100 Dates - Anatomy of a Profile

Bryce Dallas Howard Nosedives in Black Mirror

There is remarkably little variation in men’s profiles and after a while, each becomes indistinguishable from the last. Many of the photos are low quality, as if taken on a c.2002 camera phone, and are often at odd, unflattering angles. These will include such beauties as ‘up the nose’ shot, ‘chin rolls’ and cutting off half their heads. Distance shots are common, as are photos obviously taken some ten-plus years ago when the abs were tighter and the jawline was stronger.

Bed selfies feature heavily, faded and bobbled bed-linen in shot. They lie on an old-fashioned patterned pillowcase, one naked arm tucked behind their head, a wistful expression on their face. Sometimes there’s a dog there, too, because we all know that dog-owners are good people.

The bedroom mirror selfie will have the unmade bed in the background, and mismatched shoes strewn across the floor. There will be a can of Lynx trying to product place itself. In the backgrounds of bathroom selfies I have seen:

·         A toddler naked except for a nappy

·         A perturbed looking dog

And in the foreground:

·         100 empty bottles of shower gel

·         Rusty looking razors

·         A dried up cake of soap balanced on the side of the sink

Then there’s the public toilet selfie. I think that these are a go-to location because of the big mirrors and the good lighting, but it just looks kind of lazy, with the hand driers and urinals in the background, or the overflowing paper towel bin. All I can see is the smell of piss and cheap hand-soap.

Occasionally one is treated to the sight of an erection taken from an artsy angle (I report these right away, because I am sure no-one wants to see your dick) or a rotund hairy belly rising up from 70’s patterned bedsheets like the hump of a whale emerging from the sea.

Lying about age is common. The young ones will (usually) own up to it – ‘I’m actually 27, I really like older women’

The older (deluded) ones seem to genuinely think that they can pass for 35 or 40 when they are clearly hitting their mid-50’s or sometimes even older. Sometimes you get the bullshit disclaimer, ’55 not 48, it won’t let me change it’ (yes, it will, you delete your account and start again putting in the correct age).

Most common profile photos

·         In some kind of organised running or cycling event

·         Holding a big fish

·         Snow sports

·         Stroking a drugged tiger

·         Riding an elephant

·         A photo of their car

·         A photo of them as a kid (why?!)

·         A photo of them with kids, usually with the disclaimer, ‘my nephew/ niece/ Godchild’

·         The holiday selfie (in pool, by pool, on balcony. Holding a beer)

·         At Machu Picchu / Angkor Watt / The Lennon mural

·         Squinting against the smoke that is coming from the fag hanging outside their mouth

Decoding a Profile

‘No drama!’ = I love drama

‘Only swipe right if you can hold a decent conversation’  = I have no conversational skills myself

‘If you don’t look like your photos, you’re buying me drinks until you do’ = I don’t look anything like my photos

‘Only match if you’re going to chat’ = I will never reply to your message

‘Not looking for pen pals’ = we will never meet up. Like, ever.

‘Ideal dinner guest…you?’ = let’s cast this net super wide and see what catches

‘No gold-diggers or users’ = I want you to think I have money. I don’t. Also I am still bitter about a woman that left me in 1998 after I paid for an all-inclusive to Malaga

‘6 foot in heels’ = this is the first time any man has thought of this. I’m so funny!

‘No crazy exes’ = I have driven at least two women insane with my flimsy moral code and gas-lighting

‘No baggage’ = I don’t want you to have had kids, any exes or a life before me. I come with as much baggage than Rose DeWitt-Bukater boarding the Titanic.

 

These are real profiles

'47 year old white English guy looking for some fun very clean and discrete’

‘Single wanting no strings playmates, Happy to assist childless couples making families’

‘Hello I have decided to give this whole Tinder thing a proper go. Oh and any Davina McCall your first in line she’s hot and a huge turn 9n to me love to date someone as fit as she is that’s my idea of the perfect woman. I love fit older women and would marry Her or could you be her equal and be mine. Oh high sex drive is a must as well not up for debate’

‘im getting really bored of this dating app shit honestly.i aint no sad fuck boy or dopey dick picks sender.i want a lady that I can treat like a princess.yeah you probably think im talking aload of bollocks but im a gentleman that respects women.but cheeky. give me a chance please.ffs lolxxx’

Bonus Round – Just…why?

‘4.5 Uber rating’ = I have no idea why this is important, this isn’t that episode of Black Mirror where Bryce Dallas Howard goes batshit at her frenemy’s wedding, is it?

‘He’s a nice boy, 5 stars – my mum’ = third person reviews make me cringe so hard my bum hole relocates to my throat and I throw it up

‘Englishman’  - As if this is a benchmark of excellence.

