Love Free or Die - Installation 1 (read the screen shots)

An account of true love, out of frame and with some context.

Who was first?

The first conversation we had was mundane, something about school. Screen shots included below and in the future - to invite the reader to see, for themselves, if they can make the connections that I did. Please read them. The nuance is important, and they make the story.

Anyway, there were nudes of me online. I think he followed me first after I posted a nude in Aella’s thread.. Like 100 ppl did. For sure, when I cat called him on a vid, he DM’d. “You’re in Cali, right?”

Who started it is hard to say.. 

We were flirty friends for a min..

The basic first DM went something like,

Tripp: Sup girl, you’re in Cali, right?

Nicole: Hey boy, I’m in UT now.. and as much as I wanna cat call you for being beautiful forever, I’m not super available rn bc too many boys.

Tripp: That’s chill, you can flirt w me anyway. BTW I have an accent and play the guitar.. but the guitar has to wait for the second date. Accent is on the first. :)

We add each other on Insta. We talk about dating, sex, our relationship history, what we’re looking for in a partner.. It’s charged w innuendo, self-deprecating sarcasm, and also honesty. He’s too young for me. I’m recovering from other boys. Love is still mysterious. We’re def attracted to each other.

His attitude about dating older girls, or girls with different lifestyles, just in general - was .. maybe. (I’m ~8 yrs older than him. Currently 34, he’s 26).

He tells me I could get laid. I tell him later that I’m waiting for love. Sex is too emotional. Edgy (for me) to admit that. but true. He’s kinda the same. As of writing this, it’s been a little over 6 years since I’ve actually engaged in intercourse w a man. I’ve been w a couple of women, and messed around with two men that I was SUPER into. I don’t really hook up anymore and that will provide perhaps meaningful context later..

We never end up talking or touching IRL. We just sort of.. flirt and chat in DM/Insta and on the Twitter timeline. For months it was just kind of about the tease..

Time moves on, he’s all over my twitter in the replies..

Some may question (and some have questioned) us in terms of, was Tripp really that into Nicole? The data doesn’t lie. His chosen interaction w me over the course of 5 months, at 3 different data points, showed his focus on me. Dude was replying to my replies like:

On his 25th birthday, he’s drunk in Europe consoling me about how I like men more when they ignore me. I tell him it’s not true. Also alcohol is a truth serum and his focus was on me that night. I basically decide then that he’s worth dating if he cares about me enough to be available to me like that, on a super fun night in Europe.

He DM’s me things like this:

Messy and we both wanted clarity.

He’s focused on other chicks in Europe and when he gets back to the US - and my availability sort of waxes and wains. Eventually I hit on him more directly, he notices, and I kind of like, want him to be honest with me about what he wants and I think he wants the same thing - bc he keeps asking me about what I want and what love means to me. I make jokes about having kids with him. He responds with questions about timing and likes it. So he’s not really backing down from any of these advances he’s leaning into them and continuing to ask me what I want.

When a friend read these messages, he asked me about the difference between intended vs explicit questions. As a girl, when a man, that flirts with you, DM’s you to ask why you liked a post about his current status as single, in general it’s because he wants to know about your interest in him. The context of these make the implied question behind them, to me, more powerful. He asked softly first, then more bluntly when he got frustrated with ambiguous answers from me.

Another example of him asking if his romantic interest is returned:

Later we’ll look at context shift and ambiguity. Tripp can play with shift in context, and use ambiguity to test an answer to a question or to communicate more than one piece of information. In this case, it can be read as if Tripp is telling Nicole she’s hoping for him to love her.. Or, it can be read as Tripp asking if his love is returned - like, is Tripp hopefully thinking she’ll return his feels? Context and intention shift the meaning of his question about hopeful thinking. I play it back with ambiguity, with an answer: No you were definitely being caring - I’m not confirming either way that I want him romantically.. ( later I do.) The intention here (I’m guessing) was to force me into showing him my feelings by declaring my frame of reference and context with an answer.. which I dodged. lol. It also referenced the convo we had on his bday, about how wishfully I hope dudes neg me, with the intention of not hurting me but winning me. And I think he was pointing to the fact that he was being kind to me when they weren’t. “Was this on insta” wasn’t about him not remembering the convo we had, because it’s referenced in this thread. It was about pointing to the fact that he was being nice to me in public, when other boys weren’t. The conversation referenced - on Tripp’s bday (for inquiry and completeness) is below.

Another example of ambiguity on Twitter was this joke about bisexuality. A lot of people read this as homophobic, but to me it was a sarcastic nod to bisexual erasure..

Tripp, in our first convo, made the point that relying on the good will of your community to see the best in you is a tough bet. But it also helps to write consicely (unless the goal is to gauge the internal framework your audience is using to read your writing with.. Like will they lean towards, is Tripp bisexual, or homophobic? And is it okay to joke about bisexual erasure, or more okay to be homophobic. It’s like a way to A/B test audience sentiment.) And he’s aware of it:

This is a nuanced story - but the details matter. We both play with subtlety.. I’m going to teach you how to read it with us.

The point is, we were clearly falling hard and very, very interested in each other, for a very VERY long time.

Weirdly, after 6 months, I finally answer his question and let him know I’m into dating him - he ghosts. Then blocks.

He was studying for some important finals and was stressed about it so I gave him a grace period of like, 2 weeks after I told him I wanted to date. No reply from him - then asked him if he wanted to respond to me. He freaked out and said he didn’t know what I wanted (I was explicit about that as shown in above screen shot of insta - that I wanted to date him and was feeling it harder than friends) so he was just totally ignoring the words on the page. Then I just said something like “okay”. And he blocked me. After all of that.

As easy as it is to write this off as, man he just got overwhelmed, or was an asshole, there’s more at play. He’s not the first person to do this. It’s been every dude for almost a decade… someone is fucking with me. And it’s horrible.

This romance also didn’t stop there - it just continued out of frame. Tripp and I have been interacting and falling in love for more than a year.

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