Tinder: Where The Dreams Of Meeting My Bougie Black Prince Go To Die

Within the past 48 hours, I’ve decided I’m going to be chaste and devote my life to God, because this dating thing is entirely too much.

It should be noted that for the most part, I hate dating. I hate the horse-and-pony show aspect of the early stages, the faux nonchalance, the job interview feel of it. I get tired just thinking of the time wasted getting ready for someone who you might find slightly more interesting than a soggy box of rocks. I’d rather sit on my couch and eat a disturbing amount of chicken while watching a Gilmore Girls marathon.

That said, I am self-aware enough to note that all of these complaints only apply to men I don’t click with for whatever reason. And, for me to find men that I do click with, I have to continue to put myself out there to find my partner in Couch Chicken Olympics. But between working 12 hours a day, my semi-monthly attempt to stop being fat, and sleeping, (and my admittedly arbitrarily picky standards – I like what I like), I don’t find many opportunities to find my Bougie Black Prince at Fort Greene Afrobeats parties.

For the most part, I just keep on keeping on. But every few months (read: my mom turned 50 literally yesterday and has started amping up her demands on my uterus at a terrifyingly astronomical rate), I whip myself into a fever dream and find myself doing something that has empirically never worked out for me: I sign up for online dating.

The last time I did this was December 2014, when I got on OKCupid and I found myself talking to a guy who confessed that weed was his “vice” (this can’t be a thing past 25, guys) and was trying to go Kappa grad chapter. (The third strike was that he lived in Hoboken…the way my EZ-pass is set up…). Needless to say, I closed my account in under a month.

This time…I gave Tinder a run.

In my defense, it was after midnight and I had hit my head while installing my AC window unit earlier in the week…and I just watched How Stella Got Her Groove Back…and within two hours, I decided to just accept that Me, Myself, and I is all I got. Moving past the obvious Catfish (don’t make a fake profile of an ESPN sports analyst or use the picture of an ANTM contestant, I watch entirely too much TV for you to be able to successfully pull that off), and the litany of White folks (I left behind “skiing the slopes” in undergrad - NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT), a great chunk of the men I saw had me looking up YouTube videos on knitting snuggies for passive-aggressive cats.

This is the point where every friend I’ve ever had in my adult life chimes in, reverberating like the most irritated greek chorus, to remind everyone that Shamira is insufferably picky and gets in her own damn way. Which is why I came with receipts.

Let’s review as a family if I’m blocking my blessings.

1.

—-I’m not gonna lie, guys. When this profile came across my purview, I started singing to “left swipe dat.” But upon second review…there’s a special amount of industriousness in a a man that’s able to make a custom short set out of his grandmother’s old couch. The seamstress skills alone warrant reconsideration —I’m always tearing my jeans, and “a partner that does the practical things I don’t feel like handling” is pretty high on my checklist.
—-Sorry for the snap judgment, Spook. We might just could’ve been great together.

2.

—I guess I can give him some kudos for honesty. That’s all I got.
—Question: if a beard looks like it was caught in a brush fire, does it count?
—You can't really tell from the blurred pic, but he has random facial piercings. From this point on, I am  officially not acknowledging those facial piercings. That’s between him and his God.

3.

—-I just want to know why he had to specify his preferences with respect to crack addicts. Has he been burned by crack addicts in his life before? Did he fall in love at a trap house? Is his romantic history a Fetty Wap song gone horribly wrong?
—-Unfortunately, we’d probably part ways at the drinking part. I like bourbon more than a little bit. It’s too bad, I’m pretty firm on the ‘Crack is Wack’ train.

4.

*clears throat*
You gotta swipe, you gotta swipe it left….
—-Someone has to tell their Ghanaian uncle that no one is buying that he’s 35 as long as he’s dressed as a villain from a 90’s-era Nollywood movie. I am interested in moving back to Accra however…*scratches chin*
—-Highest of fives for being able to find a pair of pants that captures the spirit of the “In Living Color” logo.
—-I have no idea what to do with the intentionally placed lipstick effect on his collage. I didn’t know that was a thing men did (or anyone that wasn’t a 13 year old on MySpace).

So what say you folks? Who wins For the Love of Sham? Am I even worthy of these guys? Are men in Kwanzaa prints the wave of the future? The future of my heart is in your hands. Choose wisely.