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The Shameless Hussies: read the novel online

My Online Dating Safari

Alison and I recently had a visit from a couple of single girl friends who have been exploring the delights of online dating.  Back when I was last single, before the earth cooled, the dating sites were primitive in the extreme – the electronic equivalent of being dragged into the cave by your hair.

          So it was with great interest that I logged on with Suzie and Cate and several bottles of chardonnay to check out the wildlife populating the jungle these days.

          I was awestruck by the technological innovation and the sheer number of possibilities.  And I felt strongly that I was about to enter a very strange world.

          We looked at a well-known site where females can advertise free but males have to pay.  (Now, if you were thinking that this could affect adversely the kind of man who advertises there, you would be right.)

          In order to browse, I had to create a profile for myself, which went on for several pages.  With as much giggling as you would expect, I completed the profile in a way which was intended to ensure that I sank to the very bottom of the dating pool.  I said that I was 6’4”, Asian, white-haired, married, in a menial job and earning a lot of money.  (It did not occur to me until much, much later that this would probably lead men to mistake me for an exotic prostitute. With a hard-working pimp for a husband, maybe?)  My best pick-up line I gave as, ‘Get your coat’, and my description is ‘the one your mother warned you about’.  The option to classify oneself as married/in a relationship gave me pause, but after using the site for a little while it became clear that this accounts for a healthy portion of its advertisers.

          We enthusiastically entered some criteria and clicked the ‘Search’ button with great excitement.   What followed was highly educational, sometimes surprising, sad, funny, and weird.

          There were a lot of photos of bare, headless torsos on offer.  This says much about communication between the sexes.  In survey after survey of what women find attractive/alluring/important in a man, what comes top every time?  Smile/eyes usually take the two top spots, both of which are found in the head region.  A six-pack counts for little if his face looks like a pizza that’s been run over by a tractor.

            Many more of the photos featured cars and/or motorbikes without their owners…arguably better than a bare torso, but still sadly lacking in the detail that women really want.  The tattoos were actually more informative than any of the data in the profiles, but the photo of the man falling down the stairs was by far the most realistic.

          There were men who, from their messages, had clearly been beaten to a pulp by Cupid.  ‘Mad as hell’ is not the ideal handle to attract a nice lay-dee.  Neither is ‘Help me’.  There was a man who looked like a hotel porter who was keen to head off the flood of replies about to swamp his inbox.  He made it clear in rude sentences with no punctuation that ‘illegals’ need not apply, as he was no one’s ticket to a British passport.  And that anyone who used the site’s flirt feature disqualified themselves immediately because he didn’t want any time-wasters.  Nice.

          Others, more cunning, tried to increase their appeal by listing bands which were clearly chosen to indicate that they were in touch with their feminine sides.  So, you’re a big Celine Dion fan too?

          Of the profiles with faces, there was an amazing spectrum of expression, from confident and cocky to lost and soulful, from terrified to drunkenly ebullient, from sneering (definitely ill-advised) to one that looked very much like a police mug-shot, even down to the lettered card held across the chest.  They were posed in an equally wide variety of situations:  at their desk, in the pub, 3 inches from their mobile phone’s camera (some great nostril shots), arrayed invitingly across grubby-looking beds, with weapons (quite a lot of military or maybe weekend warrior types), legs akimbo on a beach in a miniscule speedo…with a group of attractive women in a bar.  Hang on, that’s not how the game is played!

          I started to feel like we’d reached the moment in the safari park where the monkeys start ripping the wipers off the car.

          And oh, beyond the gallery of hopeful faces, was the sheer awfulness of their written expression.  I am a total snob about this kind of thing, so if you are not, then look away now.  The site was nearly a punctuation-free zone.  ‘N’ replaced the word ‘and’ in many profiles, as did horrible emailisms like writing everything in lower case.  Our favourite pick-up line was, ‘You turn my software to hardware.’  One man is specifically looking for a woman who doesn’t ‘nag a man to death or blow off in bed and say the dog did it.’  Good luck with that.

          What struck me most about the profiles was that they were perfectly designed to attract, not other women, but other men.

          By the end of the evening, having laughed ourselves silly and drunk really quite a lot of wine, I felt much more aware of the singles scene…and the kind of men who live in Northern England. 

          What I had not anticipated was how many of them would be interested in a 6’4” white-haired married Asian lady.

          The next day, my first admirer made contact.  A very sad man sent me a picture of his car.  Then I got a message from another which just said, ‘So, you’re a big Chinese girl who’s married then?’  Next was a postman who offered to show me his pierced tongue.  Then a man with a very big motorcycle wrote to say that he’s looking for someone who is nice to rabbits.  Would those be the very…soft kind of rabbits, perhaps?  Another one, nice-looking in a married sort of way, just wanted to know how my day was going.  My favourite of all, however, was Dr Deep the Love Mussel.  He is the bivalve of my dreams.  I had no idea that a big Asian chick could get so much action…maybe it’s all the money that I earn?

          It’s time to retire my more adventurous alter ego.  I know that she will be missed in cyberspace. 

  Vanessa

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