Katie the Curver

Written By Stan

After graduating from university, I took a year off to try to decide what I should do with my life. Less than a year later, the Covid-19 pandemic began to upend everyday society. Unsurprisingly, nobody wanted to meet in person. Understandably so. Still, human contact is a simple kind of comfort, if not a basic need. Like many others, working from home and not hanging out with friends became extremely lonely. Since I didn’t really have much to do, I decided to try my luck on dating apps.

Dating For Robots

I’ve never liked dating apps. They felt highly impersonal, superficial, time-wasting and I never had any success with them. This time, though, pandemic-induced social isolation convinced me to give Tinder and OkCupid another shot. Once I answered OkCupid’s insipid laundry list of questions, uploaded my profile pictures, and wrote my bio I started to swipe on girls’ profiles.

One day, I came across Katie’s profile. She was cute, 19 years old, and her bio read:

"I’m very sweet, nice Can keep a conversation going Fun to be with Honest Enjoys animals Cant see who likes me so message me"

Okay, she hasn’t got the best grammar. Or vocabulary. Or punctuation. Or diction. Or level of enthusiasm. But I guess her content was innocuous enough. I decided to message her with a typical pickup line.

"Are you hot? Because you look hot and I’m a fan"

She immediately responded with "Lol" and we started talking. After some casual attempts at banter, I addressed the elephant in the room.

"So what brings you to OkCupid?"

"A long term relationship," she responded. "Honestly, Tinder wasn’t giving me what I wanted so here I am."

So far, so good. We quickly exchanged numbers and set up a time to call that night. On the phone, I was blown away by how much we had in common and how intelligent she was. Katie was majoring in criminal justice at university and she had an encyclopedic knowledge of famous criminal cases. Not only did we talk about how Eliza Lam ended up dead in a water tank in Cecil Tower in Los Angeles (it wasn’t because of spooky ghosts or demons in the hotel, duh!- she was mentally ill, off her meds and thought the water tower was safe), we talked a lot about the Zodiac Killer and the forensic evidence surrounding the case. I even vividly remember how, in the middle of our conversation on cold cases, she told me a story about her grandfather. He worked in the police force and apparently personally knew the Golden State Killer before his arrest in 2018. I was so intrigued by her knowledge (we were both avid fans of CSI and Forensic Files) that I asked her out. We decided to go out on a Friday night at a restaurant in her part of town.

The next morning, I received a text.

"Hey if you want to meet on Friday you got to talk to me"

Hey, I get it, she wants to know more about me. Totally understandable. We bantered about what classes she was taking and how much she hates the lectures (she was bored out of her mind in her criminal psychology class), whether she prefers cats or dogs, Harry Potter, her favorite anime, and her future travel destinations. By the end of the day, I got the impression she was a sweet girl who sincerely wanted a romantic companionship with someone. In fact, because of how much she texted me over the most mundane topics and how much we had in common, I started to feel beyond elated for Friday’s date with her. A woman interested in forensic science? Who knows about famous cold cases? On top of that, she also seemed interested in meeting me? Sign me up!

The Unicorn

I thought I had finally found the elusive needle in the haystack. My hopes for Friday shot to the sky. This, I thought, might finally be the start of something real. In apparent confirmation, she later texted and asked me if I was still available that Friday. Of course, I said yes.

"Okie see you there," she texted back.

Naturally, I wouldn’t be writing this if everything had turned out well.

Misfortune struck. The day before I was supposed to meet her, and while running some errands, I was suddenly T-boned by a sedan in an intersection. Thankfully, other than being shaken up, I did not suffer any injuries. My car was deemed beyond repair for what it had been worth - so much for insurance. After getting a ride home and the initial shock of the mishap wore off, I had to tell Katie that we should meet elsewhere since I didn’t have any transportation now. I texted her.

"Hey Katie, can we chat on the phone real quick?"

"Sure thing," she replied.

Once she picked up, I told her how I’d gotten into a car accident just a few hours before.

"Well that sucks," she replied flatly.

I waited through a few seconds of awkward silence.

That’s all she had to say? "That sucks?" No "I’m sorry to hear that! Are you okay?" or "Is everything all right?" A couple of odd-feeling seconds ticked by. Did she think I was lying? Yeah, maybe she thought I was lying. I totally wasn’t lying, but I wanted to salvage the situation and keep the conversation moving. I added that it would be best if we met somewhere closer, since I would need to take an Uber to see her. She assured me not to worry.

Katie the Curver

After I hung up, I mulled the situation over. Okay, maybe she’s a little awkward and our conversation ended up a bit muddled. Alas, just before I went to bed that night, I received a text from Katie.

"Hey I’m so so sorry to do this, but I don’t feel safe going out to that part of town. I hardly know you. I’d like to get to know you better and talk to you some more before we meet face to face. I hope you understand and again I am so sorry to do this so last minute."

Sigh. Great, it looks like I have to reschedule. I fought back my disappointment and replied.

"Totally fine Katie. Get some rest."

The next few days flew by and Katie didn’t bother reaching out to me. Didn’t she want to get to know me before seeing me in person? At the same time, I didn’t want to text her too many times either because that might look uncomfortable. After three days of silence, I decided to break the ice with a joke.

"Katie, I need to tell you something important."

"What?"

"I’m sorry to inform you that your license is suspended since you’re driving me crazy."

After a pause, she wrote back.

"Lol that’s cheesy."

Yeah, it was cheesy but at least it got a reply. Perhaps she wasn’t in the mood for jokes, though. I decided to ask about her weekend.

"Get up to anything interesting lately?"

"Hung out with my boyfriend yesterday. Wbu?"

I laughed out loud. Her boyfriend. Where did he come from? What happened to getting to know me better? Where did that go? Did she really expect me to believe that she'd managed to find a boyfriend within the last three days, or that she'd had one the entire time? Give me a break!

Realistically, what was I supposed to say to that? Did she even know who I was anymore? I fought back my exasperation and tried to have fun with the situation instead. Since she was clearly playing stupid games now, maybe I could have fun with how absurd her lies could get? I paused to collect my senses.

"Cool story. So where did you and your bf meet?"

"Tinder."

For cryin’ out loud! Didn’t she originally say that Tinder hadn't given her what she wanted? And that was her reason for using OkCupid? And why was she even talking to me if she already had a boyfriend anyway? Yeesh!

Ladies, if you want to lie, you should at least attempt to make your lies believable!

Katie was either too dumb or too lazy to make up something plausible. Or maybe she was that rare mixture of both dumb and lazy, which is a great deal worse than the sum of its parts.

Since this girl had just become a waste of time, I blocked her number, deleted her from my contacts, and that was the end of that.

The Aftermath

A day or two later, I went to a friend’s place to hang out. After a couple of drinks, I loosened up and mentioned how I had originally been expecting to go on a date with a girl, but she'd canceled with a flimsy excuse about having a boyfriend.

"Damn, did she really curve you like that?" he blinked and asked in half-disbelief.

"Curving? What’s that?" I’d never heard the word used like that before.

"Just what she did, bro. It’s when a girl lies like that."

Urban Dictionary has a great definition for this particular brand of flakery:

  1. v: to deliberately counter or reject an individual's expression of romantic interest in an indirect or passive way.

I guess that’s a term I’ll have to keep in mind from now on.

For me, it’s not really the rejection. It’s the lying. Until Katie played her stupid games with me, I thought I could be polite and mature with her like a grown up. Blatant lying is not okay, but until guys agree that it's not okay, then the women who do so will continue to be deceitful, to their detriment, and to the detriment of those around them.

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