Just me & you (G!P)

C. 01

I'm thirty years old and I'm single. This was reason enough for my friends to secretly sign me up on some dating app. Not one, but a few. After an evening in a club, not too drunken, they confiscated my phone and when the next morning I woke up, alone, at my house, I found my phone clogged with notifications informing me of something that I do not understand what it is. Of course, I deleted them all. The next day at work I told everything, over a steaming coffee, to my favorite nurse, as well as confidant of my most difficult moments and he convinced me to keep at least one app, the most valid according to his high standards of flirting and relationships. I'm not looking for sex. I am thirty years old, yes, but I feel on my shoulders a load of emotionality and seriousness to be frightening. And maybe that's one of the reasons I'm single. I can't stand when people say they are "by choice of others": the truth is that we often close ourselves behind our defenses, which prevent us from contact with others. Then at the age of thirty, nowadays, you already have a sufficient number of experiences and human cases behind you, so sometimes you also choose to take refuge in yourself to avoid messing up.

I don't feel alone, but it's true that every now and then I would like someone's company. I learned over time to go to exhibitions alone, to the cinema alone, sometimes I even eat pizza alone. I loved traveling so much and then I stopped, because I preferred to give space to the career and for this maybe, but I say maybe, I would need the company of someone. However, with a bit of presumption, I cannot stop thinking that my traumas and my experiences are too much, to be able to entrust them to a random encounter that comes from an app. I lost my mom when I was twenty, after a long illness, and my father at that point became "crazy" and fled to South America, only on a motorcycle. For ten years now he has been living like this, on an adventure and behind him he has left so much pain and a broken family. I couldn't really deal with my pain, because I had to take care of Andrea's, my little brother who was fifteen at the time. I became his mom, trying with all my forces to do a good job, that was at least a quarter up to what our real mom would do. Maybe I succeeded a bit because in the end Andrea ended up hating all my rules, my controls, my questions and so now we are two lonely brothers, looking for our balance, with a fluctuating relationship. We got closer only in the last year, after having lived together again for a few months: Andrea seemed to have finally put his head in place with a girl, who instead left him just after the marriage proposal, fleeing to South America in the exact same way as our father. Andrea was really broken and again I had to take care of him, who was helpless like a child. At least this time he didn't end up hating me.

In the meantime I tried to keep up the choices of my life: I wanted to become a heart surgeon and I almost made it. I have only changed specialization, I am a gynecologist, but my dream of working in the hospital and saving a piece of the world, every day, in my own small way, I can do it. I had a relationship, stable though young, which ended only a year after my mother's death, not having withstood the shocks of my pain and my enormous responsibilities. I was angry for a long time, then I realized that it was not right for such a young guy to put himself in such a big situation with me. It would have been right only if there had been a great love at the base and evidently there was not. Over the years I have had some relationships, mostly short, but for this reason not intense: I lost my mind for a girl, who made me live an adolescent love and broke my heart, making me perhaps impervious to any other reception of love. And then for just under six months actually, I closed a story, quite short, with one of the doctors in the Emergency Room. Working in the hospital I often meet new people, but perhaps it does not help that in 90% of cases I see couples happy to realize their dream of parenthood.

Antonio is one of my best friends, even though we have only known each other for two years: he moved here to Rome from Naples after winning the competition and he is a nurse in the General Medicine department. We met by chance, at the hospital bar, while we were contending for the last remaining chocolate puffs and since then we have been friends. We meet just outside the hospital, but his presence has been a godsend on many occasions. He is an energetic, vital, cheerful guy and above all he is gay. I don't usually categorize people according to their sexual orientation, but Antonio's homosexuality has helped me so much to discover so many things about myself. For example, after the end of the story with the ER doctor, Antonio helped me a lot to reflect and I realized that perhaps one of the reasons why I am single is that I have always looked for love in the wrong place.

So when Antonio picked up my phone and started trafficking with apps, starting to "match" my profile with others I didn't give it too much weight. I honestly prefer him to take care of it, rather than my historical friends who, only now I realize, have always given little weight to all aspects of my sexuality, caging me like them in the network of heteronormativity. During the night shift then, in a quiet moment, we met in the usual corridor that our departments share and he explained to me all the features of the app. And it convinced me so much that when I was alone then and the shift remained quiet, I found myself using it, browsing through the various profiles.

What I hadn't calculated is how much I could get carried away by this app. I started writing with about ten people at the same time, and then reduced the conversations to three and in the end, after only forty-eight hours of text messages, I got an invitation to have a drink at a pub, for this same evening! So as soon as I finish yet another night shift, I hurry to look for Antonio, who I'm sure is taking his breakfast break in the cafeteria. When I find him I let go of a sigh of relief and approach him, grabbing him by the arm.

A < hello to you too!> he exclaims, make me laugh. I apologize myself for my rush, but I tell him what is the emergency.

A < and so? Honey what is the emergency? Why the rush?>

C < it's tonight, Antonio!! Tonight!! And how do I dress? And how do I say no? And if she is a murderer?> Antonio just laugh at my face.

A < it's just curious the order of your questions!>

C < oh com'on! Don't make fun of me!> and he just laugh again.

A < so... if she were a murderer, would she ask you to meet in one of the busiest clubs in Rome? And then why should you say no, if in the meantime you are already wondering how to dress?> I snort.

C < so?>

A < so just be yourself and you don't dress up too elegant..!> I nod and he has to run back in the department. I sigh, already wondering how I will face all the preparation for the date alone, but then Antonio receives a sound pat on the shoulder, when to greet me he whispers in my ear to wax me.