Rumble in the Bumble pt.5

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

I think we can all agree that the one photo on my profile page has been pretty fucking successful.

So far, it’s already played it’s part in persuading an abnormally beautiful German to at least dip her toes in my waters (until being understandably disgusted by the mouldy surface scum of professional wrestling bobbling along the stream) , it’s convinced three people to swipe right on my profile- people who Bumble refuse to reveal to me unless I pay them money- and then, just yesterday, there was this woman!

Yeah, that’s right- I actually matched with someone! I liked someone else’s face/bum/tits/’personality’, and she in turn liked my… blue face and ’50 Shades of Grey’ quote… If she gets in touch in the next ten hours then it is on, baby!

Yeah, if she gets in touch in the next ten hours from about two days ago. Mystery Woman obviously saw that we were a match and took another look at my profile, whereupon she obviously caught herself, thought ‘…the fuck…?’ and brushed me quietly but firmly under the carpet. Yeah, this is a special kind of rejection that’s unique to Bumble. Would I have preferred it if I made the first move and she simply didn’t reply? No. I would hate both of those cruel, piercing rejections. This is a zero sum game and I find the failures seriously traumatic. What a horrible, horrible system for breaking people’s hearts without ever meeting them. What a fucking world. But, on the other hand, who can blame her? Do you know what kind of people only have one profile photo? I’ll tell you who, the same kind of people who have pineapple on pizzas, fucking pedos, mate. Like, what am I trying to hide? We better get some friends for Mel Gibson there.

The photos I sent to TG were hideous and amateur, I need to ensure these new photos are of the highest, almost professional quality.  I also had to find photos that, in the words of Henri Cartier-Bresson, makes women “splooge their undoes so hard that they have to throw the fuckers away” So what else do women want, apart from Mel Gibson? I decided I would survey my female friends, ask them what kind of things alight their loins and just destroy the crotch panel of their underwear. The only thing is… I kind of had to be careful how I asked it… I didn’t want to ask my female friends what they find attractive in a man, as that just sounds like the creepiest come on you’ve ever heard, and- with the generally accepted large scale sexual frustration of quarantine- they’d just assume that I was typing one handed as I attempted a desperate and tear fuelled masturbation. Say I’m asking for a friend?! Give over. Oh, just tell them I’m writing an article? That’s your genius idea? The thing is, hardly anyone I know is aware of this blog, and it contains screams and self lacerations that were meant for the void and I intend for them to stay there, and any world’s colliding might cause the universe to collapse in on itself. Plus, a lot of the ‘friends’ I decided to canvas are university student volunteers who I’m technically the boss of, so the loss of respect a glimpse of this blog would inspire could impact the whole charity sector. Also, I already really fancy one or two of them, and if they were aware of this blog they might read that sentence where I said I fancied them. And that’d be really embarrassing, no?

No, I had to be smarter than that. Luckily, I’m a very fucking smart man. How to get an idea of what turns on a woman’s brain? How to get a reading of what exact synapses are being buzzed and in what order? Without actually asking the last thing they thought about when they masturbated? It’s a difficult probe into their psychological make up, to gently pull strings out of the weird knot of a woman’s brain and read the tea leafs of their soul with an ostensibly innocent question, to lay out the tarot cards, read the tea leafs and…

Ah, fuck it:

The answers I got were a part illuminating and part terrifying glimpse into the female brain. Yet these answers nonetheless provided me with vital information on what women subconsciously favour in a man. That’s how it works, right? Didn’t Freud say that we all subconsciously wanted to fuck our favourite film? My favourite film is ‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day’, and I absolutely want to fuck that film. Just, like, stick my dick in it’s dolly grip as I lick my finger before putting inside its set design, y’know?

Shit, this is going off the rails. None of this will be in my Bumble profile. Can you believe TG missed out on this??

Where was I…?

Wanting to fuck movies! Yes, one woman made it clear through her film choices that she’s really into ‘problematic bad boys’.

In any piece of research or data collection, there are always outliers and perverse results that you are forced to discount. This woman is obviously into some… inappropriate stuff… that it would perhaps not benefit the research to register. This woman makes me glad I no longer drink, as her profile obviously has ‘drunken phone call at 3am’ written all over it. Sorry, ‘Problematic Girl’, but I’m going to store you alongside ‘Hit Me as Hard as My Dad‘ woman in the ‘Only contact in secret’ pile.

Across the valid results, some trends did emerge:

Yes, even though it was a harddd question, the only film mentioned more than once was The Godfather. There you go. Chicks. Dig. Godfather. The pressing question is: how can we exploit that?

OK, we want to trigger a subconscious- ragingly sexual- response to my face, based on its similarity to The Godfather. You know what else chicks dig? That’s right, as we’ve previously stated, ’50 Shades of Grey’ and stories about Caroline Calloway. But also cats. So imagine the furnace that gets sparked in a lady’s undercarriage when they see a photo like this:

That. That’s what my photo needs to look like.

Firstly, we need the moustache. Now, my fake moustache collection is perhaps a little more sparse than most, partly due to the current lockdown.

Despite the paucity of options, I nonetheless believe that we have an option well suited for the task.

Unfortunately, we are then presented with the first major problem.

