If Looks Could Kill

Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut? You just ...wake up, look in the mirror for ten minutes repressing the self-hatred, get dressed, go to work, and realise you don’t hate yourself, but rather you hate other people. Then you go home, eat a whole-ass bucket of ice cream and start hating yourself again, then go to sleep, rinse and repeat. Sometimes there’s a shower in between. Maybe I’ve just been in retail too long.

       Not too sure what it was, perhaps the fact that my favourite brand of ice cream had just been discontinued or that someone had stolen the welcome mat from my apartment’s doorstep ...again, but I decided it was time for a change. I needed something or someone to spice up my life, so I went where all people go to shake things up. I downloaded the SinKin dating app. The logo being that of a post-iceberg Titanic with devil horns was an interesting choice, but I digress.

       After scoping out some of the profiles of both men and women, I discovered there were three categories of profile pictures. Horny, pet exposure and whatever you call it when people take a photo of themselves at that lower angle that makes their head look like a thumb. Seen as how the closest thing to a pet I’d have is one of the rats in the building’s basement and I’d rather not look like a thumb, I figured I’d go for ‘conservative horny’.

       I put on some daisy dukes to show a little leg and an off-the-shoulder tee to reveal ...that I have a shoulder, I guess. The outfit looked cute and wasn’t spilling out the goods like in most profile pics, it was just what I was going for. Didn’t take long for the pings on my phone to start rolling in, so I’d say it was a pretty successful strategy.

       Of course, it was a ‘swipe up or down’ system so the pings were only from people I swiped down on and vice versa. I’ll admit, there were a couple of horny profile pics of guys I swiped down on. Typical that the first thing they both messaged me was “DTF?” followed by some not-so-flattering pics of their junk. Call me a prude, but maybe I’d be more “DTF” if we’d maybe spoken a little, gotten to know each other and not had my retinas violated. You know, just regular people things.

     I also swiped down on some horny girl pics because hey, why not? You live once, right? But after receiving their photos that showed some ...interesting angles of where once there was a bikini bottom, I discovered I wasn’t up for that kind of experimentation anymore. Live and learn, I suppose.

    Thankfully, I had swiped on some good-looking guys holding their pets in their pictures and was able to start some decent conversations. Couldn’t say that for all of them, my retinas were violated at least three more times. Thank the stars for the ‘insta-block’ button.

      Alas, then there was the obvious pitfall of them having nothing interesting to say about themselves except for how much they loved their dogs, cats or in one case a pygmy gerbil. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very sweet, but I wanted to get to know THEM. Not Fido, Mr. Whiskers or Mini King William the Eighth. Which had me wondering as to what happened to the first seven gerbils? And why were they royalty?

       In any case, I eventually got to talking with a guy who owned a lorikeet with a beautiful rainbow of feathers. He didn’t even bring up the bird in conversation, instead, he asked me questions about my life and what I was doing and where I was heading. It was refreshing and an equal back and forth. Then he sent me a picture out of the blue and due to past experiences with this app I was hesitant to unblur it. Thankfully, it was just the lorikeet from an awkward angle that made its cute little head look like a thumb.

       I replied with “???” and he apologised. The man, not the bird. Apparently, his little feathered friend had just so happened to take a selfie while his phone was on the kitchen counter and sent it to our SinKin chat. I didn’t believe him for a second, but the ‘flirty bird’ approach worked its charm. We set up a dinner date.

       We decided on a casual place, nothing too fancy. Just a ‘jeans and a nice blouse’ kind of bar and grill. The service kind of sucked, but they probably weren’t getting paid enough to give a damn, a relatable sentiment to be sure. Thankfully, the company made up for it and more.

       I’ll admit, I was nervous at first and a little cynical to say the least. For all I knew I’d become parrot food by the end of the night. But my expectations were blown away when a handsome man wearing jeans and a well-fitting polo walked through the doors. Oh, and he didn’t at all sound like a pirate. Which yes, was a real concern considering his choice of pet.

       Aside from the awkward “hello” you swap upon first meeting someone, the conversations were smooth. There was no looking at phones, no bug-eyed staring at my cleavage. Though I did catch his subtle attempts at a glimpse or two, as was expected. He was such a gentleman, the night was going so well, it seemed almost too good to be true. It was early days, but I figured I’d finally found someone to truly make me smile.

       Our mains finally came to the table, he ordered a chicken salad and I had a steak. I’m not sure when it happened, but sometime between cutting my third bite of the chewiest meat I’d ever encountered and dipping it in a sauce that can only be described as burnt mushroom juice, his face had started turning red.

      “Are you alright?” I asked, but he could only respond in tight wheezes. “Oh no,” I gasped. I rushed over to him, yelling, “He’s choking! Someone, help!”

       I didn’t know what to do, so I just started smacking his back like they do in the movies. The Heimlich manoeuvre might as well have been a foreign language to me, but I wrapped my arms around his stomach and squeezed tightly over and over. Everyone else was either too drunk or in shock apparently to do anything, so it was all down to me. Then it happened.

      He fell unconscious, face down into his half-eaten bowl of chicken and greens. I kept smacking his back, but it made no difference. “Somebody, please, call a bloody ambulance!” I screamed. I didn’t know what else to do, I’d never taken a first aid course before. I was lost ...and so was he.

       An ambulance eventually showed up and the paramedics zipped him up in a bag on their gurney. Fairly sure that’s not a great sign for anyone’s mortality. I sat back at the table, silent and staring at nothing in the distance as the flashes of red and blue faded from view. Could have been a minute, could have been an hour, I’m not sure, but a waiter eventually came and spoke to me.

       “Sorry to be a pain, madam ...but about the cheque...”

       If looks could kill...