Kurt Vonnegut Lives on Tinder

Photo by Jane Raese

Someone like Chuck Palahniuk, I'd totally get. You ever read Choke, about the sex addict?" I grip my throat and shudder.

        "Or Bukowski." Luca nods solemnly.

"Yes!" I squeal. "Exactly! Bukowski. That's good." We are milling under a weak spring sun outside a breakfast diner, postfeast. I've been enthralling Luca by telling her something weird about Tinder. All married friends like a good Tinder story. They find it hilarious and thrilling, the way single friends find the same story humiliating and terrible. On Calgary Tinder—amidst the rifle-shining and gleaming scales of freshcaught fish, the deer carcasses and camouflage, the "partners in crime" flashing peace signs while proudly "living life to the fullest"—I've noticed an odd and surprisingly literary phenomenon. Nearly every second male profile lists Kurt Vonnegut as its favourite writer. I say odd, but I'm not yet sure. I myself have never read any Vonnegut. In fact, the only person I can recall loving him was Trevor S. from grade twelve English, who had a burning passion for Slaughterhouse-Five, spiky blue hair, and a weight problem like my own. We were hardly friends, though I knew no one else as frenzied as I was by books. Perhaps this is why I remember that he loved Slaughterhouse-Five—though it could be the title itself, which is magnificent and lodges in the mind. I don't recall much else about Trevor, except that he wore the same massive nubby black sweatshirt every day, and I imagined he had a crush on me. Do I need to say he was not popular? Well, neither was I. But in terms of tiers, I fancied mine one above his and thus didn't wonder much about him.

So. Has Luca read Kurt? Does she like him? Would she say he's most suited to chubby blue-haired high school boys? Is he worth the investment?

Luca thinks for a moment. Her face loosens from the Bukowski grimace. A flash of mirrored sunlight flickers over her cheekbones. So there is truth, I think with an admiration surprisingly untouched by envy, to the phrase "pregnant glow."

She opens her mouth to say something undoubtedly clever, but before she can get any word out, a man with a pompadour, leather jacket, and aviators thrusts into our conversation, scarf flying as though he's been blown in by a wind. Heretofore, he'd been leaning against a bicycle rack near the diner door, presumably waiting for his name to be called.

"Slaughterhouse-Five," he barks.

"Pardon me?" I say, taking a step backward.

Luca has doubled over in laughter.

"Slaughterhouse-Five," he says with the authority of the pilot he appears to be impersonating, "is the only one you need to read. If you've read that one, you've read them all."

He looks like he's about to offer more advice, but I grip Luca by the sleeve to tug her away.

"Well," says Luca, still laughing, "that is the only one I've read."

________

Of course, not everyone lists a favourite author on a dating app. But in the words of a meme attributed to John Waters, "If you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck them." My Tinder profile is snappy and announces its literary prowess. I list my favourite authors in order—Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Carson, Maggie Nelson. Hint to the reader: if any date opened conversation by asking my thoughts on "The Glass Essay," I'd be undressed within the hour. This has never once happened. Not even on a date with a self-published author who promisingly announced his favourite book as Toni Morrison's Beloved. I germanely asked if he'd ever seen a ghost (my first-date banter is exceptional). He sneered! "You don't believe in ghosts, do you?" he said. This after it had been made clear, by my mention of the early-aughts afternoon television show Crossing Over with John Edward...