I’ll Never Forget When I First Saw You (on Tinder While I Was Pooping)

Some say romance is dead. I myself had all but given up on love. Then I saw you. I’ll never forget it: I was sitting on the toilet as my bowels evacuated, mindlessly swiping away on Tinder, when you appeared on the screen.

 

You often hear stories about people laying eyes on their soulmates for the first time—sitting in class, walking through the park, or at friends’ weddings. And there I was, hunched over the toilet and staring at my phone, sweating as I excreted corn kernels and brown water in the office bathroom. It was as if I was in a Meg Ryan movie.

 

I was so startled when I saw you, I actually stopped pooping for a moment. I knew we had the chance to be something special from the moment I saw your eyes and that we both liked ‘The Office,’ but I tried not to get ahead of myself, since there were multiple women in your first two photos and I couldn’t be sure which one was you. When I scrolled to your third photo and saw you standing alone on Positano’s famed black sand beach, I started defecating again in excitement.

 

Needless to say, our story doesn’t end there. As I swiped right, I got goosebumps, either because I had food poisoning or because I realized how the stars aligned to lead me to this moment. How the night before I knew I shouldn’t eat those three-day old scallops but went for it anyway. How I only opened Tinder because JSwipe froze. How I probably could have stopped to wipe at one point yet decided to avoid going back to work for another few minutes. If any number of these events transpired differently, I would never have been scouring a five-mile radius for potential mates as I suffered from violent diarrhea.

 

Like something out of a dream, we matched right away and I slid my phone back in my pants to begin brainstorming a good opening line and cleaning my bottom. I couldn’t be too aggressive with either—I wanted to play it cool, and my skin was already raw from vigorous wiping earlier that day. By the time I came up with my message, “so what’s your fave Ben & Jerry’s flavor,” I was only sporadically farting.

 

As I coyly slunk back into the office like I was never gone, I started getting emotional. It’s bittersweet to know I can again never gaze upon your Tinder profile for the first time as I shit. I almost wish I could go back in time, eat rancid scallops, and redownload the app to experience it all anew.

 

One day, I’d like to bring you to the fated stall and show you where it all began. And maybe, years from now, we’ll bring our grandchildren too.