My face is far too hairy to support any adhesive fake moustache. It’ll have to go. Yes, I need to shave all my facial hair off so that I can wear a fake moustache. It’s for love!!

As well as mutilating myself in the name of pleasing random women, I need to make sure I’m wearing the same clothes. Do I have a white shirt and suit jacket?

Erm, I could turn the Miley t-shirt back to front, I guess… What about the bow-tie though?? I don’t have a bow-tie! I do have a Wallace and Gromit tie though…

Hmmm…

Toby Lerone,  aye…?

As you can see, I’ve got the look down pretty spot on by now.

However, I hear you cry, what about the cat? You’re obviously very aware of the way the female’s mind works, and you know full well that cats, no matter the situation, are always around 40% of the most important aspect of the issue at hand. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cat. But I have a sloth….

…which I’m sure yo’ll agree is a more than suitable substitute. Suddenly, all the pieces are in place!

Fuck. Yes. My Bumble profile now has a second photo.

So now back to the psychological survey. You might notice a certain trend amongst some of the answers:

Did you notice it? No, not the Borat reference, I really don’t have the appropriate moustache for that. Sigh, yes, I know, bullshit is anyone’s favourite movie ‘The Last fucking Emperor’, that friend has since been blocked and deleted from my phone. ‘Spirited Away’? ‘Princess Mononoke’?? ‘The Last fucking Emporer’??? Notice a heavy East Asian influence???? I should make myself look more Oriental!!!!!

No no no no no no no! It’s gonna be cool! I already have a kind of Chinese wedding suit:

And, I dunno, this is the kind of shirt you’d see an Asian person wear, isn’t it?

And what else do Asian people have?

Go on, say it.

You know what I’m talking about.

That’s right: funny coloured hair!!! I actually found this monstrosity in my cupboard:

Which was fucking impossible to manage…

But it was all worth it… well, not really.

Yeah, you know what? Put my wrestling figure collection right out there. No secrets, no lies. Love me, love my perversion. Again, there are two Stings there, you won’t get get credit for just naming one. Talking of perversion, eagle eyed viewers might spot a little Easter Egg (very topical) in the picture.

See that photo pinned to the board behind my left shoulder? Yes, it’s a photo of a group of Japanese schoolgirls that my brother Mizdow brought me as a joke from a Japanese store in Thailand!!

Like, this isn’t a press shot or cut from a magazine, it’s legitimately just a photo taken by some weirdo and then developed.

I’m so getting arrested for owning this… I hope my future wives won’t be able to make it out… Regardless! Bumble now has three photos!

I mean, that’s good for today, isn’t it? Did any other films come up?

I am. Fucking. Unstoppable. At the same time that I’m wondering if I might want to stop.

I finished part four on Friday, a piece that ended with me displaying recent messages sent to me by Hejuan, intimating that she might have made a mistake and telling me how difficult it is to break up with me. I said I knew what the accepted response would be, to tell her that over means over in my best Theresa May voice, maybe even sticking my thumb and fore finger to my forehead in an ‘L’ shape to suggest to her that she is, in fact, a ‘loser’. Because that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? You have to ‘win’ a relationship. Feelings are irrelevant and there’s no such thing as working through mistakes and hard times- you have to exit a relationship victorious to save face (which is a big thing in their culture. And ours. And every fucking culture, for fuck’s sake, never say that again!) and, even better, to punish the other party for their mistakes! Yeah! Fuck everyone! I win!

At around 10pm Friday night (5am Beijing time) Hejjy rang me. Hejjy and I talked. We both really want to be together. We both still love each other. But she doesn’t want to leave her family in China, and I don’t want to leave the UK (especially not to live in China). It’s a stalemate. And we can’t think of a way around it. Eventually, the conversation turned a little more personal and Hejjy began pushing for some phone sex. I was flattered, but I knew that such debauchery would only complicate an already ridiculously complicated situation, so I let her down easy and said goodbye.

No, of course I fucking didn’t, I’m a absolute dog and jumped straight in. And it was amazing. Whomever I meet on Bumble, whomever I meet in life, the physical connection and the shared desire will never be as perfect as it is with Hejjy, I can’t imagine any actual sex being anywhere near as rewarding as what we shared over QQ on Friday night. We’re both semi-intelligent people, we both know we logically shouldn’t be doing what we’re doing, that a line in the sand best be drawn, but we can’t help ourselves. Shit, Hejjy’s a Muslim and honestly believes such behaviour is going to send her to hell but just can’t stop herself. I’m sorry, I know that shouldn’t be hot, but desire is pretty amoral and that’s pretty fucking hot. There’s backstory with Hej! There’s fucking reams of lore! I could meet Pat from Denton or Ruth from Audenshaw or Carrie from Poynton, w could say together for the rest of our lives. It will always be prosaic and dull in comparison. There’s no real belief in my Bumble journey now. Like Hugo found out, all I’m really looking for is somebody to fill the time while Hej is unavailable.

Phew! On that note! Hey, prove me wrong, Bumble! Three new photos, give me true love! The next episode won’t be very long coming, because it’ll be me checking out the conversation and making fun of people’s profiles again, and I fucking love doing that!