January isn’t just peak season for pow skiing and film fests. It’s also the busiest month of the year for dating apps. And so it was that I found Batman on Tinder. There he was in his profile pic, the dark knight himself, a sexy divot punctuating his square jaw. A devilish slash of ivories against the black mask and flowing cape.
His profile claimed he was tall (check), fit (check) and athletic (he’s Batman, for chrissakes.) Like me, he had recently relocated to Park City. I swiped right.
Just then, a screen flashed up, letting me know that the superhero’s profile was getting a lot of likes. Did I want to upgrade my regular like to a super like? Nahhh, I’ll take my chances, I thought. BAM…a match!
Just like that, I was one degree of separation from the caped crusader. I felt a tiny surge of adrenaline. I couldn’t believe my luck.
I’ve jumped through fire, hucked off snowy rocks and been hit by a bus. I can assemble my own CB2 dining table. I’ve lived on my own in Paris. I know how to relight the pilot on my gas fireplace. I can open a wine bottle without a corkscrew. Yet as fiercely independent as I might be, the prospect of a love connection with the winged avenger definitely intrigued me.
I texted a cheeky opening. “You are vengeance…you are the night…you are Batman?” He responded immediately. “Yes, I’m a masked marauder for good.”
After a little more flirty repartee, we agreed to meet for a drink at Hearth and Hill, in Kimball Junction. I was excited and a bit nervous.
Batman texted me 20 minutes before our date to let me know he’d be arriving early as he was in the neighborhood. I texted back that I’d be there in a few minutes, too. I arrived ahead of him and grabbed a high top in the empty bar.
I spotted him the moment he arrived, his muscular silhouette filling the doorway. He stood at the table in a black mask and a flurry of dark fleece. He looked me up and down, flashed a winning smile and declared, “I want to hear all about your travels to London!” “You mean Paris?” I asked. “Oh, right…Paris! I want to hear all about it!” At that moment, he looked down at his iPhone. “Sorry, I gotta take this,” he said. “Do you know what Slack is?”
“No problem,” I muttered, pretending to look over the wine list. I already knew I wanted a giant wine.
As he began to Batmansplain Slack to me, the server came over and asked if we wanted a drink. I ordered a Sauvignon Blanc and Batman ordered a Bulleit Rye Old Fashioned. “Make sure they use the big ice cubes,” he told the server. Obviously, he’d been spoiled by years of devoted service from his wingman Alfred.
Batman told me about the company he’d recently started, a nutritional app for people with food allergies. I made a joke that that was an interesting side hustle for his work as a superhero. He replied that there was nothing funny about gluten intolerance or intestinal issues. I mentally composed a rejoinder, “Perhaps a case of Irritable Batman Syndrome?” But I decided to keep it to myself.
Instead, I took a deep breath and told him he looked like a young David Straithairn. “I do?” he asked, brightening. “Wait — who’s that?” immediately googling to admire the resemblance. Watching him stroke his scruffy chin in the dim light of his iPhone, I was starting to feel more like a frumpy Selina Kyle than Catwoman.
His phone dinged. “I gotta answer this,” he said, his knee twitching like a restless boy wonder. Maybe it was Commissioner Gordon. Maybe it was the Joker. Clearly, the current situation in Gotham City was as taut as the latex on Michelle Pfeiffer’s catsuit.
Finally, our drinks arrived and Batman and I toasted to our mutual recent arrivals in town, his eyes glancing over at the server’s butt as he lifted his glass. “You have to look me in the eye when we cheers,” I said. “Or it’s seven years of bad sex.”
Batman arched an eyebrow, smiled and slowly met my gaze across the table. I felt my face flush.
“Now let’s hear about you,” he said. “I want to hear all about you.” I started to tell him how excited I was to have found an apartment in town. “Oh wow, that’s great,” he said, pulling out his iPhone again. “Do you want to see my new place?” He flipped through the photos from the condo’s real estate listing, pausing just long enough for me to see the hot tub in the foyer and the cowhide Le Corbusier lounge in the bat cave. Just then his phone rang.
He looked at me across the table, his brow furrowed, and said, “I’m sorry.” “Sure, go ahead,” I said, draining my glass and scanning the bar for our server, as I mimed the universal bat-signal for “Check, please.” Batman looked at me across the table as he listened to the caller, rolling his eyes while gesturing blah-blah-blah with his long, elegant fingertips. The server brought the tab over just as he finished his call.
And then my Tinder date swooped in silently and grabbed the check, his one true Batmanly move of the evening. A hero with a Gold Card. Just not the hero I needed.
He walked me to my car and said, “A hug?” How could I refuse? I wrapped my arms around his waist just long enough to detect an unmistakable hint of dad bod. I watched him turn into the light of the parking lot and then he was gone, just another dark stranger in the night, disappearing into the shadows.