Dating apps and dangerous men: an excerpt from Melbourne writer Amy Taylor’s ‘Search History’

Who was in the wrong here?

Content warning: This article discusses sexual violence and non-consensual sexual acts.

At some point after a breakup, the desire to sleep with someone else arrives. There is no universal timeline for how long this takes. On one occasion the desire showed up almost immediately, winking seductively at me from a doorway. On another, I’d tried to force its appearance, placing the cart before the horse, only to find myself weeping into the limp arms of a disappointed and horny stranger.

This time, when my ex and I broke up, it took a few months; a period I spent busying myself with logistical distractions – moving out of the house we shared, and, later, packing up my halved possessions and fleeing across the country. Then, when the desire did eventually turn up, I did what was expected of me: I selected someone from an app.

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The man I chose told me he worked as a chef at a wine bar in Fitzroy, so I looked it up online. On the bar’s account, I was able to find photos of him that weren’t included in his sparse dating app profile. In one photo he wore a navy apron and held out a plate of food for the camera: a chunk of charred meat floating in a thick beige sauce. His face held a sly grin. I found him handsome. I liked his smiling green eyes and the evidence of a sense of humour in the arrangement of his features. I spent an unreasonable amount of time zoomed in on his hands. They were pale, freckled and a little rough. They made my stomach flutter. I’ve always been attracted to a man’s hands; I love the way they look, and I love what they can do to me.

Even though we’d never met, The Chef and I fell quickly into the habit of messaging each other every day. He was consistently quick to respond and, to me, this felt strange, as if he lived behind the screen of my phone and waited to be summoned. After four days of unbroken dialogue, I woke up to a message that read: ‘Sleep well? x’

That night, apropos of nothing, he sent me a photo of his dick captioned: ‘Free tonight?’ and I laughed at myself. While I waited for him to arrive, I changed my outfit four times. Then I walked around my apartment, simultaneously tidying and disguising any evidence of effort. Eventually, I sat down on the couch and messaged my friend, Beverly, to let her know he was coming over. I included a screenshot of his account.

‘Be safe!!!’ she replied and sent a string of pink love hearts. He showed up just after 11, a wine bottle in hand. “Here, this is for us. It’s French, from Beaujolais,” he said, placing the bottle down on the kitchen bench and taking his jacket off. “I stole it from the bar.” “Thanks,” I said, unsure of how to respond to any part of that sentence.

I was surprised by his size; he was tall and broad and when he opened his arms to hug me, he entirely absorbed me. He smelled like grease and charcoal. I tried to imagine myself turning up to have sex with someone after working a 10-hour shift and not showering, but I couldn’t. I’d showered and shaved. I’d put on makeup. I’d tidied my apartment and lit a candle.

He draped his jacket over the back of my couch, before wandering across the room. It occurred to me then that he was the first visitor I’d had since I moved to Melbourne after the breakup, and I realised that by being the only person who had stepped foot in my apartment, I had imbued it with a particular and very personal energy. I felt his energy spreading around, muddying the room as if he were literally tracking a pair of dirty boots across my floor. I wondered then if I genuinely wanted to do this, or if I had just relented to the pressure of this seemingly expected act of moving on. Was I exercising my freedoms as a sexually liberated fourth-wave feminist by sleeping with a stranger I’d met online? Or was I betraying my freedom by choosing to engage in a sexual experience that I was feeling increasingly apprehensive of?

I wondered what he was thinking. I opened the bottle of wine and watched him casually consider the collection of books I’d stacked on the floor. I felt exposed. The same way I felt as a teenager, my stomach in knots, as I watched the first boy I’d ever had in my bedroom browse my CD collection.

“You have lots of books,” he said, holding one in his hand. With an ache, I thought of all the books I’d left abandoned in the house my ex and I had shared back in Perth. When I fled shortly after our separation, many of my belongings (my coffee machine, my couch) were sacrificed. “Do you read much?” I asked. “Nah,” he said, putting the book back down.

 

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We drank the wine and made an earnest effort at conversation, fumbling through some small talk about his shift. When enough conversation had passed, I moved towards him and kissed him. He seemed a little surprised that I’d made the first move and it was awkward for a few beats, our mouths moving at different speeds, our teeth overly present. Then he took control and guided me across the short distance between my kitchen and the bedroom. He pulled at my jumper, my favourite jumper, and I took it off myself so he wouldn’t stretch out the neckline. I helped him remove his T-shirt.

He was so different from my ex, so much bigger. This was an immediate relief; I need someone completely unrecognisable. I didn’t want to feel any hipbones pressing into me. I specifically required someone who wasn’t going to arrive wearing a threadbare hooded jumper and a pair of jeans held up by an old shoelace. When we reached my bed, he pushed me down onto it and something inside me lit up. He stared at me and took his pants off slowly without breaking eye contact. Then he said, “You want it so bad, don’t you?” And something inside me switched back off.

