I encountered “Paris” on Bumble during an extended dry spell in my love life, when one possibility after another kept falling away, like petals from an aging rose. I was getting anxious to get a connection going with someone.

Her profile showed a cute bleached blonde with dark eyebrows and a wise but slightly vulnerable look, along with several very youngish, hot-looking pics, along with one more middle-aged fashion photo-opp shot. Like a newbie I chose to believe the best of the pictures, which as it turned out were probably from the 1990s.

She was a clothing designer and had gone to FIT in the city. I’ve always liked creative women, having been married to one. Her profile went on to say she was “Driven, accomplished, well educated, passionate, polished and far from perfect.” As it turned out, the last descriptor was the sole nugget of truth in a mine of misdirection. It was capped by a trailing revelation: “Stay busy with my growing fashion company.” And she claimed her name was Paris. What could go wrong?

Like many ladies on Bumble – the females-in-control spinoff of Tinder, where only the woman can initiate a conversation – her opening text was minimalist: “Hi Larry” was all she said.

Women seem to be so uncomfortable opening conversations on the swiping platforms that they rarely say more. Media Mogul Barry Diller, of competitor Match, claims that women actually hate to make the first move. He might be right.

I replied, “Hi Paris – I like your self-description: polished and far from perfect! We should all aspire to that combination.” She completely ignored my fawning approach.

After two weeks of unsuccessful entreaties to other ladies, I decided to try again, texting, “So Paris, where did you go?”

She replied “Sorry, bust day.” I assumed she meant “busy day” but had been too distracted to miss the inadvertent reference to a body part. 

I texted, “You got arrested?” and she replied “LOL Very funny! No busy day.” I suggested a chat sometime. She did not reply.

A lonely week later I texted, “Hey Paris – let’s talk,” and resolved to forget about her when I didn’t hear back. 

But a week after that she re-appeared, texting, “Hey sorry – don’t check this much.” I noticed the text as it came in and quickly replied, “K so while you’re here would you like to talk or meet?” Only three days later she responded, “Sure. I keep forgetting to look at this app.” 

I had tickets for the popular comic, Ron White, that Friday night, and no date yet for the performance. So, I asked if she wanted to go, figuring a headliner might get her attention. But I figured wrong. The day after the show she replied, “No I don’t.” 

Then that following Monday, she texted, “Sorry just got a minute – call me” and included her cellphone number.

I dutifully obeyed and found her on the street in New York City, weaving her way through the Garment District. It made for a haphazard introduction as she ducked in and out of traffic and crossed streets. Missing every third or fourth word, I was able to piece together that she was trying to get her own clothing line off the ground with a Kickstarter campaign, but it was not going well at all.

 

After a brief discussion of her floundering startup, she cried, “Oh I don't want to talk about it – I’m too stressed!” We agreed to switch topics and arrange a meeting via text. 

Alas, I should have left her on Anxiety Avenue. But at that point I had no other romantic possibilities going and was overcome with an almost morbid curiosity about her, only made worse by her elusiveness. It was like a dieter might obsess over a chocolate cake: just one bite? 

So, on Tuesday the following week I texted, “Hey Paris, it’s Larry. Lunch tomorrow or Thursday?” and she replied, “Sorry I don’t take lunch -- too much going on.” And then she added, ominously, “Dinner is better for me.” 

Ever since my early Match days when I bought too many dinners for ladies I would never see again, I’ve been wary of committing to an expensive dinner on a first date. 

I replied, “How ‘bout early drinks Friday night and see where it goes from there?” referring to food, of course, not the progression of our physical relationship. 

But she took it the other way and said, “I would be up for something, but your comment “see where it goes” is negative.” 

Confused, I explained that I was merely suggesting a bar “where we could order some food. That’s what I meant by see how it goes. Not sure what negative connotations that holds.” I then suggested 5:30 or 6:00, which to most of us dating pros is cocktail hour, not dinner time.

She dropped the negativity charge long enough to say that Westport would be better for her. I mentioned that would be a thirty-minute drive in peak Friday night rush-hour traffic for me, but she insisted on her favorite spot. 

“I guess that works,” I replied. “What time?” No answer.

