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The team members’ expressions showed that they didn't. But that was to be expected.
There were essentially two groups of people. I was currently dealing with the technical group. There was also a business group, who told me what they wanted. As a product manager, it was my job to try to bridge the gap between the two groups. Unfortunately, what that often meant was that the code monkeys were implementing changes without actually understanding what they were doing, while the product stakeholders had skyhigh expectations that were utterly impossible to meet.
Within this circle of hell, I didn't have a whole lot of say. The stakeholders told me that they needed my team and I to produce an app that would make all other dating apps obsolete. And we were supposed to do that with a team of only six coders, three of whom were fresh out of school, practically no budget to work with, and a total of six months time (though it was an unspoken rule that nobody ever met their time requirements on any project).
Even with that in mind, what we were coming up with was pitiful. It was a pale imitation of everything else on the market, with an interface completely lifted from the most popular app, but slower and, as I kept on explaining to Erik, incapable of making a single sensible match.
And this was especially disappointing considering how much people hated all other dating apps. Our market research team had repeatedly confirmed amongst all demographics that not a single one was happy with any of the options on the market.
“Look, I appreciate what you’re putting together, Erik,” I said, “but we need to go back to the drawing board on this one. Start with what you were telling me before: we want an app that will completely revolutionize dating and change how people interact. The app is called Matchmaker Plus. How can we focus on the matchmaking?”
Again, Erik just shrugged his shoulders. “We’re only as good as our data. Garbage in, garbage out. Most of our data is about relationships that don’t work out.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” I asked. “What do you need?”
Cheryl piped in. “We need information on who is compatible. Not who isn’t compatible.”
I scribbled that down.
“So we can run interviews of couples in functional relationships,” I said.
“Yes,” Erik said, “exactly.”
This made no sense. “Why weren’t we doing that already?”
“Nobody told us to.”
* * *
Work was even more frustrating than usual, so when I went home, I skipped the kitchen and fell face first into my bed, screaming into the pillow. When I ran out of breath, I turned my head to take in some more and screamed again until I’d gotten it out of my system. I thought I could escape the world of romance by getting the most cynical job I could imagine: developing a dating app. When I first got hired, I figured that infatuation turned people into brainless robots at the mercy of their genitals — and I still feel that way — but I learned that those brainless robots could be much more complicated and picky than I imagined.
In a sense, I relearned the conclusion I’d already come to: love was not for me. It was hard enough to find someone else out there who was attractive, but it was even harder to find someone who was also easy to live with and who would get along with you. I love my sister, but coming home every day to see her lying on the couch watching the worst TV shows imaginable began to take its toll. She left on her own accord, eventually. Though I wanted her to stay, I remembered how much I enjoyed living alone and having the place to myself once she was gone.
I could walk around in sweatpants or even nothing at all if I wanted, with no fear of judgment. I could listen to the music I wanted or order whatever food I wanted, without fear that the smell would bother whoever else was in the apartment. If I wanted to stay up until two in the morning I could or, if I wasn’t feeling it, I could go to sleep at eight pm. I was in complete control of my life, and wasn’t freedom the most important thing?
At that moment, my mind instantly reminded me of the feeling of the doctor’s hands on my torso, and I felt a warmth between my legs.
“Oh, fuck,” I said. And I said it out loud because, in living alone, I could talk to myself and nobody would think I was weird.
It was true, I was sacrificing a small part of life to have this independence, but there was also a solution to that, which I kept fully charged in my nightstand for times like these.
I pulled open the drawer without bothering to sit up, then stuck my hand inside, searching for my vibrator. After pressing the on button twice to get it to the setting I wanted, I pressed it under my body, between my clit and the bed, and angled it just right for my enjoyment.
I was technically a virgin in that I’d never had sex sex, but I wasn’t a complete stranger. I’d had done everything but. I’d had guys fumbling with their hands and shoving their harsh stubble against my face. I had a couple of guys try to go down on me, but did so in such an inept manner that I had to tell them to stop. In my experience, it wasn’t that men couldn’t find the clitoris, it’s that they’d been trained to treat it like a button on an X-Box controller.
So I liked the idea of men, in theory, but in practice they never lived up to what I wanted them to be.
Take, for instance, Dr. Maxwell. Something made me gravitate towards him.
Now, he was a great-looking guy with a sexy, deep voice and a serious stare that could absolutely melt me. I let my mind drift towards my memory of his body, tall and strong, with a sense of sturdiness to him that made it easy to submit to his control. At least in my fantasy.
In real life, I’m sure he was an oaf who chewed with his mouth open and left the toilet seat up. He probably lived in a sty and never cleaned.
But right now, I didn’t need to worry about that because I had just the right amount of vibration between my legs, and I was thinking of that rugged body up against mine, putting his hands on me with unexpected tenderness as his mouth gave me perfect kisses.
It was just glimpses of different things, cutting between them like an MTV music video collage.
In one moment, I was back in his office, lying on the table as he was examining me. But it wasn’t cold this time because he was keeping me warm. In more ways than one.
