It’s Spring Again (A.K.A. You’re on Bumble Again)

It’s Spring again. To be more explicit, you’re on Bumble again. But buyer beware—navigating the dating landscape of Vienna can sometimes feel like you’re Al Pacino in Cruising (1980). You don’t know which figurative pocket to put your figurative yellow bandana in.

While sitting at Café Kafka, bored out of your mind, having already asked about siblings, travel plans, and your date’s wallet contents... there remains one PARAMOUNT question to determine your date’s positionality, personality, penetrability, and profundity.

The doctor is in! Ready to diagnose your date’s answers, lending you a helping hand through the murky waters of Vienna’s dating scene. For your own preparedness, here are ten answers you might hear thrown around when you bat your eyes and stutter through, “Who’s your favorite author?”

“Tolstoy!” They say, too quickly.

I hope you’re wearing your warm socks because they will surely take you to Krappenwald after this and invite you to make sweet love on that battleground hillside. Socially obtuse, but it’s sort of sweet. They dream of going to Opernball, but for now they stand frigid in the corners of Alsergrund house parties. It’s usually their friends’ parents’ penthouse suite—and they’ll invite you if you wear an antique corset. Performatively, they long to join the Austrian military, but just like Alexander I in the battle of Austerlitz, they didn’t make it (due to mental frailty). They spent their time learning Russian on Duolingo instead. You poked around and discovered a meek 40 XP. Proceed with tact.

OR “Who’s your favorite author?” — “Don’t judge me, but I love Sylvia. Plath, that is.”

Dig out that blue jeans, white shirt, and queue that Ultraviolence at the jukebox. Hey, awesome! You get free drinks with them! They know the bartender very well. Maybe too well? Was it weird for you when your date and the bartender disappeared to the bathroom for thirty minutes? If not, enjoy your second date to Schwarzen Flamingo. After which, on the way home to their studio in Josefstadt, you’ll walk in uncomfortable silence for ten minutes until they light a cigarette and whisper, “You don’t know how fucked up I am...” Coke, ket, and coquette.

OR “Who’s your favorite author?” — “I love Murakami’s work. You do know Haruki Murakami, don’t you?”

They’re wearing the same light-wash denim jacket featured in every single one of their Bumble photos. Half of their profile pictures were taken the same day at Albertina’s Chagall exhibition (jacket on, jacket off, jacket thrown over shoulder). They overshare about “weird” sexual experiences over your matching cortados. You find out they don’t believe in therapy. Yikes! At least they like jazz. “Who do you listen to?” you ask, genuinely curious. “Dave Brubeck,” they say full-chalantly. You sigh. But you know you will be going home with them for Ghibli movies and chill after this. Don’t be surprised when someone who uses the word “prosaic” twice on one date gives wistful cunnilingus.

OR “Who’s your favorite author?” — “I’m really into languages and history and antiquity. I can’t get enough of Donna Tartt.”

Good news! Someone wants to shag you. Bad news—they’re straight out of high school. They flex that they read The Odyssey (at nineteen). Due to the lack of details about the sirens, you understand they read the abridged version. After a lull in conversation, they ask if you want to go through each other’s phones. You find Percy Jackson fanfiction in their Notes app and a public Pinterest board titled “cunty bisexual fits to wear in college.”

OR “Who’s your favorite author?” — “I read a lot more than this, but right now I’m really into social realism, so I’d have to say Sally Rooney. Although I read a lot of other books.”

As they sit down, looking around condescendingly at our beloved Café Kafka, you ask where their beret is from, and without blinking they say, “Humana.” They’re doing their internship at SPÖ but swear they are a die-hard KPÖ LiLi stan. If this first date ends well, you’ll have great sex, lots of eye contact, and you’ll both cry after.

For your second date, you go see The Seventh Seal at Filmmuseum. Their eyes glaze over. The next morning, they explain how misogynistic the film was—especially since they thought Ingrid Bergman was a feminist director. They accidentally break up with you over a miscommunication about your summer living situation. Months later, you bump into them on your Interrail trip. They sailed the Adriatic and got back together with their 38-year-old ex/boss from Burgtheater. Tough luck kid—don’t say we didn’t warn you.

OR “Who’s your favorite author?” — “Since we’re the new Lost Generation and Vienna is the new Paris, I’d have to go with Ernest Hemingway.”

News! Yet another high schooler dying to lose their virginity to you. Perv. This time your date slips you the invite via eleventh grade curriculum book recommendations (To Kill A Mockingbird, The Old Man and the Sea, and Brave New World). They await your jaw drop after revealing they read all of Moby Dick, unabridged. (!) To be fair, they had a great Bumble profile, including the hunting rifle jump scare in their last photo.

On the second date (a mild score for them), they’ll take you to their most cherished childhood lieu: some random hut in Oberösterreich (their German, not mine). They’ll wear tweed. What a special day—until you notice their new edition of The Great Gatsby and a pack of Marlboro Golds poking out of their giant pocket.

OR “Who’s your favorite author?” — “Man, that’s a deep quesch. I’m messin’ heavy with this French guy Albert Camus. In particular ‘La tranjure.’”

You already knew this person before matching on Bumble, and they are unbearable in your Existentialism in Philosophy and Literature class. You once looked over their shoulder and saw their top Safari bookmarks: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and theflixertv.to/thesopranos/s5/e14. Now at Café Kafka, they refer to Michel Foucault as “she.” Afterward, they take you to the Death Valley of Vienna: phil, Café Sperl (that one booth), Top Kino. They ask, “You ever been here?” Do you lie? You do.

The next morning, you wake up in their bed to them smoking a Gauloise and drinking Nespresso. They chuckle and mutter, “Should I kill myself or have a coffee?”

OR “Who’s your favorite author?” — “I’m not so much into the American Psycho hype, but I’m really into Bret Easton Ellis’ other, less violent, work.”

They wish they were on Xanax. Desperately. The worst drugs they’ve ever done are prescribed Ritalin and a legal (!!) CBD gummy at the same time. They tell you about the portfolio they’re working on that aims to portray the emptiness of upper middle-class kids in an unnamed Scandinavian city. They show you the mood board, which mainly consists of young Richard Gere photos from American Gigolo (1980). Their favorite cultural theme is repressed homosexuality, yet they insist that defining sexuality is passé. They love Charli XCX while making fun of your favorite The Cure album unless it’s Disintegration. Claims decadence—gets tired after three beers. They leave abruptly, saying they forgot they have to return library books.

OR “Who’s your favorite author?” — “I’m not so much into the Catcher in the Rye hype, but I love J.D. Salinger’s other, less angsty, work.”

They wish they were blackout drunk. They can’t drink because of health complications (shockingly unrelated to alcoholism). Oh no! They accidentally spill their tiny backpack onto the café floor. You help them gather their things: loose pain meds, the Unabomber Manifesto, and a notebook filled with mammal anatomy studies. Then, mid-ramble about dialogue-driven literature and chamber plays, your date stops, stands up, and without looking at you says, “Sorry—I forgot I have another engagement.” They run off. You’re relieved.

Shell-Shocked Finale

Shell-shocked from the Bumble cesspool you just waded through, you find yourself at Café Einhorn. It’s 3:37 AM, you’re drunk—someone taps you on the shoulder. “Hey, Feuer bitte?” You begin, “Es tut mi—” then you realize it’s JD and Bret. But they’re already back at their table, typing furiously on one laptop, passing it back and forth and scream-laughing at the text under a title you can just barely make out:

What your date’s favorite author says about them.