I waited a day, and on Friday morning texted her the same question, half-expecting – almost hoping at this point – that she would cancel, claiming she was too busy. But then she revealed herself in a relatively salacious reply: “Hi doll can we do 6:00 at Tarantino’s next door to Harvest? I like the bar and it’s more intimate.”

“Sure thing – see you there” I texted back, swallowing the hook whole. 

Later I fought thick traffic to get to Westport on time, and actually arrived at the bar a few minutes early, to find it nearly full. Only three single chairs were available, none close together – just one on the angle of the L-shaped bar and another two down at the very end against the wall. I explained my situation to the bartender, and he asked the couple on the angle to move down a seat towards the wall. They graciously complied. I over-thanked them as I sat down.

Then I texted Paris, “I’m at the bar” and she instructed me to grab two seats. Wondering what else I might think to do, I replied, “Already done.” 

And then irony intervened. Of course, Paris was late, so I had time to look around. And who do I find sitting next to me but a fellow writing course member from the previous year, a gentleman in his seventies who wrote truly child-like stories about growing up in the 1950s in Port Chester, New York. He had heard more than one of my tragic tales about online dating, and asked me plaintively, “This isn’t another one, is it?” 

 

“Guilty as charged, I'm afraid,” I said. 

We chatted amiably for fifteen minutes until Paris bounded in off the street. But she passed right by me and the vacant chair to embrace another man at the dining room entrance and chat with him, at length.

When she finally pivoted and found me, she revealed that the man was Leandro, the proprietor, who she said, “has always taken good care of me.” Judging from the extra weight she was carrying in relation to her online photos, I surmised that care was of the gustatory variety.

She sat down, molting off her winter fashion layers, and pleaded a whirlwind of a day. She didn’t really apologize for being late – she just ordered a Cosmo and mentioned that she hadn’t even had time for lunch.

Great, I thought, famished AND thirsty.

We chatted for a short while until the guy to her right coughed twice. She stopped mid-sentence, turned with an annoyed look and patted him on the shoulder and said, “You’re not going to give me that cough now, are you?” As he was assuring her that he was just getting over something, I whispered in her other ear, “This nice gentleman gave up his seat for you about twenty minutes ago.”

 

She did a little double-take but continued to extract his vow not to do it again. Finally, she took a healthy gulp of her Cosmo, perhaps as a prophylactic from her brief contact with the cold sufferer, and returned to our conversation. 

And then her iPhone began to flash like a strobe light. Somehow, she had her camera rigged to flash every time a call or message came in, imitating the emergency lighting in many public buildings – almost impossible to miss. I guessed that Bumble messages would elicit the same behavior, making her earlier claims of, “I keep forgetting to check this app” a little dubious.

In fact, in the first twenty minutes of our date, she did not ignore one text or phone call of the half-dozen that came I, including a five-minute call with one of her associates about a production run in which she barked out a stream of orders and ended with a terse “Well, just get it done.”

She finally hid the phone under her funky felt hat to concentrate on the conversation. But between the difficulty of arranging this date in the first place and her extended entrance, copious texting, apparent lies about not seeing my messages, rudeness to her unbeknown benefactor, and then taking a phone call, I was completely disenchanted with her.

By all rights I should have gotten up, dropped a $20 on the bar and wished her luck. Unfortunately, I'm not that much of a dating bad-ass, so what I did instead was find something of interest to talk about. Willfully disregarding the age-old advice from the book “Men Are From Mars...” that women do NOT want men to solve their problems, they really just want to be listened to, I decided it might be fun to try solving her company’s financing problems. I started to make suggestions.

You see, like any fix-it man on this planet, I can listen to very few helpless-sounding complaints before chiming in with a cogent suggestion or three. And having done two startups in the past fifteen years, I actually know what I’m talking about. So I gave it a shot. 

Here is a short list of my suggestions and her rebuffs:

“So tell me about this patentable technology that you’ve got in your clothing.”
“It’s not Patent-able. I TOLD YOU I already have a patent on it!

“So what exactly is it?”
“It’s a spanx-like lining for both tops and bottoms in all sorts of outfits.” 