I allowed him to continue to lead, though it became obvious that he was performing a method he had most likely perfected in his last long-term relationship and now applied like a template to all his sexual encounters. His exploration of my body felt like an uninteresting task he was required to complete for a reward. He ran his hands over me with impatience, like he was keen to move on. He swooped his head down to kiss me, his technique all exhale and tongue. Then he pulled away and smiled as if to tease me, before swooping once again. All of this was accompanied by a surprising level of confidence.

He seemed sure that he knew what I wanted and didn’t need to ask me or read any nonverbal cues. I could have told him what I wanted, but I didn’t. I couldn’t find the right words; the ones that wouldn’t wound him and instantly halt the momentum, leaving us stranded somewhere. Instead, I sent him body language signals, slowing my movements down and shifting his searching fingers to the left by moving my hips. I made affirming noises when he got closer to the right speed, location and pressure. He bulldozed blindly through these cues. Whether this was because they didn’t land or whether he thought himself in possession of a better idea, I wasn’t sure. Then he was on his knees, guiding himself inside me.

I sucked air through my teeth as he entered me, my own body not quite ready. The first few thrusts hurt, but I moaned anyway. The futility of the situation was becoming apparent, but I felt the weight of the unspoken commitment made in these kinds of situations. A line that, once crossed, signalled it was too late to back out. In this case, a line established because: 1) He caught an Uber from Fitzroy to Brunswick for me. 2) He stole us a bottle of wine. 3) He might not like being told no.

I attempted to engineer a change of position so I could be on top of him, a final effort to gain back some control, but it was ignored. He placed one hand on the wall behind my bed and his other hand around my neck. I surmised then that his last girlfriend was probably into being choked and he’d assumed I would be too. The alternative to this theory was that it was for his own pleasure that he choked women, a problematic distinction. I could breathe fine and so I didn’t bother to move his hand. By this stage, his pounding rhythm had bored me, and I’d begun to detach from my body.

I sank into numbness and the climax I’d been working towards left the room entirely. Soon his rhythm became faster and less conscious, which told me that he was getting close. I participated by gripping his body with my legs and moaning, engaging my pelvic floor and running my nails over his back, performing a sort of exorcism to speed things up. He didn’t make any noise besides breathing heavily and aerobically.

His grip on my neck tightened. Blurry shadows scattered across my vision, and I wondered if I should say something. Maybe if I hadn’t retreated so far away and didn’t feel so much like a spectator, I would have. Instead, I simply watched him with detached curiosity as black seeped into my vision, first from the outer corners and then moving inwards to the centre.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was The Chef crouching over me, naked, ghostly white and terrified. He was shaking me by the shoulders. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” he was repeating in a panicked voice. His flaccid dick swung back and forth, tapping against my thigh. I groaned. “Holy shit, Ana, are you okay?” he asked, letting go of me. “Yeah, I’m okay,” I replied, surprised at the smallness of my voice.

When I sat up, I noticed my hands were trembling. “Oh my god.” He sighed with relief and sat down on the bed next to me. “Jesus – that was scary. What happened? Are you sure you’re okay?” I suddenly, urgently, wanted him out of my apartment. “I’m fine,” I answered. “Sorry, could you please just leave? I’m okay.”

He seemed torn by my request; did it imply I was angry at him? Would there be consequences if I was? Who was in the wrong here? “Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked. There it was: my part of the blame stated out loud to remind me that this wasn’t his fault entirely. “Please just go. I’m fine.” “Okay, okay,” he said, his hands held up in defeat.

He pulled his pants on, followed by his T-shirt and finally his boots. I sat and watched from the bed, not yet ready to move. Once his jacket was on, he hovered awkwardly by the front door. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked for the third time. “I’m fine.” “Okay, well…” He looked down at his phone and then back at me. “Bye, I guess.”

He pulled the door shut behind him, and in the silence that followed, I realised I could hear myself breathing. I lay back down on my bed, closed my eyes and focused on slowing my breath down. Then I made my way slowly to the bathroom. In the shower, I rocked side to side, rolling the stream of water from shoulder to shoulder until the hot ran out. I pulled on a pair of trackpants and a jumper and watched in the mirror as the bruising around my neck grew darker and darker.

An hour or so after he left, he sent me a message: ‘Hey Ana, that was really messed up. I didn’t realise what was happening, you should have said something. I hope you’re okay.’ I closed the message and held my finger over the dating app icon until it began to tremble nervously, then I deleted it.