Would You Ask Your Dating App Match to Help You Move a Couch for your First Hinge Date
I asked a hinge date to help me move a couch. And then documented the whole thing on Instagram.
Look, being a single woman in NYC is rough. I don’t have the luxury of a partner to help me move stuff on a whim. That and I have a huge shopping problem. Retail therapy, as I like to call it, more often. The only problem is that I like many twenty-somethings in the city, I’m pretty much broke. I’m a girl with expensive taste but horrible debt. So I’m always looking for the next deal. Very much like Isla Fisher in Confessions of a Shopaholic.
So this morning, rather than paying attention to my actual paying job that allows me income, I’m on the Facebook marketplace and eBay, scrolling endlessly through groups like NYC garage sale, free and for sale, and buy nothing. Deals on these groups go fast. So to outbid, outpace, and outsmart all of the stay-at-home manhattan moms out there; I always have the screens on in the background behind my work computer.
And this morning, I saw it. A velvet couch that normally retails for $500. Something that my post-graduate ass could only dream of with my used Ikea furniture I inherited from the NYU student down the hall. It wasn’t pottery barn, CB2, or even west elm. No. It was Wayfair, so close enough in my book.
I immediately message the Facebook girl, who responds that there are other interested buyers. She asks if I can pick it up that same day, and without hesitation, I say yes.
Now comes the tricky part…It’s Wednesday. My roommates are busy. My friends are busy. And it’s 24 degrees in January. But the stubborn, determined girl in me that moved across the country to be here to make a life decided to take charge. I don’t know exactly what came over me, but I immediately went to my Hinge dating profile, clicked the first hinge date that had liked me and matched, and messaged him this: “First date idea, do you want to help me move a couch?”
Within minutes my hinge date replied: “That’s probably one of the better date ideas I’ve heard. What time?”
Bingo.
The couch was mine. I hurriedly sold my horrible couch as quickly as I could. Even discounting it by $50 for the first person who could pick it up. Confirmed pick-up and messaged Hinge date boy back.
Now, this might look like a misadventure straight from How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days, but I’m not joking when I say that we actually had a decent texting conversation once we nailed down the logistics. He seemed charming, funny even. Well-traveled and studying for law school. Crap. I think I actually might like this guy I roped into going into a stranger’s house with me to pick up a couch.
As soon as I confirmed everything, I posted our conversation on Instagram because I couldn’t resist. I was immediately met with,
“Are you Insane?”
“Haven’t you seen ‘You’”?
“Stranger Danger!”
And my personal favorite from my mother:
“I JUST RAN DOWN THE HALLWAY TO THROW UP, AND I’M PRAYING FOR YOU”
She sent that from her work email.
Now came the hard part: moving my current couch out of my room. I seriously have no idea how the movers got it in the door, to begin with. It’s a futon, you see. It comes with a separate cushion, a folding frame, and a cover. And my dumbass didn’t think to take it apart before trying to shove it out the door. It got stuck. I had to remove the cushions while it was stuck in the door frame, and I had to contort my body in such a way to maneuver around it, I could have tried out for Cirque du Soleil.
At this point, I’m dripping with sweat, my roommates are in the middle of zoom meetings, and I’m about to give up on the whole endeavor. I somehow manage to get the damn futon out of my room and into the living room.
Now here comes the fun part. I live on the East Side of Manhattan. The new couch was literally across the island. Given how everything has gone with the subway recently, I opted for a cab instead. My Hinge date and I met at the cross street of the Facebook girl’s apartment. Of course, being who I am as a person and Southerner by nature, I told the girl about my first-date plans. She gleefully cheered me on and texted back that she would be rooting for me. But really, I just wanted the couch.
When my Hinge Date and I met, the first thing I noticed was that he was shorter than he stated in his profile. Come on, guys. Quit doing that. We made our way to the Facebook girl’s apartment in an elevator building. If it had been a walkup, I probably would have died. We quickly assessed the couch and found that it was just as difficult to maneuver out of those doors as mine had been earlier. We ended up taking the couch apart and carrying it piece by piece down to the lobby.
The doorman of that building was incredibly helpful as I called an Uber. XL. It would be a whole 10 minutes of awkward small talk in a building neither of us lived in before the driver pulled up. I think the doorman of that building was the real hero of this story because he immediately noticed my awkward laughs and jumped in to save me.
When the Uber arrived, the driver gave the most exasperated look that I imagine an uber driver could give on a Wednesday in below-freezing temperatures. There was some folding of seats, some uncomfortable broken attempt at Spanish from me, and a whole lot of shoving into the back seat of a minivan before we were on our way.
I really should have tipped the Uber Driver more. He ended up helping carry the couch out of the car to the elevator of my building and only asking that I make sure his car did not get stolen in return.
Getting the couch into my apartment was a whole other issue. My old couch was still in the common area. The way my apartment building works is that the hallways are narrow. Between my Hinge date and I, we had to PIVOT so. many. times. But we got there.
As soon as it was in my room, I officially asked my “date” to dinner. We walked to a Thai place down the street. We exchanged travel stories, worst date stories (this one was not the worst date for either of us), and so on. All over Pad Thai. I ended up paying for dinner because I felt so bad. Considering my date was still a student, he didn’t object. When we walked back to my place, we were immediately met by the guys who were supposed to buy my old couch. We hurriedly said goodbye while I moved to let the buyers in.
Once they were all gone, I sat down, blankets piled high on my new couch, updated my Instagram story informing everyone I was not, in fact, dead, and began to write.
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