She retrieved her iPhone from under the hat and showed me photos of her clothing – all on svelte models who clearly had no need for elastic thinning gimmicks. And then she turned out the lining of her own tight-fitting top to show me a sample, revealing copious rolls of flesh underneath. It was way Too Much Information.

I asked, “Do you have a PR person?”
“No, just a useless marketing guy who I hate because he never listens to me and does exactly the opposite of what I tell him to do.” I wondered if perhaps he actually knew better than she did, but withheld the observation.

“How about an Investor – you mentioned one. Does he know anyone you could work with?”    
“NO! He’s just an investor, he’s not in the fashion business. Who would he know?” 

This question was just so fundamentally uninformed - Investors know everyone! It’s their business to get help for their investments. But I let it go.

“What about a channel of distribution, like a retailer? The B2C market is really the hardest one to break into alone.”
Response Part I – “What do you mean, B2C?” 

Thinking oh dear, I said, “Well, it’s the variety of business that you’re in. B2C is the acronym for 'Business selling directly To Consumers.' It’s a common shortcut phrase.” 

Response Part II – “I’m not dealing with any GODDAMN retailers! They take more than half the revenue and don’t give any help to the consumer at all. They’re lazy and incompetent - they just stick your product in a corner and tell you it doesn’t sell!”

Warming to her agitation, I countered, “Gee, I’ve actually had really good experience buying jeans at Nordstrom. They’re very helpful.” (Smirk)

“Nordstrom doesn’t know SHIT about women’s fashions!” she cried in response, and heads started to turn around the bar. “Oh my God, I’m so stressed.”

Furthering her mood collapse, I offered the sole remaining possibility: “Have you considered finding a partner who knows how to do what you don’t?” I was thinking, like Finance, PR and Technology.

“I'm never taking another partner. The last one tried to take MY business away and I found a loophole in the contract and had my attorney tell him to fuck off and sue me!”

By now she was nearly hyper-ventilating, having conjured a truly vivid picture of the inescapable little dungeon of her dreams. And she had turned all of my suggestions into squeaking bats flying around the cell.  So, I gave up.

“I guess you’re stuck” I said. 

“I’ll have the Veal Milanese and a white burgundy,” she countered – to the bartender of course, taking solace in food and drink, assumedly on my tab.

 

Because she probably knew by then, and might even have planned, that my only possible exit from this miserable little skirmish of an encounter would be to ask for the check. Which I did even as she munched away on the last bite of her veal. 

There is a stereotype female in the dating world who, as the saying goes, “just wants to get fed.” I actually first heard this saying from a woman who was pleading “not guilty” to that very charge over a first-date dinner, back in the early days when I regularly made such rookie mistakes. And yet a decade later I’d let myself get suckered into it once again.

I began to imagine that I’d wandered into a Little Date of Horrors with Paris, the voracious fashion plant. Attracting me like prey with photos of her as a lithe young sapling, she had grown in my very presence into a plump, all-consuming flesh-eater, first devouring the conversation with her ceaseless negativity and then polishing off the $39 veal dish without even offering me a bite, all the while suggesting lasciviously, “Feed Me -- See More!”

But I’d seen enough. I paid the bill, which with my two diet Cokes and mussels appetizer was still nearly a hundie, and signaled the end of the date by standing up. She downed the last of her chardonnay, grabbed her trendy little felt hat and wrap-around things and followed me out of the restaurant. But then she veered right, taking the lead. 

I followed her for fifty feet, only because my car was in the same direction, until she turned into an entrance-way, apparently of the building where her office was located. She pivoted and gave me a firm kiss-avoidance hug, mumbling something like a thank-you, which may or may not have included the word “dinner.”

 

I stepped back and patted her on the shoulder and said, “Well, good luck,” which of course had myriad meanings. Then I headed off to the grocery store across the street to buy a pint of gelato to try to salvage some of the evening.

Savoring a Double-Chocolate Delight on the ride home, I reflected on this train-wreck of a date. I was still pretty pissed at falling into the old trap of buying dinner for someone I really didn’t like.

 

I thought,  If I hear that her Home Shopping Network debut in May is a massive success, I may just buy one of her outfits and use it to strangle myself in astonishment. With all that elastic, it would be easy.