October 2021 – Lisbon, Portugal

I matched with Fanny on Bumble a few weeks in to my stay in Lisbon.  Motivated by my success with Baby J, I gave this quirky 10-years-my-junior man a right swipe. 

I soon learned, by his own definition and via our conversations, that he was in fact quite quirky.  He was a self-proclaimed introverted extrovert from the Netherlands who had just relocated to Lisbon for a new work position. 

Soon in to our conversation, Fanny was upfront about not being sure what he was looking for and was really just looking to meet new people and was struggling to do so since the housing provided by his job was a bit outside the city. This was fine by me, because: same.

We decided to meet up and then wander around Lisbon and grab drinks along the way – perfect lowkey plan.  I met him across the street from the train station and as soon as I saw him crossing the street I thought he was absolutely adorable, and could tell he had described himself perfectly.  He had on a lopsided shirt, pants that didn’t exactly coordinate and his glasses were a just slightly crooked, but he had the most genuine smile.

We had the MOST awkward greeting that we both called out immediately and declared we needed beers right away – good thing we were standing in front of a bier garden.

We ordered two “big beers” to go and started walking.  Beer in hand and walking, things got less awkward and I think we both settled a bit.

Fanny was quirky, but also incredibly intelligent, which made him the perfect conversation partner.  As we wandered and stopped and drank and had bites, we talked about everything from careers to politics relationships to friendships to being in new places (literally, emotionally, spiritually) in our lives.  He told me about a relationship he entered when he was quite young, and stayed in for several years, even though he knew it was very unhealthy.  He told me about his evolving sexuality and being bi-sexual. Though quite bit younger than me, Fanny was indeed an old soul.

Though there was definitely some awkwardness, I think we both found this a safe space to open up and talk about a lot of real things from the beginning.

We continued our walk-and-sip for a while until Fanny realized his last train was very soon.  He said he better catch it or he would have to stay the night with me.  I said he was welcome to my second bedroom and we both laughed when he said he better just catch the last train then.

We came full circle with our awkward goodbye, that included a half-hug that he considered an enormous victory since I had told him I am not a hugger. 

I grabbed an uber and headed home and he texted a bit later to tell me he had made it home. We both said we had a nice time and I doubted I would ever hear from him again.

The next day he texted:

Good Morning

Good Morning

We are friends, right?

Yes, we are friends.

That was one of the most open and direct follow ups I have ever gotten from a date – no matter how good or bad.  As awkward as Fanny was, he was direct and that was incredibly refreshing (at least, seemingly).

We actually did end up being friends, odd friends, but friends just the same.  We hung out on several occasions, he told me about a woman he worked with that he was interested in, but wasn’t sure how to navigate. I told him about Bachelor #4, that seemed to actually be turning in to a thing.

We cheer lead each other’s ventures, I interpreted texts from the coworker he was crushing on and was bold enough to invite out to dinner (she wasn’t feeling it… unfortunately).  We flirted with the same waiter, and spent a couple of nights partying on Pink Street.

Fanny seemed like a great local buddy, until his awkward quirks went a bit left… He became a bit enamored with a friend who I tagged in some IG posts and started reaching out to her and asking me about her. She was clear she was not interested, but he remained persistent, to the point she blocked him.

I decided it was best to put a little distance between myself and Fanny, who also had started bailing on getting together and distancing a bit too.  It seemed a natural fade out…

Until he sent me a text telling me he needed to block me on IG because it was “too hard to watch” my life. To say I did NOT see that coming would be an understatement. I told him I thought that was a bit much, but if he felt the need to do that, than he should – and he did. 

I didn’t hear from Fanny for a while, and then suddenly received a message from him asking me to follow his new spoken-word IG account and asked me to read a few poems he had written.

Cue the awkward teen drama movie music…

One of the poems was about a woman who passed up the undesirable guy (him?) and went for “Mr. Perfect” (which he had dubbed Bachelor #4), he went as far as to describe Bachelor #4, whose photo I had shown him.

Ummm…

How does one even respond to that?!

I sat on this for a bit and then asked him why he never told me any of this.

His response was, “I swiped you on a dating app, obviously I thought you were pretty”.

Umm… Thinking someone is pretty to declaring and maintaining a friendship to writing some dark poetry is a bit of a leap, no?  I told him I didn’t know he felt that way (since NOTHING suggested he did, and he had been borderline infatuated with my friend) and he seemed pretty shocked by that.

At this point, my time in Lisbon was coming to a close, and I decided to leave my friendship (or whatever the fuxk it was at this point) there as well and just let things fade out.

I moved on to Mexico, then back home to NYC for a while and Fanny became a distant memory…

Until…

An IG message…. (mind you, he has my WhatsApp number)

The content of the message was along the lines of him being in a better place and being ready to follow me again, because he didn’t think it would hurt so much.

I may or may not have checked all my windows to make sure he was not looking in them. And may or may not have told Bachelor #4 to do the same (he was probably at higher risk being in the same city and all).

I took the very high, mature road, and blocked him.