Then, as the session ends, I find myself wondering if she is on Tinder

Still, as the evening progresses, I can’t shake the disquieting impression that Meg isn’t interested in me so much as whatever fantasy she’s concocted based on my Tinder profile

So reads the message that appears on my phone the next morning. And not just a new match, but three! There’s Michelle, as well as 33 -year-old Ashley, and Lori, a 22-year-old whom I felt vaguely creepy for liking in the first place. While this is not as thrilling as catching a stranger returning your nervous smile from across a room, my ego swells at the thought of these women deeming me worthy of a rightward swipe. Michelle has gone ahead and taken the initiative, writing me a message that reads, in its hieroglyphic entirety: “hi : ).” I delete five drafts before settling on a response (“Hi there. Good morning”) and feel, as I hit send, like a ninth grader who’s just passed a note to the cheerleader in algebra class.

I spend two weeks in New York, hoping it will prove to be an especially fertile ground to get my Tinder on. It does not disappoint. Within two days, I’ve been matched with more than 60 women. One night I meet up with Nicole, a 34-year-old designer of throw pillows, and when it’s clear that neither of us is really feeling it, I log on to Tinder and set up a date with Casey, a 28-year-old who works at Google, whom I meet at a bar up the block an hour later for… a repeat of the same experience! Two days later, things take a promising turn when I find myself at a Brooklyn taco joint with Meg, a 29-year-old fashion exec I’d exchanged a flurry of messages with. Our conversation is effortless and flirty, and we don’t realize we’re the last ones in the restaurant until the waiter politely tells us they’re trying to close. She keeps telling me how she can’t wait to take a ride on my motorcycle, a reference to one of my Tinder photos, in which I am straddling a Triumph, one I admittedly put up to look cooler than I am. When I confess to Meg that the bike isn’t mine and that the photo was taken during the first and only time I’d ridden one, she doesn’t seem to hear me. As we kiss on a street corner at the end of the night, she whispers, “Next time, pick me up on the bike.”

So I delete the app. I resume my old routine: working, cooking, meandering through the city, and spending a disproportionate amount of time at the yoga studio, where the act of contorting myself proves to be a more sustainable way of combating loneliness than swiping images of women on my phone. At class one Saturday, I notice a woman in the back row whom I’ve seen a few times over the past three months but have been too shy to approach. Maybe, I think, I should download the app again, give it one more shot, and swipe and swipe and swipe until I find her . . . except , wait a second! She’s right there. I have found her. But does she want to be found? That’s always the question, and there is only one way to find out.

Still, as the evening progresses, I can’t shake the disquieting impression that Meg isn’t interested in me so much as whatever fantasy she’s concocted based on my Tinder profile

So reads the message that appears on my phone the next morning. And not just a new match, but three! There’s Michelle, as well as 33 -year-old Ashley, and Lori, a 22-year-old whom I felt vaguely creepy for liking in the first place. While this is not as thrilling as catching a stranger returning your nervous smile from across a room, my ego swells at the thought of these women deeming me worthy of a rightward swipe. Michelle has gone ahead and taken the initiative, writing me a message that reads, in its hieroglyphic entirety: “hi : ).” I delete five drafts before settling on a response (“Hi there. Good morning”) and feel, as I hit send, like a ninth grader who’s just passed a note to the cheerleader in algebra class.

I spend two weeks in New York, hoping it will prove to be an especially fertile ground to get my Tinder on. It does not disappoint. Within two days, I’ve been matched with more than 60 women. One night I meet up with Nicole, a 34-year-old designer of throw pillows, and when it’s clear that neither of us is really feeling it, I log on to Tinder and set up a date with Casey, a 28-year-old who works at Google, whom I meet at a bar up the block an hour later for… a repeat of the same experience! Two days later, things take a promising turn when I find myself at a Brooklyn taco joint with Meg, a 29-year-old fashion exec I’d exchanged a flurry of messages with. Our conversation is effortless and flirty, and we don’t realize we’re the last ones in the restaurant until the waiter politely tells us they’re trying to close. She keeps telling me how she can’t wait to take a ride on my motorcycle, a reference to one of my Tinder photos, in which I am straddling a Triumph, one I admittedly put up to look cooler than I am. When I confess to Meg that the bike isn’t mine and that the photo was taken during the first and only time I’d ridden one, she doesn’t seem to hear me. As we kiss on a street corner at the end of the night, she whispers, “Next time, pick me up on the bike.”

So I delete the app. I resume my old routine: working, cooking, meandering through the city, and spending a disproportionate amount of time at the yoga studio, where the act of contorting myself proves to be a more sustainable way of combating loneliness than swiping images of women on my phone. At class one Saturday, I notice a woman in the back row whom I’ve seen a few times over the past three months but have been too shy to approach. Maybe, I think, I should download the app again, give it one more shot, and swipe and swipe and swipe until I find her . . . except , wait a second! She’s right there. I have found her. But does she want to be found? That’s always the question, and there is only one way to find out.