The week ended well, though it started with one of the intermittent “Just wanted to tell you, you look lovely but I’m looking for someone younger” messages I receive sometimes, defensively out of the blue as if I need to be headed off at the pass. Quite what this man of 55 was doing straying into the geriatric-females area of the site is anyone’s guess. I messaged him back asking why he wanted someone “under 35, preferably 24-29”.
He was eager to tell me. He’d been divorced for a year, having left his wife when she became “overweight and argumentative”. He’d spent his whole working life supporting her and their children, and now he deserved a young woman. Deserved! Oh, yes. He was strident about the use of the word. A straightforward commodifying was going on, an imagining of parts. It was important that whoever he chose hadn’t had children, so she would be firm-breasted, flat-bellied and tight. But what about compatibility, I asked; what about going into old age with someone? He didn’t plan to retire for another 20 years, he said. He was young and vital. “As for having things in common, if she’s young enough she can learn.”
After this I craved a conversation with a regular human being. Having exhausted the local roster of men (we’ve exhausted each other, in fact), I cast my net wider. Generally, I stick to the 10-mile radius so dating in a casual way is possible. Distance is difficult; a trip to the cinema is loaded with expectation when you’ve had to travel far to get there. I knew this, but I couldn’t help myself. I extended until I blundered into the catchments of other cities, and saw a whole new row of faces.
There was one I was immediately attracted to. Not the handsome tanned one or the actor or the floppy-haired Peter Pan type: the potato-faced one, the teacher with the ridiculous goatee and twinkly eyes – that was the one. Martin. I went to his profile, and experienced one of those immediate recognitions, the sort that tells us that someone newly met is already a friend. His humour was dry and he’d made hilarious summaries to do with aspects of his life. “No expectations of who I’ll meet, what they’ll be like, no checklist,” he’d also written.
I sent a one-word message. “Hello.” His online green light wasn’t lit, but as I watched, it lit up. He’d received an alert to say mail was waiting and in turn I got one, saying he’d visited my profile. Shortly after this, a message arrived. (And I thought, as I went to it, no wonder there are people who can’t settle, who can’t give this up, this rush of possibility.)
His reply said: “Hello! How very nice to hear from you. I see we have almost spooky similarities, and what’s 100 miles between friends? How’s the weather looking, where you are? I’ve been trying fruitlessly to fix my car, which has been going URUGUGURUG when I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t. I was so excited to get a message that I probably have oil on my phone.”
I asked Martin if it was really that rare, receiving a message. I got lots, I told him, though most were variants on “Ello darlin’, fancy a shag?”
“I’ve only been here a month,” he said, “And none of the women who’ve contacted me have appealed. I hope that doesn’t sound arrogant. But there’s got to be basic shared language, don’t you think? I’m not here just for the shags. I want a life partner. I hope that doesn’t put you off. Might be bad to mention wanting a life partner in the second message.”
He went to his laptop and the conversation continued for most of the evening. It was bright, sparky, warm, fun: it was like standing with a glass of warm white wine at a bad party and suddenly finding someone wonderful to talk to. When I logged off I copied his profile page to my laptop and spent a while looking at it. I zoomed in on his potato head, slightly piggy eyes and squashy nose, and began to feel vaguely proprietorial.
Then I got a message from another man: “You look young for your age; can I see some pictures of your body to see if you’re young all over?”
Sometimes an invisible hand comes out of the internet and paws at you. I got Martin’s profile page up again and looked at it, and began to feel better.
Stella Grey is a pseudonym