To set the scene, it was Summer School. Already a pretty cursed time of year. Half the campus was deserted, and the people left milling around campus were a little strange. I mean, who does Uni during the holidays? To add to the isolation, none of my flatmates had moved in yet. I was bored out of my brain. So naturally, I downloaded Tinder.
I match with this guy – normal enough, not the hottest. Good chat, a bit flirty and definitely possessed some confidence. The kind of conversation we were having was the one that skips very quickly past small talk and lands somewhere much more… Direct. We ended up meeting up one night, and I’ll say it was not a “grab a coffee and politely discuss our majors” kind of situation. But it's summer, right? No rules, no consequences, all that shit. So after our magical night of pleasure, I go about my life, sending sporadic messages for the next couple of weeks. Pretty crucially, it had never occurred to me that my path might cross again with this man. Oh boy – how wrong I was about to be.
The paper I was enrolled in over summer was fairly easy, and I was honestly just doing it so I could claim student loan over the summer. When combined with the fact I had decided to take a very lax approach to my studies (strictly online, camera off, mic muted), I don’t think I visited campus for the whole holiday until I was dragging myself into a much too small, much too warm room to give my stupid final presentation for the course. But things were about to get a whole lot worse, and even hotter (due to feeling violently ill and embarrassed). I saw him.
It was immediate, gut-dropping recognition. I mean, after all, he was the man I had made some… deeply extracurricular memories with. Ōtepoti is too small on a good day, but this little summer situation made me realise nobody is safe from awkward eye contact with an ex hook-up.
For a split second, I thought that maybe (hopefully) he was just another student. But alas, he walks straight past me, to the front of the room. Puts his bag down, and starts to plug in his laptop. Because guess what? He is the fucking tutor of this paper.
I have truly never experienced more of a complete internal collapse. Looking back, I can genuinely say it was one of the worst days of my life. I am stuck sitting there, clutching my notes, while my brain is replaying every horny message we have sent, every questionable decision I had made, and that entire albeit pleasure-filled night, in vivid detail. The worst part was that we had been talking for weeks. Not super consistently, but enough that there surely could be no chance he hadn’t made the connection.
The seminar began, and we were both acting like we hadn't shared a night of mutual satisfaction just a mere month before. Then, of course, it gets worse. Because I have to present my stupid fucking presentation. So now I'm standing at the front of the room, speaking nonsense about some [REDACTED] topic, while the man who had seen me in a completely different context is sitting there, grinding me. Sorry, I meant grading me.
I don't remember a single word I said. But I do remember thinking that it was the most humbling experience of my life. And it was. Luckily I got out of the room unscathed, and also somehow passed the paper. Woohoo.
