We were lazily strolling down Copacabana beach, and I was already besotted with this tall, gorgeous American I’d matched with on Hinge mere hours earlier. Our chat flipped between niche pop culture references and intense political debate, breaking only to see who could do the most pull-ups at the makeshift beach gym. I knew immediately after this encounter that I couldn’t speak to him again. I never thought that less than a year later, he’d be flying me to Tromso to unsuccessfully chase the Northern Lights with him on one of the most emotionally confronting trips I’d take.
The night I first met J*, I was only a few days into my travels, trying to figure out how to get from Copa to Madureira for a COME VOCE party I’d seen on Instagram. Travelling there would’ve been easy had a storm not halted the trains I needed to get out of the city. In between navigating an entirely new transport system and battling intense delays, I decided I’d call it a night. Slouched, tired, and mindlessly scrolling on Hinge during my Uber ride of defeat back to the hostel, I saw that he had popped up. The ins and outs of our initial chat are hazy, but he was attractive, seemed interesting, and was keen to meet – lucky for him, my evening had completely cleared up. Still dressed as if I were going to the club in a long, horizontally striped, multi-coloured knit skirt that dragged on the floor despite my chunky sandals and a super-high cropped vest, I redirected my ride to the restaurant we’d agreed to meet at – somewhere I quickly found on Google that was close enough to my room for me to escape to if I hated him.
The buffet had brash white lights, music blaring, and a sea of servers in sailor costumes weaving through incredibly on-the-nose underwater-themed decor. I spotted him as soon as I walked in. He was even more attractive in person and charming in a way many British women find in American men, who are often just polite. Over oysters, we dissected and debated the best and worst aspects of being raised on opposite sides of the Atlantic. He had strong feelings about the supremacy of the English breakfast; I had to get him to answer for the litany of crimes committed against chicken wings by his fellow countrymen. We shared our comparative experiences as a Black British Caribbean woman and an African American man, realising how much we had in common. A force drew us closer together across the table as our conversation spanned time, history, and culture. I felt completely taken in by him. There was only one logical next step: never speak to him again.
We spilt out of the restaurant, exchanging stories and walking beachside toward the rooftop bar at my hostel. Meeting him was confronting. His most annoying qualities only bothered me because I saw them in myself. He loved a debate; so did I. He needed to be right, as did I. He found it impossible to stay on topic, so our conversation flowed in a way that anyone looking in from the outside would find completely bewildering. I was triggered. This was the feeling I had right at the start of every debilitating heartbreak, so naturally, I thought it was best not to speak again. After he left my room the next morning, following a night of deep discussion in which he’d asked questions like “Isn’t it weird that you have to pretend to sleep to fall asleep?”, I unfollowed him and deleted our chat.
