The Last of My Bumblebees

This post is dedicated to the last few (dating app) contrasting men I interacted with, who turned out to be major catalysts – pivoting me out of this realm of half-connections:

Chin, my age, a married and poly classy gentleman, started feeling like an old friend to me:

Chin reached out to me on Hinge. I don’t remember why I swiped back on him because neither did I want to talk to a married person nor did I think he was attractive (for me), but once again my hunch led me the right way.

Within a couple of days of chatting intermittently (he is a busy guy with a marriage and a time-consuming job), he invited me to attend a live music performance with him one evening – one of his friends was performing. I said “sure!” and I am so glad I did, because not only did I get to experience live music after so long, some stellar poetry as well – but I also got to spend a stress-free evening with a thorough gentleman. He didn’t even touch me all night. Aaah. That was good.

I had assumed that we would be at the live music thing for a while and then we could head to the sea-face promenade nearby and walk around and chitchat before I headed home again. But life had other, better plans. We attended the whole performance (3 people performed – 2 musicians and 1 poet and she was particularly surprising and lovely!) till it was maybe 11pm or some such. And then he was hungry, so we stepped out into the bustling Bandra bylanes and waited for his kebabs to arrive. We stood around for a long time waiting outside the small shop and talked away. It was nice. It was definitely a bit awkward, but nice.

Then I said I shall push off for the night (after 12am) and walked around looking for an auto. I gave him a few “thank you” hugs with his consent because I had had a really good evening. I had done the live music thing after ages and also I had felt such a lack of pressure from this guy all night – pressure as in, we weren’t flirting, he wasn’t making any moves, we had just enjoyed the music standing near each other.

Apparently he thought I was very cool, all the time that we were around each other, which is what he told me the next day. I guess he liked how I interacted with and cheered on the performers and stood right near the stage where they were performing (we must always respect the performer/ artist by giving them our full attention – after all they are putting themselves oh so vulnerably out there for our pleasure). Hmm.

Anyway, we stayed in touch intermittently afterwards. Tried to meet a couple more times in the middle, but couldn’t make it work – till the last week of my 3 month stay in Bombay, when we managed to meet for lunch. I was coming back from a korean comfort food making class where I had made kimchi and bibimbap and was looking and feeling very cute. I met him for our platonic lunch date. We talked for 4 hours, after which he wanted to head home, I dropped him off and he handed me a gift he had made for me – a ‘coffee and sugar’ body scrub. So cute! I used and finished the whole jar over a few baths before I left Bombay and thanked him for the thoughtful gift.

We have mostly been platonic with each other. And its been a delight.

I anyway have not felt any sexual or romantic interest or attraction with Chin, but I have definitely enjoyed his company. Only once did he full-on come on to me by proposing that we cuddle and let our bodies do what they wanted to, in the flow. But since I don’t lead people on when I am not into them, I didn’t take that on board or pursue it or flirt back. I just let it respectfully hang there. I never revisited it. Neither did He. And magically, I didn’t lose his friendship over this. He understood my vibe and that I respect Him as friend and wish to remain friends. And since then we have stayed in touch on a weekly basis mostly.

Our conversations have been cool since I am open to talk about anything and everything the Sun. He, as do so many other men/ people, finds me very open-minded and non-judgmental to talk to. I agree with him. I say so because even though I have been so curious about his marriage and his ‘poly’ ambitions (how does it work? who decided or proposed that they would be in an open marriage? how does he deal with his wife’s other partner/ bf? does he get jealous? does he feel lonely? etc.) but I still haven’t asked him anything since we became friendly (since March’ 2025, and at the time of writing this post we are at the end of September) because I wouldn’t want Him to feel uncomfortable.

He often ends up referring to or talking about his wife, and once or twice he has apologised and asked me if that’s okay and my answer has always been a surprised “why would you apologise?!?” “she is a huge part of your life, you & I aren’t romantically involved” so why wouldn’t it be perfectly normal for you to talk to me about your life, of which your Wife is a huge part!

We are friends. I am glad I swiped back on Him. We have talked and laughed a lot together. I have narrated many a story from my dating app career to Him. So Has He. It has been a comfy good time. I value Him and our friendship.

May it continue for as long as we need it/ enjoy it. Cheers to Chin & I!

Husein, 35, beautiful man in the shape of my desire, still walks around in his underwear in my mind’s eye:

I won’t say much about Husein except for the main things that shaped my interaction with him.

