The Full Story
From us
First from Jordan, then from Margaret
Jordan's Version
I had been in the trenches of the modern dating world for a couple of years. Endless swiping, dead-end first dates, scanning the club dance floors, the works. Shortly after re-downloading Tinder for the ***th time, I came across someone… different. Her profile stood out in a sea of shag cuts and stick-n-pokes. We matched, and suddenly, I felt hopeful.
It rained on our first date. She arrived at the cafe before me. I saw her red hair. I thought to myself, oh, I might be fucked. The cafe didn’t have seating. She was down to walk with me and let me lead her around. She was confident and funny and beautiful and she studied literature and religion in college. She moved to Philly on a whim. I knew then I was truly fucked. Before we parted, I gave up any pre-text of nonchalance and said, “I’d like to see you again, in a dating context.” I couldn’t allow for my intentions to be misinterpreted.
On our second date, we went to the dumbest mini-golf course in existence. I had never had so much fun. On our third date, we watched Moonstruck and ate shitty pizza. I texted my friends that I would marry her if she let me. She got me into biking, I got her into clubbing. I had lived in Philly for nearly a decade, but when we were together, the city seemed different. The light reflecting off the rowhome windows and swimming through the trees was so much brighter. She would laugh, and I would look around and notice that everything had suddenly become clearer. Margaret came into my life and there was no going back. I feel so lucky that this is just the beginning.
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Margaret's Version
It was 2022, and I was going on my first ever date in Philly, hoping the incoming storm didn't reflect the date's outcome. I trudged to the coffee shop we had agreed to meet at, annoyed about the rain and how accidentally early I had shown up. This was not Jordan's fault, but when she walked in 15 minutes after I did she encountered a slightly damp, slightly perturbed, and extremely nervous Margaret.
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Luckily, she knows how to charm, so I walked away from that hours long date feeling hopeful that hey, maybe Philly would be as fun as I hoped it would be. We quickly set up another date (a shockingly bad indoor putt putt course that Jordan saved by taking us to one of her favorite bars, Lorraine, after) and have been inseparable since. For the slightly more embarrassing part, shoutout to the woman I met at a "Queer Picnic," one of the first events I went to in Philly. She told me Hinge was dead and I have to get on Tinder, and she was absolutely right.
In the next four years, I got Jordan back into biking, she introduced me to all her favorite people and places in the city, we moved to South Philly, and she bought a cafe. We are now legally binding ourselves to a lifetime of me meeting her out after work even when I really don't want to, and her always giving me a free coffee when I stop by the cafe.
