*Names have been changed

I smelled like burnt hair and cheap vanilla perfume. I knew I should’ve left my hair natural. It’s not like I was going to see this guy again. Sighing into the mirror, I finished brushing on my mascara and traipsed into my bedroom to grab my purse.

“Another one?” My roommate asked.

Begrudgingly, I nodded. “Yep."

When I first arrived in the bustling city of New York for my summer internship, I was lonely. They say that New York is one of the loneliest cities in the world (don't know who "they" are, but they were right). I didn't know anyone outside of my work office, and I wanted to branch out.

I got the idea for this story, "How to Lose a Guy in Tinder Days," after sitting in my apartment for God knows how long and realizing that I needed to get a life in the city. I wanted to see how different New York Tinder was from my west coast hub, Seattle. So, I figured that I'd use the app to my advantage and write about going on tons and tons of dates, seeing if I could expose the true nature of East Coast men via online dating sites.

Apparently there are 7.125 billion people in the world, with 3.17 billion of said people using the internet. 50 million of said 3.17 billion use Tinder, checking their respective sites an average of 11 times per day. Tinder users tell me that you can use the app to find friends, lovers, significant others, or just a one night stand. I figured that, with these numbers, I was bound to find some source of entertainment, right? I wasn't wrong. Gems like this guy are all over the app.

(Buzzfeed news source)

When I first started using Tinder, about two years ago, I was sad. My boyfriend of nine months had just broken up with me and I was attempting to nurse myself back to sanity by buying every Ben & Jerry's pint in site. My childhood friends kidnapped me from my seemingly permanent spot on the living room couch and took me to one of their living rooms so that we could bask in the sugar-high of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food together.

My friend, Sonja, turned to me and said "Have you heard of Tinder?"

I stared blankly at her, "Uh... No?"

She snatched my phone, pressed some buttons, waited for about 30 seconds and then handed it back to me.

"You're welcome," she said.

I looked at the tiny flame on the screen, trying to figure out what on earth it was. Then the faces of hundreds of men flashed across the screen. Thus, a Tinder addict was born.

When my addiction crossed state lines and unleashed itself on the unsuspecting male population in New York, I was blindsighted by how many bachelors I met. It was ridiculous. Tinder on the East Coast was like Match.com for millennials. On the West Coast, you find some people like that; those who are seeking relationships of some sort. However, most of the time you're lucky if the person on the other end is sober.

I went on so many dates. I met Hank, a power-lifter turned financier with a hard exterior but noticeably soft side; Drew, a Tulane student with a passion for drug-selling and ridiculously nice restaurants (I chose to believe that the two weren't correlated); Andy, a publisher with a fascination for bunny rabbits; Ron, the freakishly shy and somewhat sexually inappropriate college grad who moved to New York because he "felt like it"; Drake, the personal trainer turned anime gamer; Nolan, the 35 year-old Italian bartender who convinced me that he was 25 until he admitted to me that he was actually 35. Ew?

I discovered that men on the East Coast were rather sex-oriented. I'm not saying that men in my beloved Seattle aren't, because they are. Men on the East Coast just one-upped them a little bit. For example, on one of my dates, I sat down in a restaurant and was greeted by my dining partner with the following: "Damn girl your Tinder did you justice. Want to just skip the eating part and go right to the sex? Might as well save time."

Eventually, after enough of these "meet-and-greets" that were really just alternate ways to get sex from another person, I decided to have some fun. On my dates there-on-out I decided to do things that were outlandishly weird, trying to bomb the dates and turn my story into a humor piece. Once I walked up to a Tinder match and said "hey, wanna feel my sweater? It's made of girlfriend material," just to see his reaction.

It was all going as planned, until I met the one who unraveled my calm facade of youthful, aggrieved singlehood: Chris.

We met in a Starbucks. When he walked in and came up to me, giving me that awkward hug that one gives another when you've spent long hours conversing via an internet web source, I thought that he was just going to be another guy for the article. I thought he would be another date I bombed for story fodder.

I sat down with my overly iced americano in one of the Starbucks booths and waited to see how I could mess up the date. He was clad in a cute button-down and dress pants, hair impeccably styled. I could work with this.

Then he started talking. He had lived in Germany for a year and had adventures that I could only dream of. He had a smile that lit up whenever he was passionate about the topic. He stared into your eyes when you were relaying a story like the only person in the room worth listening to was you.

We talked about religion, politics, dreams and work ethic. He had a golden moral compass and a laugh that made you feel like you were the funniest person alive. We sat in that booth for two hours, just listening to each other and getting to know one-another. I walked away from the date smiling, wondering if I'd see him again.

When I got back to my desk I started to write him into the story, but I stopped. For some reason, I felt like I shouldn't. Then I realized something: I didn't bomb the date. I didn't do anything weird or eccentric in an attempt to throw him off. Why didn't I do that?

We started texting every day, going on dates whenever we could. Our golden friendship blossomed into a crimson red summer romance, filled with laughter and smiles. We spent long hours outdoors going on adventures, staying up until the sun touched the horizon, talking about life. We went to a concert, dinner all over New York, parties with friends and events where we were each other's plus one.

Near the end of my internship, I realized that I was going to leave soon back to Seattle. I looked at him one day and asked if he wanted to go to the Hamptons to meet my family; he surprised me by saying yes. We spent that whole Sunday basking in the sun and laughing with the people I had grown up with. They adored him.

Now it's summers' end. I stared at this story for hours, wondering how to write it. When I started it, I was using it as a tool to compare coastal Tinderites to their respective male counterparts. I ended up finding the one who would make my summer the blissful experience that it was. He was the one who filled the lonely gap. The one who made me smile and laugh.

So I guess what I'm saying is that "How To Lose A Guy In Tinder Days" actually became "The Real Tinderella Story."