LOVING & LYING IN PITTSBURGH

by Savin Kann

pictured, moules frites at Pointe Brugge

I won’t sit here and act like I know everything about the Pittsburgh dating scene. By the time that I truly began dating around, I was already at school in Baltimore and had felt too scared and exposed to go publicly on dates in Pittsburgh. However, my first date ever was in Pittsburgh, and it occurred two days before I moved into my freshman year dorm. I act like it’s a big secret but it’s something that all my friends know about, as well as some family members and acquaintances who I’ve drunkenly told the story to. It was scandalous at the time, and I guess it still is–as he was 40 and I was 18.

I told my mom that I was meeting my boss from an old job in case someone told my parents they saw me sharing coffee with an older man. There’s nothing traumatic about this story, no big finish to an illicit affair or tears on my pillow from a first love gone wrong. We went on that singular date and texted a few times after; I learned he was a sniper in the military, and that was it. 

I know this is true for everyone but in the nearly six years since that fateful day I have become an entirely new person, and still feel like the gawky teen who is too vulnerable to face adult life. Looking back, I notice that that first date, while scary in the moment, was actually a huge confidence boost for me. I entered college knowing that I had the ability to put myself out there and finally experience the dating scene that I had so desperately longed for in high school. It was a strange confidence that can only come from being young and inexperienced, especially in the dating world. I went forth with the confidence that I was the hot young thing that everybody wanted. It felt like I had superpowers.  

My first kiss happened two months later. I was a freshman and he was a senior, albeit at a different school. We went to the 24 hour diner near my school, and then back to his filthy university apartment to make out. That was my limit at the time. Even only having just swapped spit, I got home at 4:00 AM and took a sadistic glee in feeling like the biggest whore on the planet. We didn’t speak again for two years. Over the next few months, I went from meekly dipping my toe in the shallow end to jack-knifing my way off the 20 foot tall diving board, at least by my own standards. 

I was faced with a dilemma my first summer returning home. I was accustomed to freely going on dates, meeting people publicly, and knowing the joys of physical touch. I didn’t know if I would be able to translate this confidence to Pittsburgh. And I couldn’t! I didn’t do anything remotely romantic until I returned to school for my sophomore year. Sure, I talked to guys on the apps and felt this tugging in my chest to go out and meet them, but at the end of the day I wasn’t able to rise to the occasion. Despite all of my successes and new experiences in college, I kept up the pattern of text-only relationships. It was what I raised myself on and it was what I knew best.

The process became my signature; engage in thoughtful and nuanced discussion where I bared my soul through digital media and then shy away from in-person contact. 23 year old me in New York has to work hard to break out the foundations set by a 15 year old me in Pittsburgh. We both engaged in these long-form conversations because it allows us to build up a fantasy. In this digital cocoon both of us felt a sense of false safety that sustained us. It allowed us to curate our image, one where we openly presented the surface bad parts, and hid our real flaws. We could get the intimacy, validation, and banter of a regular relationship without having to worry about both the real and perceived dangers of public intimacy. 

I realized last year that my communication with men is based on this habit that 15 year old me had started. I joined Tinder when I was that age and said I was 18. I store the regret of this decision deep within my heart; It was stupid, it was unsafe, and it was extremely illegal. It also thankfully never went anywhere. But one needs to understand the context surrounding this decision. At the time I was the only gay guy I knew of, I had no romantic prospects, and was surrounded by couples. I deleted the app a month later. And then redownloaded it with a new fake profile. And completed the cycle through November of 2016. Back in those days, you needed a facebook profile to have tinder, so there’s a bunch of blank and faceless Adam Smith profiles probably still out there. 

I used Tinder seriously for the first time two months after my 17th birthday. A friend convinced me that I was so close to turning 18 and signing up wouldn’t be as bad as it was when I was 15. I rationalized it in my mind as that I couldn’t change too much within the 10 months that I would turn 18 and that I knew what I was getting myself into. If something went wrong there would be no one to blame but myself. I actually put pictures of myself on the profile, and found that a lack of anonymity had given me the confidence to engage in deeper conversations.

The only thing that stayed the same as before was that I was too scared to meet anyone who I was speaking to. Instead, I would just engage in long conversations on the app, never giving up my number and making excuses for why I couldn’t meet them that day. In fact, some of my earliest “relationships” consisted of these all-consuming chats where I revealed too much so I could get some form of external validation. 

The first time I revealed the truth was when I was speaking to a guy named Zach. He was 26 at the time. We had been messaging non-stop for a few weeks and I felt like I needed to come clean. I apologized profusely for my lies, and had already mentally prepped myself for him to immediately cut me off once he found out I wasn’t 18. Instead, to my joy and discomfort, he was fine with it. He had the same rationalization I did. I was less than a year away from 18, how much could I really change? I wised up, and deleted the app after, never to download again until it was legal. 

I see the same guys from when I was younger still on the apps when I return home. It’s an odd experience. Where I was at that point in time feels like yesterday, but enough time has passed for me to look back and see all the issues. Seven years later, we find ourselves patrolling various swipe-based platforms in the hope that one single motion will bring about the knight in shining armor to whisk us away into the sunset. We all have new numbers at the front of our ages, or at the very least are close to having one. I know I have changed, I have a career, new friends, and new expectations for what I want in life. How have they changed? I now have to wonder about becoming the older man. I know I’m still young, but I am reaching an age that I once considered to be the “older man age” at 18.

There’s a long-standing, somewhat joking, sentiment that I share with my friends sometimes that I might need a “Midwestern nice” guy to date. I tell them how cool it is to date in New York. I can enjoy the prospect of a guy with an ironic pornstache and tattoos who can take me to a one-night only rave in an auto body shop. I’ll mention that the thrill of pumping music and and the adrenaline of the initial fear that I’m being taken to an abandoned auto body shop only to be sliced and diced and be a warning for the next generation of gays coming to New York can keep me going until 3:00 AM. Afterwards we’ll get dollar slices and share a kiss that is both tainted and magnified by pizza grease and I’ll float on a cloud knowing I am living the dreams I had when I was 13.

But sometimes, I need a bland guy named Mike or something to pick me up in his Nissan Altima and take me to the Cheesecake Factory. This isn’t to denigrate Pittsburgh or to say that I subscribe to the idea that it’s still a backwards failed Rust Belt town; it’s homesickness.

I share this when I am struck by the overwhelming fear that comes from a lack of place in New York, a fear that says I am not special here or that I simply don’t belong. I am so grateful for everything I have here; friends, family, and a job (even if I am underpaid and overworked). The reality is that it is a big city, and I am a homebody who loves routine. Even in a city with as many opportunities as New York, I need to be pushed out of my comfort zone so that I can appreciate them. I miss the perceived simplicity of life in Pittsburgh.

There are times when I long for the joy of laughing and gossiping over platters of moules frites at Point Brugge, or allowing the memory and connection I felt with others at Shady Grove heighten its average Americana menu to haute cuisine. There’s a portion of me that wishes that I was able to share these experiences with a loved one at these restaurants. That I could look back and see them as not only places of friendships, but ones of romance as well. It’s the innate need for the high school romance that will never happen, or a reminder of a future that I could one day build. 

Savin Kann is an artist and writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania currently based in New York. He got his B.A. from Goucher College where he was a Kratz Summer Writing Fellow for the summer of 2020. His other work includes being a dramaturg and director for a staging of Jacqueline Goldfinger’s The Terrible Girls. His work has previously appeared in Grub Street magazine from Towson University.