I’m going to tell you about fear.

It’s so easy to categorise people on Tinder; as I explored in my last blog, in some ways it takes the pressure off. But it’s also easy to cede complete control, to speak to someone because a pop up tells you, coaxes, encourages, or derides. And it’s easy to forget that it can’t tell us who lies and if the lies pose a threat.

Danet in “Text as Mask” writes that online “people explore previously unexplored personalities… [perhaps dark ones] much like wearing a mask at a carnival.” Whilst these people can be completely innocuous in person, the reverse is also true.

It came in through the paisley blind and gave everything in the room rosacea. Must have slept through most of the day. I dressed in what I thought was orange, but out in the sunlight even the dress was red.

Quarter to. The boat was quiet, strung with thick lanterns stretching their limbs. It wasn’t too late to walk back along the tow path and feel Nausea subside. Instead, I did breathing exercises.

The boat was empty apart from an elderly man with a grey-ish beard at the window.

“Hello, you must be her.”

“I’m sorry I think you’re mistaken.”

He seemed amused. “I could have sworn we arranged to meet here, last night, when you talked about your interest in water.”

“…that can’t be.” I didn’t have to check my phone to know the date was a 22-year-old, suntanned hipster whose favourite novel was tbc. I remembered him variously surfing and studying (complete with tank top).

He reseated himself and began cleaning his glasses. “All that’s true (except the picture). So, what you have to ask yourself is this: would you have come to meet me if I’d disclosed my age?”

“That’s not relevant. You lied; there’s a difference between omission and actively assuming someone else’s identity.”

“Is there?”

“Are you accusing me of shallowness?”

“I am suggesting that Tinder is somewhat ageist. It interests me, as an academic.”

The boat bowed and the gathering engine signalled we were no longer moored.

He gestured to the chair. “Look, we’ve 90 minutes. Why don’t you tell me more about yourself.”

I yanked out the chair. He waited patiently until I spoke, asking him who he really was.

“I’m a professor of renaissance literature.”

“At the university?” I didn’t remember him. But it could have been the other uni.

He spoke then, quickly, like he’d been chewing on something inedible and needed to spit. He’d written a controversial book about “high-level corruption” and had been imprisoned and tortured by an unknown group whose motives he never found out. When finally released he discovered his wife had left, taking everything except the manuscript.

It seemed ridiculous.

But, his urgency, (and the online news article) gave substance.

“In the cell, I had a lot of time to contemplate water.” He looked out the window at the spring showers. He was so close he wouldn’t have seen a reflection, only the coming darkness on the other side.

“The thing about pain, is that it breaks the body. It hates the object that commits it. Personifies it.  But at some point, the mind gains power. The object changes. Have you read Elaine Scarry?”

He took another swig and set the glass down, where rain pooled. He pointed. “I like it, despite everything. So emphatic. The moments where it endeavours to start upwards as though it wants to be light and falls…”

He became aware of his nose, hastily wiped the smudge.

I laughed. Perhaps he was lonely. Perhaps this was not a dichotomy of true and false, depth and surface, but an inveigling space where selves are both.

“Did you decide on a favourite book?”

“An impossible question. Recently, I have enjoyed Fifty Shades.”

I spat out my drink.

“I’m not joking. It’s the most feminist novel I’ve read in years.”

“The most feminist novel? You’re a literature professor.”

“It’s about time someone wrote about the pleasures of S and M.” He picked the lime out of his glass and sucked it.

“…Well I guess some people are into that, and good for them.” I looked out the window. I hadn’t noticed us turning. How far upriver were we?

“Yes, some are.” An alcohol rash was spreading over his cheeks.

I wondered how fast the river was.

He had a list. Things that began in a space where pleasure and pain oscillated between consenting open-minded adults, and rapidly moved into darker spaces, culminating in something unimaginable.

As the boat pulled in I jumped, hitting my knee. The bruise flowered on the bus.

When I got there the department was dark and I cornered the staff list, scanning the red lettering. His name was missing. I searched for the article he’d shown me and stared—

“Page not found.”