It was his first Bumble date and, I’m sorry to say, likely my last.

After all was said and done, it wasn’t his fault.

I mean, he did show up for the date in a short-sleeved plaid shirt that seemed to have been pulled out of a hamper from 1965, the breast pocket of which held a pair of grandpa reading glasses from the same time capsule. But it wasn’t really that.

And it wasn’t his face per se, which seemed nice enough even when I noticed there was a tooth missing, and there was just this kind of general crustiness about him. I’m sorry, but that’s the best way I can describe it. He did have a great head of hair, which was slicked back like some guy from a Brylcreem ad.

It also wasn’t the fact that he mumbled or kept “accidentally” touching my leg. Oh, sorry, he’d exclaim, as his hand simultaneously landed on my knee. Again with the Oops, sorry! To the point that I started to wonder if he wasn’t a low talker on purpose, just so I’d have to lean in closer to hear him.

I will say that he seemed kind. Smart, ill at ease, sort of witty in a nerdy way that could have been charming. If only — well, if only he hadn’t blurted that he was six months out from a 25-year marriage.

“And you’re my first date!” he announced like Oprah giving away Pontiacs. “Be gentle with me,” he joked, and I genuinely chuckled right as I felt the realization land like a pigeon shitting on my head.

For me, that was it. The end of online dating. There had to be another way.

Driving home, I kept wondering why the whole thing felt less like a date and more like an evaluation. Somewhere along the way, dating apps had turned me into some kind of lovelorn customs agent scanning, assessing, profiling every detail. Was he really that bad? Or had I just been trained too long to judge like I was checking passports?

I don’t mean to be pessimistic or defeatist, but the whole concept of modern American dating sucks. It’s become as transactional, judgy, pressured and goal-oriented as, well, American culture itself. I think I finally understand the French guy who 10 years ago told me while we were on a date that French guys don’t date. WTF, I thought at the time. But now, I think I finally understand. Dating isn’t supposed  to be an audition or a job interview. And if it is, well, then I suck — because after all this time, I’m still out here.

I get it if you’re in your 20s and you want to get married and procreate. That’s fine — go on your soulmate vision quest. But it’s different when you’re older and you’ve already been through all of that, when you’re comfortable in your skin, you make your own living, and you’ve created a life you’re genuinely content with. Then what?

Maybe that’s when you realize that dating isn’t about an end game or a goal or a strategy at all. What if it’s just about staying open and curious and present? What if it’s simply enjoying connection with our fellow humans?

I decided to test my theory on this dating app called TimeLeft. I know, I just said no more dating apps. But hear me out: This one’s different. You answer a few questions and the app matches you with five single strangers you subsequently meet up with IRL for dinner.

So that’s how I found myself praying I wouldn’t have a wardrobe malfunction as I crawled over a tatami platform in a Japanese restaurant in Sugarhouse at 7 p.m. on a Wednesday. Four people were already seated at the table. One woman was a no-show. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a flash of envy as I surveyed the table. There was zero spark of attraction.

My old dating reflex kicked in: evaluate, categorize, dismiss. I noticed the giant Apple watch of the guy across the table. It was 7:11. I briefly wished I were in a 7-Eleven buying a pint of Ben & Jerry’s instead of making small talk and eating sushi with a bunch of strangers I’d probably never see again.

The guy across from me asked me if I’d been to one of these before.

“Nope, it’s my first time,” I said, ripping off the Bumble guy’s joke. “Please be gentle with me.”

“Don’t worry,” he said looking me dead in the eye. “It’s just dinner.”

I ordered a firecracker roll and a Prosecco and felt my shoulders finally drop.

Then came the stories.

The woman next to me was a bad-ass military mom who’d lived all over the world and carried a pink handgun. The guy with the loud Hawaiian shirt was a long-haul trucker who drives an old M35 “deuce and a half” cargo truck for fun. The guy with the Apple watch was the son of a retired CIA intelligence officer and a self-proclaimed liberal with an encyclopedic knowledge of AR-15s. And the cute, outgoing middle-school teacher next to me, it dawned on me slowly, was someone I’d once been on a date with several years ago. This seemed irrelevant in the moment.

By then, the conversation had become an awkwardly engaging swirl of stories that were open, funny and vulnerable. The lack of pressure and absence of any need for an outcome created a different kind of connection. The kind you rarely find tire-kicking in the shiny, yet shallow showroom of dating apps.

As the TimeLeft app states, “The next time you cross paths with a stranger, dare to greet them. It could be the beginning of a memorable story.”

When I got home, I tried the game that the teacher told us about called “Florida Man.” You google the words “Florida man” and your birthday. “Just try it,” he said. He promised the results would be hilarious.

He wasn’t wrong.

“Florida man dressed in Dalmation onesie outruns troopers, shakes off tasers before he’s caught at girlfriend’s home,” one headline read, and “Florida man attacked by sister, bit cop after someone touched his cigar,” read another.

I don’t know about pink handguns or loud shirts or CIA gunsplainers or, heaven forbid, Florida men. All I know is that people are strange and unpredictable and beautiful in ways that make me want to give up just as I want to lean in a little closer.