Online Dating (very short story)

CW: transphobia

Becca gritted her teeth in nervous anticipation as she opened the dating app to check her messages. There were five of them, and unfortunately very few seemed worth following up on.

The first was sent by a guy with no face photo (something she asked for in her bio!), just a picture of his bare torso taken from an awkward high angle. His message simply read “hey girl looking for a hookup?”

The next had a photo of a woman that was clearly an attempt at catfishing. The photo looked like a professional headshot of an immaculately groomed, unusually attractive woman. The message contained a shortened URL that claimed to link to a site where they could talk more. Becca flagged the account as a bot and moved on.

The third message seemed initially promising. The guy had a face photo and was decently attractive, with no obvious red flags. He’d said, “Hey, are you in the Seattle area?” Well, fuck. That was another one out. She’d done long distance once before and didn’t exactly want to jump into it again.

The fourth was from a lesbian with a nose ring and some snapchat filter that made it really hard to see what she actually looked like under all the smoothing and red cheek blush circles. Becca was kinda getting tenderqueer vibes from her profile. The message said, “Hey, would u wanna try getting coffee or something?” She sent back “sure.”

The fifth was the worst of all. The photo was of a frat bro looking guy, complete with a backwards mesh cap on in his shirtless photo. At least it included his face. He’d said, “Hey, ur really hot. I don’t even care if u have a dick.” Yikes, dude. Work on your opener.

Well, a 20% potential success rate was honestly way higher than usual. And a moment later, she got a response from the nose ring lesbian.

“Oh sorry I just realized you’re AMAB. I’m sorry but I’m like not into dick. I just really love pussy. We can still be friends tho?”

Welp. That seemed more like it. 0/5, a perfect failure. Oh well. She’d check again tomorrow.