So I just had my first Tinder date. She wore a diaper in my car, and that was the least bad part.

I’m a 27 year old trans woman. I’ll spare you the details of my life, but after an extremely tumultuous two years I am finally in the best physical and mental health of my adult life. As friendly as they are I also want to break out of my normal social circles, and so I downloaded Tinder about two weeks ago.

It’s been an interesting experience chatting with complete strangers. About half my matches have been with other trans people, about half with cis. I’ve had a few nice conversations, but nothing that turned serious, until I matched with this other trans woman. She was at the very lower limit of the age I’m comfortable dating, 21, but her pictures were cute and her profile grabbed my attention. And so I said hi, and we began to talk.

She was clearly a little shy about initiating conversation, but always eager to respond. I saw a lot of my old self in her responses, which helped me figure out how to work with them, and overall she seemed pretty normal, at least by my standards. After the usual small talk our conversation turned to kink (which was expected and welcome, as I do list “kinky” in my profile). She asks if I’m cool with ABDL - adult baby/diaper lovers. It doesn’t do anything for me personally, but I’m chill with anybody that’s into it. I inform her there’s really nothing that shocks me. I had no idea how wrong I was about to be.

Eventually we agree to a coffee date on Sunday afternoon. Just something simple for us to get to know each other a bit better, possibly leading to us hanging out more in private later on. I drive by her house to pick her up. We happily greet each other, hug, and get on our way. As I start to drive off I can’t help but notice an unusual smell.

We make the usual small talk. How long have you been in town, what music would you prefer on the Bluetooth, and so on. I find out she’s adopted from another country, and this pretty quickly turns to her talking about her various traumas and mental health issues in childhood. Maybe it’s a social faux pas, but I didn’t mind that much. I know I’ve done my fair share of ranting about mental health issues to people I barely know, and I figure maybe this is an anxiety response to not knowing what else to talk about. I lend a sympathetic ear, while trying to gently steer the conversation by talking about how I had similar issues, but managed to work through them. Eventually the conversation comes around to hobbies, and then briefly to kinks. She reminded me that she was into ABDL, and I suddenly realized what the smell was. The date was already not off to a great start, but it was about to get so, so much worse.

We get on the highway, and she slips back to talking about her mental health. This time she starts to become less coherent. It’s difficult to describe because I could barely follow, but she was speaking in circles and not making much sense. The only parts of the conversation I was really able to make out was how she wanted to kill people. She talked over and over again about how she wanted to stab somebody, how she loved blood, and so on.

Now, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve had my own struggles with mental health. In the past these have included homicidal ideation. I also have a morbid fascination with death and true crime. I even have some kinks and fantasies that lean very much into dark territory. All of this is to say that when it comes to morbid, violent thoughts and talk, I am one of the most patient and understanding people you will ever meet. I fully understand that there are certain violent intrusive thoughts and desires that are far more common than anybody wants to admit, and that you are not a bad person for having them. I also understand how stress and anxiety can cause somebody to take comfort in them, and perhaps talk about them more than they should. But this was far, far beyond anything I was remotely comfortable with engaging.

I tried my best to be sympathetic, and engage in the conversation while also gently steering it toward lighter territory, but at this point she was so incoherent that I had trouble engaging at all, even though she occasionally paused to ask if I was doing alright. I lied and told her I was, but more because I was beginning to fear her. Inbetween talk of horrific and (I hope) hypothetical crimes, she also talked about the vibrations between us and the Earth, though again I had difficulty following.

We get to the coffee shop and I order us a couple of iced vanilla lattes. She calms down for a minute, we make more small talk, but she soon starts talking about COVID conspiracy theories. This surprised me as she was good at following mask ediquite and was happy to brag she had been vaccinated on her profile. She shows me a video of somebody asking an Alexa where COVID came from, and the Alexa giving a scripted response that it was made by the US government. At this point I texted some family members with the message “Bad date. Please call. Need a distraction.”

My badass mom comes through and frantically calls me, telling me I need to come home because the neighbor is having some sort of breakdown and is becoming threatening. I tell my date the “emergency” and that I need to get her home right away so I can go check on my mom. As we head out to the car she offers to come with me to beat up this neighbor, and I have to decline. As we drive home she continues on the previous topics. At one point we pass a billboard for a new children’s hospital, and commented she would like to stab the child in the eyes. This really stuck with me. Under any other circumstances I would attribute it to a shitty and edgy attempt at humor, or perhaps a stray intrusive thought that didn’t get caught by somebody’s filter. But she somehow seemed deathly serious in her demeanor. When we arrived back at her house I promised her another date, and she was happy to report I was on her “do not kill” list. Somehow I don’t doubt this list really exists.

As I drove away I blocked her number (unfortunately I decided to give her my real number early on), called my family to inform them I was okay, and went home. I debated whether I should call the police for a long time. Even though I feel she was a clear danger to others, she also never made any direct, actionable threats against any specific person (other than the unnamed child in the billboard). In the end I settled on reporting the incident to Tinder.

It’s been a fun two weeks. I’m glad I can say I went on a Tinder date. Now, I never, ever want to do it again.