Our acquaintance lasted only a few days. Chatted with him for hours one late night, got on a voice call, liked talking away with/ at him – actually I did most of the talking. He listened intently.

Decided to have him come over to meet and cuddle (maybe) one friday. Enjoyed talking with him face to face. He had had a tough life, father left his mother and him very early on. Single mother raised him and I think she did a good job.

This dude was/ is built beautifully – aaaaahhhh my dream body. I didn’t know this (that I had a dream body-type now) till he held me. He was in his underwear, holding a topless me (I was on my period). Oh my goodness how glorious it felt when he was on top of me, kissing my breasts holding me in his big arms so gently. Wow. What a gorgeous specimen!

Big shoulders, big arms (not the gym-bulging types), chiseled waist, gorgeous ass, strong legs – all built at home. Piece of human art. Wow.

(Oh and his cock is gorgeous as well)

He was perfect for me – at his 5’9 or 5’10 height. Me at my 5 feet 🙂

We could only spend a little bit of time making out and cuddling before he had to push off – because we had spent most of our time talking on my living room sofa, until I asked him to cuddle me. A few minutes later he asked to kiss me 🙂

Till that day I thought “wow what a nice dude!” and “wow, we have chemistry and we get on well too!”, “want to meet him again and make out much more next time” etc.

But there was a twist in the story from the next day onwards. It started becoming clear to me that he wasn’t a fan of me as a person suddenly. He wanted to fuck me for sure, and he wanted to spend more time together because (as everyone says) my home space is beautifully cozy and comfy.

He didn’t really like me – didn’t really like me as a person or human. He found me annoying I suppose. Shrug emoji. I am not sure of the exact nature of the dislike, but HE DID NOT REALLY LIKE ME AS A PERSON. The end.

Not only that, he made some off-colour “jokes” with me towards the end of our acquaintance. I really didn’t understand the change in this person or my perception – shrug emoji.

I am pleased to say that even though the image of his gobsmacking half naked body standing in my bedroom’s doorway is so clearly etched in my my mind’s eye, I let him go within just a few days.

I want to say here that I took every opportunity I could to compliment this man on his unbelievable hotness – I believe beauty must be appreciated (with consent of course). What a gorgeous specimen, wow. AND I also honestly told him that I didn’t feel like he Liked me as a human, and that for me was a dealbreaker. I have no interest in kissing someone without knowing/ feeling that I am liked by the person I am kissing/ spending time with.

So, Husein & my story is very short but it showed me two things straight up – a body type that is made for me AND my non-negotiable priorities.

I am no servant/ hostage to mere shallow beauty/ hotness no matter how horny and ready I may be. That was a nice reminder.

I thank Husein for quietly exiting my life after I let him go. Cheers to him.

And definitely cheers to me!

Arpit, 40, a mirror to my shadows & unhealed wounds; shed light on how I could potentially shrink myself to chase a mirage, unintentionally brought clarity to my life:

On 21st April, 2025, after I stepped out of my morning yoga course class in Bombay, I received a notification from Hinge (the other dating app that I was on). It was a sweet Hello from a man claiming to have read my posts on this site about mushrooms. He was fanboying by his own admission. He assumed I was a badass of some sort (which of course I am, but maybe his definition varied from mine).

I remember the date he reached out and also many other tiny details of our interactions because that’s how my brain works – I remember random details about people and events.

I have written a couple of long long endless theses on this guy to try to make sense of the Arpit story (saved as draft posts for this page). But I am not going to dump that all here. I will try to keep this shorter because what follows after Arpit is the real gold I wish to document.

Right from the get-go it was clear that Arpit was a hyper-sexual conversationalist and that made me uncomfortable (as I told him much later). An almost-complete lack of warmth didn’t help either. He asked many probing questions about my sexual behaviours right at the start and then throughout as well – it honestly felt like I was being auditioned for a porn film. Me no Likey!

Someone wise has said, “Intimacy isn’t physical first… It’s emotional safety first. Because the body can’t open where the soul doesn’t feel safe.”

Of course this is not his fault, I should’ve / could’ve stopped the conversation due to my discomfort with the sexual enquiries, but didn’t because He offered breadcrumbs of affection/ warmth and I chased those (scares me frankly – how I sought his attention, affection & validation). I feel shitty about that but I get it now. Its a shadow wound (needing to prove my worth to someone who might not agree) that I have become aware of because of Him. I thank him for this.

