Matchstick

Illustration by Eduard Jude Jamolin

“Male, ripped, law student, loves dogs, knows how to cook, owns a BMW, has a condo, artsy, frequents CBTL, 25-30” I press send. A window with the words “submitted” popped up. It was a Friday night. My roommates had all gone home for the break but the weather held me hostage in our place.

My phone pinged, and the words “Match found!” popped up. I tapped accept. “Jackpot. Hello, mrlawyer98.” I hit him up with a hello. He was a quick responder, but he seemed too dry a conversationalist.

Me: hello! 😉

mrlawyer98: hey

Me: age?

mrlawyer98: 30 you?

Me: 21 😀 studying?

mrlawyer98: lol that’s way too young

mrlawyer98: nope. Graduated Law already

Me: Age doesn’t matter 😉

Me: oh nice. What school?

mrlawyer98: USC

Me: oh niceyyy 😉 i study there too. Polsci ;)))

mrlawyer98: nicee

mrlawyer98: hey gtg kinda busy rn

Me: Okay byee ;))

It was a good clue that he was a Carolinian, but looking for him wasn’t easy. The college of Law had a lot of good-looking people and everyone except the teachers and staff were home for the break and the alumni yearbook wasn’t of much help even if I could gain access to it. He was boring online, but he piqued my interest.

A message notification popped up.

It was NDRRMC telling me to take care and prepare an evacuation kit. How thoughtful, I thought while pressing play on my laptop.

I was halfway through the season finale of GoT when my phone pinged. “Must be the service provider advertising one of their promos again,” I muttered while unlocking my phone, only to be pleasantly surprised with a notification from him.

mrlawyer98: heyy

Me: Oh hello! 🙂

mrlawyer98: so waddup? Sorry for leaving you hanging last time

Me: oh it’s fine actually, had to keep myself busy to kill the time

mrlawyer98: so wyd?

Me: binge-watching GoT. U?

mrlawyer98: cool imma go ahead then

Me: no actually it just ended

mrlawyer98: oh rlly? Lol cool

Me: haha yeah

Me: btw, are u rlly a ripped 25 y.o. and everything on the list?

mrlawyer98: yea ofc why would I lie

Me: hmm really? Send a pic 😉

mrlawyer98: u first 🙂

You have sent a photo.

And just like that, he never contacted me again. Probably I was too low for his standards, or maybe he was just busy, but he never messaged me again. He’s probably the 10^th guy to lose interest of me after I sent them my photo, but I can’t blame them, I was way too fat to be dated. I didn’t even had a goal set yet and I didn’t think guys liked dating people who had no goals, guys my type at least. So, I finally decided for myself: I had to work hard, achieve my goals; goals before guys. Long story short, I graduated from my pre-law course, proceeded to law school, passed the Bar Exams, worked as counsel for big companies before moving on to work with PAO and now on my way to establishing my law firm, all before getting past 30.

While resting on my hammock outside my house in uptown Cebu, I decided it would be time to finally give love a chance again.  I opened my iPhone Y and installed the Matchstick app. I opened the app, which greeted me with a prompt:

“Hello, would you like to try our new feature? We’re bringing back the old Matchstick interface we had five years ago.”

Nothing really much changed now, honestly, just a few color changes. I tapped YES. I tried to log-in using my old account, but it kept saying the account does not exist. I tried signing up using my old account’s details, but it said the username was already taken. I was left with no choice but to make a completely different account.

“Please input your screen name”

I typed in a name that has been stuck in my head, though I cannot recall why. Maybe it had some value to me, maybe it was someone else’s name, or maybe it was just something that would show off my status and greatest achievement. The system asked for a few more details before greeting me with a window.

“All done! Welcome to Matchstick, mrlawyer98!”