Soul, Baby, Soul

Recently, I’ve been immersing myself deep into another world.

This is a world of archaic rules, of carefully contrived language; a world where not everyone may be as they seem and intentions are rarely clear. It is a world of danger and excitement, where a click of a button may instigate a whole new adventure.

Oh, all right, then. I’m exaggerating. As usual.

Last week, I went and joined a dating website.

I’ve briefly written about my thoughts on twenty-first century dating before and whilst I’ve even done a little idle browsing, if I am honest my heart was never in it. Although, I’ve flicked through the relevant pages of newspapers putting curious little marks next to the descriptions that interested me, it was just a flirtation with an idea. It was never serious. I just wasn’t mentally ready.

In the end, it was an impetuous act born by the sudden realisation that it would be sensible if I stopped trying to metaphorically piss on my own doorstep. One complicated situation after another was threatening to boil over and it seemed like the easiest way to distract myself.

And distracting it is.

I’ve chosen a silly nickname for myself and probably not spent long enough writing a description not only of how I look and act, but of how I would like my ideal match to look and act – a notion that seems more than a little ridiculous given that I have no fixed type of person who I am attracted to. Never have. Short, tall, blonde, dark, slight, curvaceous, working class northern, slightly posh southern,
I’ll give anyone a whirl. I don’t, typically, like narrow-minded bigots, but then who in their right mind is going to put that on their profiles anyway.

Only a crazy.

And I’ve had enough of crazy for the time being, thanks all the same.

So, I have the alias, I have the description which slightly naughtily plays up the writerly aspect of myself and correspondingly makes only the briefest of mentions to the underpaid public sector project management side, but hell isn’t this is a idealised version of self anyway? Then came the photo. This proved to be more problematic than anticipated as in all the relatively recent photos I can find of myself I am either extremely sweaty, somewhat drunk or wearing dark glasses. It also transpires that it’s incredibly difficult to take a decent picture of yourself.

Either that or I’m losing my previously photogenic good looks.

I could have asked someone to take it for me, but as I said this was all taking place on a whim and I found the idea of ringing someone up at midnight to ask them to snap me faintly embarrassing. This was something I wanted to keep secret.

(Yes, I realise I’m now telling everyone about it, but somehow it has always been easier to write rather than talk about things.)

After what felt like a phenomenally vain process where I smiled, beamed, pouted, attempted to half laugh or even look disinterested all of which seem to result in my head being at an odd angle to the rest of my body, I thought ‘fuck it, that’ll do.’
And so on I ploughed without a care for the rules and etiquette which exist in this online world – cripes, I had no idea.

All first attempts at contact appear to have to come from the men (at least in the heterosexual niches) which means that I have spent hours composing emails which I hope have the right level of flirtatiousness and intrigue around them whilst being unique to the person I’m approaching based on the scant detail I can glean from their profile and not descending to simply “I think you look cute.” Indeed, I begin to feel after the seventh attempt that my prose was becoming a little dry and formulaic, yet I was also labouring far too long over each message. Where’s the balance?

But then pretty girls replied and it all started over again with my head full of fluffyness as it always has been whenever someone attractive has paid attention.
Whilst women don’t message upfront they do seem to prowl the boards of the non-existent club that we’re all crammed into, eyeing up and down the profiles and pictures that spark their interest. I know they do, because you can see who’s checked you out – the internet version of a lingering glance across a crowded bar, perhaps. Some become fans of me (whatever that means). Some become fans of me without even viewing my profile (which is a little odd).

But what I cannot get over is the incredible amount of time it absorbs. It becomes slightly drug like, addictive – ‘how many views have I had today?’ ‘Why are some people viewing me but not responding to my email even though they’re my fan?’
Composing the messages is a slow process because there isn’t the moment where you can nervously laugh off that you’ve just made a tit of yourself. Trawling through all the profiles is equally laborious and there’s almost too much information to absorb. At one point I started to become paranoid that I was muddling people up.

It would, in many ways, be easier if there was a format that somehow replicated the technique of someone I used to know, who at a certain time of the night would just decide he’d drunk enough beer and now wanted to have sex. He’d methodically work his way through propositioning every single woman in the room, with his addled Scottish charm, using a ranking system based on their physical proximity to him and giving each no more than a couple of minutes until either he went home with one of them or (as was more frequently the case) he went home alone to have a wank.

Simple, crude and if not effective at least time efficient.

Mind you, sex isn’t the point. It’s about meeting someone without necessarily meeting them. In that way it is time efficient, but you are still making decisions about people based on the refraction of the computer screen, the stylised image that careful planning can project.

All that said I am quite enjoying the more arcane ritualistic method of chatting to women. What’s that, I hear you ask? How’s it going? Do I have any dates lined up?

Mind your own business.