He would start a chat with “hey sexy“, “how’s my girl doing?”, a lot of “my girl” & “good girl“; and it would melt me. Haha. I was putty in his textual hands, a bit, for sure, those couple of months.

He showed me the power of my inner voice/ intuition and how highly protective it is of me. I say this because even though I was majorly disregarding my intuition (which had clearly indicated that Arpit was NOT FOR ME AT ALL), I was still being protected from him. Meaning, we never met, even though I really tried to make it happen.

When I say that I was being “protected from him”, I do not in any sense mean protected from any sort of violence or mal-intent (I am sure he is a gentleman who fully understands and honours consent and chemistry etc.), but rather I mean that I was being protected from the TOTAL emotional, spiritual, philosophical, energetic MISMATCH that could have been uncomfortable/ unpleasant at best and damaging/ scarring at worst.

He, however, was very honest with himself in this regard – he understood and declared to me that He & I were TOO DIFFERENT from one another (Him sounding like a wild animal who has attended orgies and likes to lick a woman from “ass to clit”, needs his cock sucked as priority, has only been with “cock-worshippers” etc. and lil old ‘coy’ inexperienced Me newly discovering who I am sexually).

[Interestingly, no other man (out of the 20 or so men I interacted with with some longevity over the last one year) has ever used that word to describe me – ‘coy’. Every man I have interacted with has seen/ received my bold, frank, expressive, forthcoming, sensual confidence & eagerness.]

Anyway, He was ABSOLUTELY right (about Us being terribly Too different). He should have backed off once he understood this, and maybe he tried to as well, but I insisted on flirting with him!! I let my curiosity, imagination and loneliness get the better of me. I didn’t/ couldn’t back off either.

He claimed to be a ‘dom’ in his relationships. That sounded sexy to me – it made me realise that I want a man I can respect/ look up to, a man that can lead me in bed and maybe in the relationship too. But his version of ‘dom’ seemed to be about being withholding, having his needs met first, and he DID NOT seem protective or nurturing or warm etc.

(But isn’t it natural for a dom to nurture and care for their sub? That’s part of the deal dude!)

Through Him I learnt that I would love a leader (man/ partner) in my bed and in my life as well, but not a leader in terms of masculine ego or some sort of a toxic hierarchy, but a man who is calm, patient, loving, cares about understanding and loving the human before wanting to fuck Her, who could be a reservoir of stillness for my creativity & madness, can handle my emotion/ passion/ boisterousness, lead me in a way that I respect (in bed and otherwise), is a container to my fire, makes me feel safe & desired enough to slut-out with him 🙂

I must pause here and state clearly that I am not hating on Arpit. I, in fact on the contrary, hold unnecessary unwarranted affection for Him.

The little wounded child in me wanted to please Him so much, wanted to be adored by Him, wanted to feel wanted by Him. And of course, till the end he did tell me, “I have the hots for you”, but I don’t know what this was based on.

Even though our “story” is very short, and we didn’t even meet, I could still write a mini-book about all that transpired, all my thoughts and feelings about all of it.

To try to bring this to a close, I will say this, with some sadness (there was immense sadness in June-July, but revisiting this now in end of September, the sadness is just fumes – I have moved on) that in the end, from my point of view, Arpit turned out to be a cliche and that hit me hard, because my assumption has been that I won’t be met with cliches (because I ain’t one myself).

But, maybe I became a cliche too where it concerned Arpit – clinging to a man who wasn’t being very nice, who was withholding attention or affection or desire, a man who wasn’t interested in my ‘stories’ unless I was going to fuck him the way he wanted me to. I clung to Arpit. I did. What a cliché (me!). This really hurt my ego. And it showed how readily I could have tried to shrink Myself and what I desire – for his attention, contort myself into a shape that He would ‘like’/ ‘love’.

Back to him being a cliché – to me, he became one in the sense that he showered me with attention in the beginning and then he slowly faded away, and by the end of it – he almost fully vanished when I began openly expressing my lusty desire for him e.g. taking 5 days (literally!) to respond to my very sexy/ flirty texts. That stung. Of course, this is when I said goodbye to him and closed the ill-fated connection that we shared.

I confess that I fell in love with him a little bit – the mirage of Him, my insanely vivid imagination of Him. And of course that MAKES NO SENSE TO ME TODAY AS I WRITE THIS, but it felt like I have fallen in love with a complete stranger, an idea, a potential, a thing that doesn’t exist. This made me feel like an idiot. Haha, poor me!

