant access. It meant options. It meant that any given moment, someone else could be my replacement.
And I hated what that did to my mind—how it quickly made me question things.
Was I enough?
Was I temporary?
Was this real for him, or just convenient?
And I wanted to ask. I wanted to say something. Anything. I wanted to tell him that it bothered me. That it didn’t sit right with me. That I didn’t understand why it still needed to be there if what we had was real.
But the words stayed where they always did: inside my mind.
“Okay,” I said instead.
Just like that.
Okay.
As if I had agreed to something.
As if it didn’t bother me at all.
Victor nodded, like the conversation had ended before it even began.
And it actually did. But the feelings didn’t.
It stayed.
Quiet.
Unresolved.
Growing.
But the truth was, that wasn’t the first time I chose silence.
It started earlier. Two weeks before that.
We were at dinner, and I remembered that night clearly because I had spent the entire day preparing myself for it. Not physically, but emotionally.
I had rehearsed it in my head over and over, trying to find the right way to say it without sounding needy—without sounding like I was asking for too much.
We had been seeing each other for over a month. And a month in gay dating equates to a year.
It was long enough.
So I asked…
Carefully…
“Vic, what are we?”
Victor didn’t even pause.
“We’re dating,” he said casually, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
I nodded at first, but the answer didn’t land the way it needed to.
Dating.
That word could mean anything.
It could mean something.
But it could also mean nothing.
So I pushed a little.
“Are we in a relationship?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “Or… what are we doing exactly?”
That was when his expression shifted.
“We’re dating,” he repeated, this time with a slight edge in his tone. “What more can you ask?”
I felt my stomach drop, but before I could even respond, he continued.
“I already love you. I give you everything. Isn’t that enough?” he said. “We can’t move that fast. We already are. But if you want, we can just end it now.”
Just like that.
Clean.
He said it without raising his voice.
Casually cruel.
Like what we had was something he could put down anytime.
I froze.
Because that wasn’t what I meant. That wasn’t what I was asking for.
I wasn’t trying to end anything.
I was trying to understand it.
“Sorry,” I said quickly. Too quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
And just like that… I took it back. Not the question, but the right to ask it.
Victor shrugged it off, the tension dissolving as quickly as it appeared. The conversation moved on. Dinner continued.
But something in me didn’t. Because after that night, he pulled back.
Texts slowed down. The energy shifted. The certainty I thought I felt started to disappear.
For a week, I felt it. The distance and the silence and the possibility that I had asked for too much and ruined something that was on its way.
And that… that scared me the most.
I was scared of losing him.
Because I already loved him. I felt it deep in my bones. I loved Victor.
So I adjusted.
I became easier. Quieter. Less demanding.
I stopped asking questions I wasn’t sure he wanted to answer.
I stopped saying things that might make him pull away.
And with that version of me, things went back to how they used to be.
We were okay again.
I felt okay again. I even felt happy. But I didn’t feel secure. Because I knew then that one wrong question, one wrong move, one moment of honesty, could be enough to lose him.
I told myself I was being understanding, or patient, or chill. But truthfully, I was just afraid.
And that was why, two weeks later, I didn’t say anything.
The memory didn’t fade—it was interrupted by the sharp buzz of my phone against the table.
I blinked, pulling myself back into the present, the weight of everything I had just relived still sitting heavily in my chest. For a moment, I just stared at the screen before reaching for it.
A message…
From Francis.
Hey
I paused, my thumb hovering over his name longer than I expected. Because out of people I thought to reach out to me, Francis was the last.
I had never liked the idea of reopening things with my exes. It always felt like stepping into something unfinished, something that had already proved it didn’t work. It felt unnecessary. Risky, even.
But at the same time, I wanted to reply.
I couldn’t fully explain why.
Maybe it was the timing. Maybe it was everything I had just remembered. Or maybe it was because, out of everyone in my past, Francis had always felt like the least complicated version of it.
I exhaled quietly and opened the conversation.
Hey
I typed back, keeping it simple.
I hesitated for a second before adding:
Are you free later?
The typing bubble appeared almost immediately.
Sure! Let’s meet up.
I stared at his reply, my thumb resting against the edge of my phone as something subtle shifted in my chest.
I didn’t know what this was going to be.
But I knew I was going to show up.