Last week I was in hospital.
What better way to pass recovery time than on Tinder? Frequently, I paused to think about how inappropriate it was to be swiping whilst inserted with cannulas, drainage tubes and morphine surging round my body, but then I remembered how bored I was, how crap daytime T.V. is and how my concentration was so weak I was barely able to read a page of my book.
And then one of the guys I was talking to asked me to send him a sexy photo, despite knowing I was in post-op recovery. I mean, what is more attractive than hair that hasn’t been washed for a week, with tubes, drains and bandages, on a hospital bed, nurses popping in and out asking if you’d ‘managed to pee and poo?’ and wearing a cotton nightie (something you’ve never worn in your life, unless it was tiny and made of lace or silk).
Naturally, I didn’t send a sexy photo.
He seemed put-out.
High on morphine, I promised to send one when I was home.
Why? Why did I do this?
That’d be the morphine…
Of course I wasn’t going to send the bloke a photo – I didn’t know him, had never met him and he was so intent on receiving a dirty photo that he was becoming off-putting.
When I returned home, he kept commenting about how I had promised to send a photo on my return home. I asserted my right to say ‘no’ to this stranger. His response?
‘Why? Don’t you like your body?’
Excuse me?
Just because I don’t want to send a naked photo to a stranger, does not mean I’m self-conscious of my body. And I told him so. ‘I actually really love my body’ [aside from the swelling, bruises and bandages I currently wear].
‘Then why?’
‘Because I don’t want to send a naked photo to a complete stranger.‘
I’m still surprised at his initial response to me shunning his request. His idea that I must be shy because I don’t want to flaunt my genitals in his direction is absurd. It’s because of girls who do, the girls who don’t seem frigid. And that’s not meant as a criticism to those girls who do. It’s 2016; we have all our fetishes catered to at the click of a button, we can go on a date with someone after just seeing some online photos and sharing a post-code and sex is all over The Top 40. I’ve explored both sides of the fence: I’ve been the girl who shags someone after a little dance in a club and sends naked photos to guys I met once (admittedly, I regret this) and I’ve also been the girl who holds out for a guy to wine and dine me a bit first. Since my last relationship, I’m struggling to pin down a guy. My mum reckons “it’s because girls are so easy these days.” Why would a guy settle with one girl, when he can quite easily pick up four or five other girls with a few swipes?
Maybe I need to find an older bloke; someone who doesn’t know what Tinder is.