My head was in a washing machine spin cycle when it concerned Arpit. I became a nincompoop towards the middle of our interactions. I felt so small, so grand, so lame, so cool – under his eye/ words. All at the same time.

He felt like a God, a potential ‘daddy’, a bully, a snob, a withholding bastard

– all at the same time.

Arpit came like a whirlwind of attention, information and questions, expanded my perspective about a few things with his stubborn points of view, made up his mind about me pretty quickly, didn’t let me go when he should have, got me hooked on his attention, made me feel small and not sexy/ wild enough, wanted but not wanted enough, and then just basically treated me with disrespect (the silence, the delay in responding etc.) until I checked my self-respect and walked away.

Having said the above I want to say that, to me, a few times in our chats He did seem really nice, even warm or caring, and about halfway through our acquaintance I felt so much affection for Him – I wanted to sit in his lap, facing him, and planting a hundred kisses on his face. I felt this for a long time.

I wanted Him to like me, I wanted Him to want to meet me (which he said he did), I wanted him to care about me, be warm towards me, be silly with me, take me out for a drive (I don’t have a car in Bombay – my car resides in Kanpur), to want to cuddle me, to want to talk to me (irrespective of whether I would be a suitable sexual partner or not), for him to be sweet with me (about which he once said “too much sweetness is gay” !!!!!! – such a huge red flag my god!).

Anyway…

Towards the end (before I said goodbye), there was a day, in the beginning of July’2025 when I couldn’t stop crying. In the midst of all the tears, a thought occurred to me – I want to love a man.

This was such a big pivot for me to realise – I had been thinking/ claiming my intention to be ‘polyamorous’ since I had spent 13 years with one person only and then I had retired from romance for another 6 or 7 years. So after 20 years of being this way, I imagined that I “deserve” to “explore” and have as many lovers and paramours as I like.

Also because I had told myself, “I doubt I could fall in love ever again” (jaded divorced person speaking), this thought of “I want to love a man” freaked me out. How did Arpit do this to me/ in me? (of course he DIDN’T DO ANYTHING – it was all MEEEEEE – for all I know, I have not mattered much to this person throughout).

At the time this disruptive thought occurred to me – I felt/ misunderstood it as “I want to love Arpit, but he won’t let me!” But it wasn’t about him at all. It was about the Man who is maybe somewhere out there, waiting for Me. A man who will lead me, a man who will be warm, a man who will have the strength to hold me in all my nakedness and vulnerability, a man who will see my journey and witness my powers without needing to dim them, the man who will be a safe haven, a home for Me.

None of the above is his fault – he simply came to me as a mirror and exposed the last-remaining chinks in my self-love. How it hurt, wow. Breathtaking.

Bless you Arpit. Thank you for treating me in such a confusing way that I was forced to exit your world, Arpit. Thank you for releasing me from that absolutely mind-fucking confounding half-connection. Thank you for your insincerity, your disregard, your nonchalance, your coldness. Had you not been that way with me, I would’ve gotten lost instead of getting focused on what I must do next.

I love you, the Arpit that actually exists, lives and breathes somewhere in Bombay. But, I LOVE the Arpit of my imagination much much more.

Both these men have brought life-altering levels of clarity to my point of view on men, love, romance, and what I want and don’t, what I deserve and don’t. I thank them both for this gift that is shaping this lovergirl’s life-direction now.

Darsh, 33, lovely human, poet, rapper, musician, a loveable goof, aspiring standup comedian, an anxious horny sincere sweet sweet sexy boy:

Aaaaah Darsh. Uff, what a sweetheart. It was shitty to let him go. Around the time I had swiped back on Arpit on Hinge, I had almost fully gone off the dating apps. I had gotten quite jaded with Bombay men online. Also, I had become so excited-confused-titilated-hungry-thirsty-fixated about Arpit that there was not much room left for any other man to capture my attention. And I had lost the will to multitask. So, gradually I had come off the dating apps barring the ritualistic staring at the “who liked you” pages on both Bumble & Hinge, scrolling up and down, then giving up and closing the apps.

Of course I did try to connect with 2-4 people during this time. But that’s it.

The absolute last person I ever swiped back on on Bumble was Darsh, and what a good call! My hunch won again! What an angel, this man. Love him.

I will try to keep this short.

