Painting by Arabella Proffer

Like all the impatient, lonely people, I am on Tinder. At night, wrapped up in blankets and velvet pyjamas, I find myself in the posture of a modern odalisque, swiping left or right and waiting for miracles to happen. Or at least something pleasant.

In the past year, I have been in touch with a chess grand master that turned on my sapiophile needs,  an editor of a magazine that praised my poetic style, an incredibly handsome man that looked and acted like a Greek god and a nomad that stopped his globe-trotting for a while to come meet me. I also had a date with an architect that almost made me lose my head.

All these and I am still alone. Because in a fast moving world in which immediate satisfaction is easily graspable, people started forgetting the basic rules of erotica.

The approach, the retreat, the longing, the looks, the desire to dissolve into the other person, the mental closeness. It is like a dance. I do not know if I am good dancer, but some people just keep stepping on my feet. Erotica is a dance that requires warm up and practice. A lot of practice.

My encounter with the architect that almost made me lose my head lasted about one week, enough time to pass through all the stages of a relationship. This is love in the times of Tinder, this is ars amandi nowadays. But now really, is it?

I met him on a Sunday afternoon at the end of summer. It was so hot that the city seemed to be standing still. As I was slowly approaching, he waved at me and I had that strange impression I am meeting an old friend, not someone for the first time in my life. We had a coffee at a terrace and introduced ourselves briefly in the same manner in which someone would stand up at a business meeting, saying: I am Laura, I paint and I write, I am looking for a lover. His name was John, he was an architect and he was looking for sex. But no one uttered these precise words, we just looked at each other, my gaze falling over the slight tremble of his heads, his eyes rolling over the tip of my long hair and my breasts.

How often did you ask this question: what do you want from me? How much peaceful would you be today if you did? I sometimes dream about a world in which people talk honestly about the way they feel and what they want because all the unspoken words and the misunderstanding they imply are those turning against us in the form of depression, resentment and frustration.

I really liked him, I liked his curly hair, his broad smile and a certain shyness that is so appealing to people with excessive imagination. When he grasped my hand in the bus stop at the end of our date, I could already feel thousands of bubbles of champagne exploding in my head. Somebody stop me before I become too cheesy and start talking like Doctor Heart. Or Paolo Coelho on drugs. Later that night, we took another step into our fast-forward relationship.

I found myself lying in bed and listening to his voice on the phone: what do you do right now, on which side are you lying, do you like it this way. You know, those things. Yeah baby, fuck me.

A few days later, the inevitable happened. But, dear God, what a pleasant inevitable! As my body was slowly abandoning, he kept whispering sweet nonsense to my oh-so-sensitive ears. I am not masochist, I am a woman and like all women, I am sucker for sweet words. If you say forever, I believe you.

And then, silence fell. Our fast-forward relationship was approaching the cold war times. No more how-are-you’s, no more proposals, nothing. So after some days of self torture, I decided to speak up my mind and I sent him a message:

I think people should not separate their emotional side from the physical side, they are strongly connected. I don’t know what you wanted from me and I didn’t get the chance to ask. I am a sensitive person and all my emotions build up inside. This is why I keep quiet sometimes and do not express my desires clearly. Now I am a bit upset because I was too impulsive and did not act in harmony with what I want. I really liked you and otherwise I wouldn’t have tried to reach you. But there is nothing what I can do. I will just go on looking for people that share a similar philosophy about what being a whole person means.

I still do not know for sure if erotica works on the rules of similarity or difference. But what I do know is that those who find themselves questioning loneliness often are at the same time those who enjoy dancing the most.

Try to leave a man and a woman alone in the same room for a while and see what happens. It is the same dance our parents did, standing at the roots of the great mystery that is life. People are born out of love and this is what keeps the world moving forward.

My name is Laura, I paint and I write. I am looking for a lover. I used to be on Tinder, swiping left or right while lying on my left side in bed in my room, wrapped up in warm blankets and velvet pyjamas. Maybe a lonely man reads my text and would like to meet me. I hope I expressed my intention clear enough. I will do my best not to step on your feet when we dance.

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Laura Livia Grigore is a poet, painter and psychology enthusiast, with a background in space engineering. She likes to experiment with various mediums and types of writing. Her artwork is orientated on emotions, reflecting her opinion that most of the answers we need can be found inside ourselves, although the hardest thing to do is to be sincere with oneself.

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