Good Material

by Dolly Alderton

The tenor of our messaging is how I remember conversations during my brief time on dating apps—flirty without ever feeling the flirting is aimed specifically at me. Friendly without friendship. Suggestive without ever really suggesting anything.

But I’m not a member of that club any more. No one is. It’s been disbanded, dissolved, the domain is no longer valid. So what do I do with all its stuff? Where do I put it all? Where do I take all my new discoveries now I’m no longer in a tribe of two? And if I start a new sub-genre of love with someone else, am I allowed to bring in all the things I loved from the last one? Or would that be weird? Why do I find this so hard?

You can’t just keep saying all these banal things about wanking and shagging and attributing them to Samuel Johnson.”