The 69th story in 100 Indian Tinder Tales had to be intense. Actually the writers (K&S) of this tale asked me if they could have the 69th spot. When I read it, I couldn’t wait to illustrate it but decided to wait.
Inspiration: Malika Favre’s fab Kamasutra
Over to K&S (I am not making this up) from California.
Part 1: K: “When combined, the words “single” and “Valentine’s Day” often make for one unhappy person, and I was no exception. There I was, cold and alone on an uninviting February night…what was a millennial girl to do, other than drown my sorrows by binge-eating ice cream and swiping through Tinder?
With just a few exceptions, I had previously used Tinder merely as a shallow validation game, swiping right and left without intending to actually meet up with matches. Yet having the Valentine’s Day “what the hell, might as well” mindset, when one of my matches started up a conversation with me, I decided to engage with him and see where it went.
It was the best decision I made that year.
It turns out he was an international student from India and we went to the same school; our dorms, in fact, were less than a five-minute walk apart. After talking for a few days, he invited me over. I had a midterm the next day, which at the time I did not feel prepared for, but I figured that a short break wouldn’t destroy my grade. Of course, I wasn’t counting on the agreed-upon half-hour “cuddle break” to turn into a three hour sex marathon. But the conversation flowed, he was cute, and yes, I was horny. And so it happened. (Somehow, my GPA survived that night and the rest of the semester).
After that action-packed first night, we started seeing each other all the time. By the time spring break had come and gone, I was practically living in his room, adding my blanket, hairdryer, and hairbrush to the ever-growing collection of my clothing strewn haphazardly throughout his room (clothing was very easily and often shed in that room, as it turned out). I had never felt like this before, where sex with him was on my mind 90% of the time, where needsexNOW was a highly recurrent thought, where I couldn’t wait to get done with class just so I could jump into bed with him for an hour or two (…or three or four…or the whole day and night). I had completed, as one of my friends succinctly put it, the transition from “good girl straight A student” to “nympho”.
By many accounts, our relationship shouldn’t have worked out. To start with, neither of us particularly wanted a relationship. He had deep emotional scarring from an ex, whereas I was graduating in a few months. There was also the fact that I was tall and he was…not (though, as I would say half-jokingly to my friends, “height matters less when you’re both horizontal”). We didn’t have many friends or even interests in common. He was, in a word, “ridiculous,” at one point trying to make me believe that he kept a pet scorpion under his bed to prevent me from leaving. Yet somehow none of this mattered. We worked together, and we worked together well. As our sexual relationship grew more and more intense, our emotional connection increased as we came to truly care for each other.
I told myself that I wouldn’t cry when I left him, but I did anyway. Leaving hurt, and knowing that there was a chance I’d never see him again forced the wound deeper. I don’t regret for a second the brief time we had together, but I just wish it could have been longer. Yet despite the separation of oceans and a twelve-hour time difference, we still talk every day. To call it a “hook-up” would be too shallow; to define it as a proper “boyfriend-girlfriend relationship” appears too formal. To me, it was something deeper, more intimate and visceral, that touched on something raw inside me I didn’t know I could access. It transcended labels. Whatever it was, it healed me. (According to him, we were and are lovers, for life, and will be such whenever given the opportunity.)”
Part 2:
S: “As a short guy, you learn that physicality matters a lot more to women than they claim (everyone wants a guy taller than them), so when I swiped right on her I was taking a chance, one that I normally don’t. Maybe it was the purple bikini she was wearing or maybe it was just her blonde hair. To my delight it turned into a match, and our conversation started; as usual I was unsure of what she wanted and quite curious as to why I got swiped right on. In a college setting where hook-up culture is the norm, I try not to assume why a woman swipes right on me. We started talking and we hit it off rather well – we spoke about our time at college and similar experiences.
Uncertain of where this was going and a 100% sure of my inability to gauge what a woman wants and is thinking, I turned to my best friend, my wingman for the past 4 years. We read the conversation carried out till then and deeply analyzed it- I was told by him that she was definitely interested and that I should give it a go. Emboldened by this insight into the female mind, I proposed a meeting with her and getting a positive response from her confirmed my friend’s analysis.
We were to meet in my room, talk and see how things played out. An hour before she was supposed to come over I nearly chickened out and called it off. A couple of dirty admonishing glares from my friends and I found my courage to go ahead with it.
Things couldn’t have gone better, we met, we spoke and we decided to watch some Parks and Rec. While attempting to cuddle, less than 2 minutes into the episode I blurted out, K what do you want to do here – being a strict believer in affirmative and enthusiastic consent as well as being rather challenged at making moves, I needed to know what I could do and what she wanted us to do. The magic words “let’s hook up” left her lips and from there started a passionate and ridiculously enjoyable engagement. We got along far better than either of us had anticipated and we proceeded to spend the next 3 months together. If things went my way, she’d not have left my room at all, except to go get us food, to fuel our next bout of no holds barred steamy sex. On an average, we’d have sex 3-5 times a day and I’d push for her to stay the entire time in mine, to which she’d happily agree.
Over the next three months we became intimately familiar with each other and spent innumerable hours bringing the other off. There were times when we’d start off, thinking we’d be done in 15-20 minutes and make it to meetings/class/meals before they got over; when we’d finish the watch would show that we had overshot our estimates by more than an hour and a half.
Knowing that our relationship at college was of a temporary sort (she was graduating at the end of semester and I still had a year left), I tried my best to make the time we had together the hottest of her life- I wanted these to be the glorious tales of wild and hedonistic college sex she would tell her grandkids about and think back to wistfully once boring middle age set in.
We decided to fulfil as many of each other’s fantasies as possible and it was amazing. Somewhere between all the orgasms and oxytocin, we felt a genuine emotional connection forming, where for once I wished semester never ended and we could stay in that lovely bubble for an indefinite period of time. The line I heard the most from my roommate during those months was “make a lot of babies”, which he loved proclaiming whenever he walked in on us and by the end of semester, this happened more times than I can count.
Now that semester has ended and between us exist a couple of oceans and continents, reality has sort of set in- we know we will be in different places and our being together physically is going to be opposed by the direction of our lives and our circumstances. It’s immensely saddening, but when I look back on our time together, I realize that the time spent together did something to me that I hadn’t thought off at all. She fixed me, and parts of me that I felt my ex had damaged and broken forever. I honestly thought after my last break up that I’d never get emotionally attached again in a relationship -not because I didn’t want to but because I couldn’t. K did more for me than I ever thought possible and I only wish I’d learned how to manage our time together better, especially our last week together. She was by far the best thing that happened to me in the US and I feel I still have to thank her and treat her properly for it. I’m determined to make sure that our bond, doesn’t become toxic with the distance, our different life paths and the passage of time. I’m definitely going to meet up with her again – I want at least a week with her alone when I get back to the US. However, I wouldn’t forgive myself for ever hurting her (even unintentionally), of from holding her back from meeting someone with whom she can have something permanent or by becoming a distraction for her- she’s brilliant and has so much to do in life.
Who knew Tinder had the power to help heal a broken heart and psyche while also providing me with the best times of my life? We came together beautifully despite our differences and perfectly, much like the numbers 6 and 9 do to form 69 – our dynamic was unique, such that our 69 was a ying yang- perfectly balanced opposites.”