He conveyed to me, over our acquaintance that I was his ideal woman (sexually) – older, “plus size”, short, pretty. He told me I was very hot (to him). I found him very attractive too. He was openly silly. Sometimes it was annoying / badly timed, but mostly it was fun and adorable. Very polite, very obviously a gentleman, very wise (sometimes he said/ says things that are well beyond his years or experience – he might be an old soul). He reminded me of Ayub in some ways – his curiosity, asking me questions and then really being into the answers I provided from my POV.

We spoke on a voice call on our second night chatting or maybe the first itself (I don’t recall exactly) and I talked and talked and talked and he listened and listened (Husein did the same for me). I told him all about my dating app experiences and he seemed to enjoy them quite a bit – told me I should write a book about it (not the first or last man/ person to tell me this). I really enjoyed talking with him.

We didn’t start out by sexting or flirting outright. We chatted generally a lot. And it was no holds barred – I am anyway an open book and very honest and non-judgmental in general, on top of which he is a great conversationalist as well. It was super lovely to talk to him about literally anything or everything. I loved this guy!

He began slowly revealing his desire for me, but not in overwhelming ways – it was quite classy. And then I pounced on him, virtually. Haha. I shared media with him – fully aware of my powers. And mind you, I was also very attracted to this person. I wasn’t doing him a favour by seducing him, I was fully enjoying Him and Him me.

We texted either every day or every other day.

I had thought I would meet him if and when I flew to his city next. I wanted to make love with him, because everything that he seemed to want to do to me, I wanted it done 🙂

And I wanted to blow his mind and other organs as well (wink emoji).

Darsh is near-perfect. For any woman. As I have told him, he is a gift to women.

He truly is. He has his weaknesses, chinks or flaws (who doesn’t). He has high levels of self-awareness too (a huge plus!), which is seriously rare amongst dating app men as per my experience (or amongst men in general) (or amongst people in general!!!). Whenever he would feel overwhelmed by his life, anxious or disturbed by circumstance he would not only know it, be aware of it, but also clearly communicate it with me (“hey, I wil get back to you once I feel better mentally“).

In his self-awareness, after I had praised him about being a sweetheart and about being curious about being intimate with him, he had promptly replied with a stupid “oh, I can assure you I am a moron“. It was almost like he was trying to warn me, “hey lady, do not fall for me, I am a moron, please be warned and please be afraid!” And I took his word for it – I do not argue with people about what they say about themselves any more. If he says he is a moron, I must believe that he is one. Period.

Okay so long story short – there is so much beauty to write about this boy and how much I enjoyed his virtual company and his humanity (he seemed to be a complete contrast to Arpit!) and his desire for me, but I won’t – on the last day when we chatted, I was telling him about Arpit in short, about how I was still sort of hung up on him, and about my big realisation/ revelation while saying goodbye to Arpit [i.e. “I want to love a man/ pour love into A man“, (singular man)]

This freaked him out a bit I guess.

He immediately expressed a discomfort he had been having apparently – he said that since his last couple of heartbreaks he had decided to prioritise Himself and his needs and his creative needs. And so he felt like he was half-assing all his connections (including me) and he didn’t like that. He was decidedly detached he said. And he wondered if this would end up hurting me.

I naturally scoffed at this, because it seemed like he was assuming that I was falling in love with him and hence might get hurt, or that I was viewing him as potential romantic partner – which I wasn’t. I really really liked him, wanted to meet him, to hang out and to have Him make love to me exactly how he had described his desire to. That’s that. I am not nonchalant, I do not care about hiding my desires or liking for someone. I do not play games, I am transparent. I detest nonchalance. I detest coolness/ coldness/ pretences. I am Me, and I openly express desire, liking and affection if it’s part of my felt-truth.

So, I assured him that his fears about me feeling hurt are unfounded, but then within a moment something flipped in my brain. I began feeling emotional.

I knew I had to let Him go – I had to let this beautiful boy/ man go. I knew it. I told him “lets sleep on it“, it being an evaluation of whether we should let each other go considering our individual life-stages and desires and priorities.

I said good night after he said that it hadn’t been his intention to “break it off between us” when he expressed what he did and that he felt bad that we were talking like this all of a sudden (considering parting ways).

After I put the phone away, I broke into a quiet sad cry. Wow. It was breathtaking. Something momentous had dawned upon me and I knew what I must do next.

More on this in the next post.