Dating : What’s the Protocol When You Run Into a Tinder Date?

When I came across Jeremy’s profile, I recognised him as a singer-songwriter I’d seen perform at a local music venue. The event was a tribute to Leonard Cohen, and Jeremy had given a soulful rendition of Lover Lover with an acoustic guitar, his voice cracking with emotion. During the chorus, he had to pause to wipe tears from his eyes.

On the basis of this performance alone, I made a number of assumptions about Jeremy — namely that he was sad and serious. So I was surprised when the first thing he did was to ask me how me how I knew a mutual Facebook friend. I explained he was my sister’s husband.

“Do you have a crush on him?” Jeremy said, apropos of nothing.

“He’s my brother-in-law,” I repeated.

“Yeah but do you have a crush on him? You do, don’t you? You totally have a crush on him. Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t have a crush on him,” he said.

We were ten minutes into the date and, having just ordered dinner, I didn’t leave as I probably should have at that point— but hoped the conversation would switch course. It lurched and rolled around a history of his marriage and relationships, and by the time we finished our sushi, we’d drunk a bottle of wine.

After a session of karaoke (Leonard Cohen sadly wasn’t on the playlist), Jeremy crashed — in a strictly platonic sense — at my house. But early in the morning, I woke to an incessant poking in my right arm. That’s not a euphemism. Jeremy was wide awake and jabbing his finger into me.

“Claire! Claire!”

“What, what is it? What’s happened?” I opened my eyes. We’d only come home from the karaoke joint a few hours earlier.

“Claire, Claire, Claire, Claire.” More poking.

I closed my eyes again. “Stop it, I need more sleep.”

But he didn’t stop it. He leaned close to my face and started blathering incessantly. I wasn’t paying attention until –

“Shut the fuck up, bitch!” Jeremy said in my ear.

My eyes opened. “What did you say to me?”

“Come on, it was just a joke.” And he said it again.

“Oh my god,” I groaned. “Please leave me alone.”

“What’s the matter, can’t you take a joke?” Jeremy said. “Don’t you have a sense of humour?” Then a wicked grin — “Don’t you have a sense of humour, bitch?” He drew out the vowel sound, rising at the end.

“Seriously, just stop talking. It’s really not funny.” The door on my house needed to be unlocked from the inside, and I was too tired to get up from the bed. If he would only be quiet, I could get some sleep.

He continued to drivel incoherently, so I kept my eyes shut tight and ignored him — as you would a whining child. Apparently unsatisfied by my lack of response, Jeremy got up and walked over to my guitar sitting in a corner of the room.

He brought it back to the bed and sat in front of me. Shut up and sing, I thought, and maybe you’ll somehow turn back into that subdued and soulful performer I saw a few weeks ago.

But Jeremy instead decided to push the guitar into my face, strumming it as hard as he could, dribbling out a string of nonsensical words — ending with “Shut the fuck up, bitch!”

“Don’t you have anything to do today?” I asked, over the top of the racket.

He stopped playing, remembering he was supposed to be recording a song with my brother-in-law.