My Name-Twin Was Arrested for Robbery...and Everyone Thought It Was Me

When I bumped into the other Davon Clark in college, it was funny. When friends confused our dating profiles, it was weird. When he got in trouble with the cops, my life started to fall apart.

Illustrations by Thomas White | Story Edited by Naomi Zeveloff

I walked out of class and pulled my phone out of my pocket. There were dozens of missed calls and messages from my girlfriend. She was demanding to know why I was on Tinder. One of her friends was claiming that she had found me on the app, and she had sent a screenshot of the bio to my girlfriend. Sure enough, his first name and interests were identical to mine.

After collecting myself, I gave my girlfriend a call. She answered yelling, understandably. I gave her a few minutes and then tried to explain: It was someone else. She shot back that she knew I was lying. Her friend had started a conversation with the guy and he’d told her his full name, Davon Clark — which was also my name.

I knew exactly who it was: The other Davon Clark, the one who also happened to be a 20-something black boy, attending the same university, and like me, wrestling and writing poetry. I had first learned about this uncannily similar Davon a year ago, and now he was showing up on Tinder, causing this uncomfortable conversation between my girlfriend and me. (To be fair to her, something like this had happened before: A year earlier, a friend of hers had sent her a screenshot of my actual profile. I had made it after a bad argument. Although I wasn’t on Tinder anymore at this point, from her point of view, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.)

On the phone, I started laughing. I asked for a picture of the other Davon, and her friend sent another screenshot from the Tinder profile. Clearly not me. My girlfriend said she understood, and the matter was put to rest. But little did I know, things were about to get way more uncomfortable.