Premarital Sins That Weren’t Worth It

WRITTEN BY SLOANE MURPHY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY KRISTEL BECARES
DESIGN BY JESS PISTONE

Nobody knows how to date anymore. After our collective time inside, most dates that I've been on have been horror stories that are only useful as terrible stories to tell to friends over drinks. My own involve a woman going on a monologue about the inherent innocence of trans women, and one girl telling me that she wasn’t even gay after she kissed me. Convinced that I couldn’t be the only one going through an insane spell of dating bad luck, I put out a call for stories and found that the pandemic didn’t really affect this at all, because according to the people who answered my call, apparently, nobody ever knew how to date in the first place. Four people sat on the phone with me and told me some of the worst things I’ve ever heard. That’s impressive because one time a stranger DMed me on Twitter and just told me I was too hairy. Out of nowhere. I had never talked to this woman before. I think about her a lot.