The Heartfix: An Online Dating Diary. Stella Grey

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СКАЧАТЬ a rush to judgement, disguised inside a series of questions. There was worry about taking on a woman another man had discarded. ‘What did you do to get dumped? Are you a bitch?’ I mentioned this in an on-screen chat one evening with a man called Neville, and asked what he thought.

      ‘You may as well give up now,’ he wrote, ‘and withdraw from here and save your money.’ I asked him what he meant. ‘It’s porn that’s your problem,’ he told me. ‘Now that porn is normal, now that it’s normal to look at porn online, that’s the downfall of the middle-aged woman. Men are convinced that if they become bachelors again, that’s the kind of sex life they’ll get. Young women, big tits, flat stomachs, a tight fit where it matters. There are loads of gorgeous young things here who’d be happy with a 50-year-old sugar daddy. You can’t compete with that.’

      The question of competition kept coming up. I’d spent most of my life not fretting too much about whether men approved of me, but now I was having to resist scrutinising myself as if through their imagined eyes. I had flashes of self-disgust about the fact that I was so tall, and so big-boned and well-upholstered, and had such big feet. My waist had thickened and How was I going to compete? It was deeply disconcerting. I hadn’t ever seen myself like that, as someone not physically good enough to be loved.

      Not having seen profiles written by other women (only women seeking a female partner see them), it was hard to know what the norm was, and how far I deviated from the average. I mentioned this to my friend Jack. Together we went in to my page and blitzed every one of the errors he identified: being whiney, being needy, being pompous and self-aggrandising (that hurt), overly conventional (Radio 4 was tussled over; I won) and too bookish. The argument that it was best to be myself cut little ice. Despite his efforts, despite adding baking, Sundays in London parks, gigs and beer to the list of things I like, I was still, Jack complained, all too evidently an alpha control freak and raging intellectual snob. That was limiting the response types. It was putting people off. It’s important online not to be seen to take yourself too seriously. Men engaged in online dating constantly say how unseriously they take life, as if that’s a good thing. I find it a complete turn-off, but then it’s evident that I have way too many opinions. Having considered the matter, I decided to persist with the accurate, off-putting version of myself. What’s likely to happen if you pretend to be someone else, and attract someone attracted to that imaginary woman? Exactly. It’s not going to end in bliss, is it? The best that could come out of it, it seems to me, is that it would end in a farce that was hilarious to tell other people about, but only ten years later when it ceased to be mortifying.

      Jack set up his own dummy page on one of the sites, as an experiment and in the interests of data-collection, and reported back. He advised me not to look at the profiles of my competitors. Too many of them were pert, yoga-doing women with doctorates and waists. ‘There are, like, fifteen of them just in your postcode,’ he said. I decided to make a fake male profile and go and have a look for myself. Jack counselled against. ‘I wouldn’t go there. You’ll delete your page and join a monastery.’

      ‘A nunnery, you mean.’

      ‘A nunnery. Though a monastery would be more fun. In any case, how many women have ever looked at your profile, checking out the competition?’

      ‘None. Women don’t do that. Well, I thought there was one, but she turned out to be a transvestite. Women can’t see other women unless they do a same-sex search.’

      ‘Exactly. People would think you were secretly a lesbian. If they were secret lesbians too it could become a bit awkward all round.’

      Jack had saved some of the profile pages written by skinny middle-aged Pilates-babes in my neighbourhood. The ones he judged successful had a winning combination of softness and steel. They showed a modest sense of achievement and ambition, but not too much. They referenced cultural phenomena that men can relate to (The Fast Show, Blackadder, Shawshank Redemption), and hinted that they had a ditsy side (‘I’m a modern girl, but I admit not great with fuseboxes!!’). They reassured men that they liked sex by using the dating site code-word cuddle (‘cuddles are my favourite thing, and I will look after you’), and they listed outdoor stuff – a passion for hills, skiing, scuba – under Hobbies and Interests. Being outdoorsy is important to lots of middle-aged men. ‘I don’t like to sit still too long,’ the men on dating sites said, over and over. ‘Life is for living and I’m looking for a woman to share the adventure with. No couch potatoes please.’ Perhaps it’s to do with being middle-aged, this insatiable quest for fitness: a sign that a man is resisting time as much as he can, and that he expects a future partner to have the same King Canute-like determination. It helped explain why some of the dismissal of a well-upholstered woman was so sharp and sneery.

      A message arrived from Morocco.

      ‘I see you here tonight and I think you are very beautiful and clever,’ the message began. The sender was sturdy, bald and had a lovely smile. ‘I have a bold idea I would like to put you. I think we are ideal for match and I propose that I send you a ticket to coming to Tangier for a weekend to stay in my house and to have food with me.’ Another message arrived before I could reply. ‘I hope you do not think I am not genuine. I am very genuine.’ He sent references, scans of his diplomas, photographs of him with his children – they did all look very happy – and of his houses (a city one, and a country one with a pool). Half an hour later another message came, telling me more about his life, how I shouldn’t be put off by his being Muslim, how modern he was in his outlook and how international. He said he was aware that his English wasn’t the best, but that I should consider his many educational attainments. He was actually a great catch.

      I sent a copy of his second email to Jack. ‘What’s the delay?’ was Jack’s only comment.

      ‘Casual dates not possible when they involve journeys to Tangier,’ I told him, stating the obvious.

      ‘It’s not because he’s five foot six and a bit plain, then.’

      ‘Height I admit is a factor.’

      Height was a factor, but I wasn’t fixated on handsomeness. I like the idea of plainness, in fact; plainness is comforting when it’s a plain face that you love. And sometimes, people can become handsome in front of your eyes. Fall in love with someone’s mind and find it beautiful and their face might follow. It happens. I had a photograph of a snaggle-toothed ex-boyfriend on the laptop to remind me of this. What you don’t see in the picture is the power of his eyes, his magnetism, nor how interesting he was in conversation: how he could start to talk and hold a whole room spellbound. In person he was irresistible, but none of that was apparent in the photograph.

      Another message arrived from Morocco. I could stay with his sister, my suitor said. She wanted to send me a note assuring me of her brother’s decency. I had to come to a decision and it came down to this: despite all enticements, was I really going to travel to Tangier for this date? No. I replied saying so, with regret, and my correspondent didn’t write again. This annoyed Jack. ‘You could at least have got a free holiday out of it,’ he said. ‘You reject people way too soon. You might have fallen for him. It would all have been a great adventure. You said you wanted an adventure. You could have had a nice life in Tangier.’

      ‘You’re being ridiculous,’ I told him. ‘You wouldn’t have done it.’

      ‘Yes, I would,’ Jack said. ‘Like a bloody shot. But nobody ever asks.’

      Simultaneously there was the question of Phil. I’d been trying out my policy of wooing by written word on someone I sort of knew. I hadn’t ever met him, but we were friends of friends, and so the meeting on the internet dating site might have been a bit embarrassing. He didn’t think it was, not at all, he said – or, rather, he wrote, because I never spoke СКАЧАТЬ