Profile of the week

Toothless Roddy looked like Iggy Pop’s older, more drug-addled brother. He posed topless in leather trousers, his scrawny but fat chest festooned with silver chains and what looked like an emergency pullcord fob. ‘Why was I stupid enough to live beyond 30?’ he lamented, before going on to essay about sin, the Bible and music in one terrifying, unpunctuated paragraph.

Crush of the week who is definitely not on Tinder…

Cody Fern, (The Assassination of Gianni Versace, American Horror Story) who carries off both make-up and pretty clothes better than I do and is smoking hot. Not sure I could date a man that is more proficient at eye-liner application than me, though. Nah, I totally can.

 

 

100 Dates: I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost ( Ghouls, Zombies and Perverts)

I’ve had 4 more dates since I last wrote, with the same fellow. It’s unlikely he reads this, but thanks to WhatsApp / Instagram syncing contacts stalking potential, it is possible. Thus I am holding off on updates until I know if a 5^th date is going to happen.

In the meantime, here’s just a small selection of the interactions that didn’t go anywhere.

 

1.   Captain Haddock (winter 2016)

 

I met Captain Haddock not long after I’d come out of an eight -year long relationship. I wasn’t ready for any kind of romantic entanglement, but he was so handsome with his hipster beard and sharp blue eyes. He was always with a friend who was the spit of a young Matt Damon and walked like a reverse Mr Soft, with his torso dipped into the wind.

We exchanged numbers, and texted back and forth, I used to bump into him in the pub and we’d exchange a cursory hello but nothing more. The one night we did talk, he spent most of the time chatting my friend up.

He wouldn’t make firm plans to meet up and I called him out on it in the manner of a teacher admonishing an unruly pupil. I never heard from him again after that.

It was because of Captain Haddock that I learned the phrase, ‘rejection is protection,’ but I never fully absorbed the whole ethos of that until very recently.

2.   Shrek (Summer 2017)

We had been texting for a few weeks when we agreed a date to meet up one evening in the week. He went to a wedding the weekend before, and his last message to me was ‘good morning, beautiful wish you were at this wedding with me,’

I texted him the day before the date asking if we were still on. I got left on unread (those two grey ticks are such an insult) I should have known that not hearing from him for 3 days meant he’d moved on, but I was an OLD newbie then, and still took things at face value.

He popped up in my stack again recently with exactly the same photos, which made me wonder how old they actually were.

 

3.   ASB Phil (Winter 2017 / Spring 2018)

For almost a year I chatted to ASB Phil. He earned his nickname because he used to send me topless photos of himself asking what I thought, and a friend misheard ‘Abs’ Phil and thought I said ‘ASB’. The name stuck, but ASB didn’t. Weeks would go by without me hearing from him, he’d hint at meeting up and then never set anything up, and ignore my suggestions to.

Our final text exchange came when he messaged me after about 3 months of total silence to ask how I was.

‘Do you only text me when you’re bored?’ I asked him.

No, he said, he wanted to make it up to me and go for a drink. Too little, too late my friend. I said as much, and he never replied.

He actually popped back up in my ‘stack’ a few days ago, using the same pictures, and this time I swiped left.

 

4.   Dave Horror (2018)

He told me that he worked for the police, which was only kind of truthful. He was actually employed by a private security firm to work in police custody suites. We had a lot in common and set up a date to watch a film in Oxford. I came into working with all my stuff so I could get ready there and go straight to meet him. For someone that would text several times a day, he went oddly quiet and I texted him at 3 to ask if we were still on because I’d be leaving work soon.

He replied telling me his aunt had hurt herself so he couldn’t make it.

I accepted this blatantly weak excuse and indulged him by saying I hope his aunt felt better. I never heard from him again.

 

5.   Car Sex Cosplay (2018)

As you get more experienced at OLD, you get better at sniffing out bullshit. CSC told me that he lived ‘with a housemate’, but when he sent me photos of his place, you could tell that a woman lived there and was responsible for the décor. I said to him, ‘is your housemate female?’ Yes, he said. ‘Is she your girlfriend?’ I asked. No. My ex wife. We’re separated.

He was very snooty about housing association tenants, which, if you know me, you’ll know is not an attitude I agree with.

He told me that he used to be very overweight and in the early days of his separation used to meet Tinder matches for sex in his car and that on one occasion had been ‘going at it’ so enthusiastically he not only thought he had a heart attack, but he destroyed the car’s suspension.

He last message to me was a photo of him feeding his unimpressed cat a Wotsit.  

 

6.   PhD (Christmas 2018)

He cancelled on me TWICE IN THE SAME WEEKEND, saying that he needed to be working on his PhD. I was irritated with myself, because he didn’t even really cancel the first time, I waited until late afternoon to ask him what was going on and he responded, ‘sorry, I’ve been in a PhD hole, please please can we do it tomorrow?’ Only to do EXACTLY the same thing the next day. When he contacted me again, I basically told him to fuck off and stop wasting my Goddamn time.

 

7.   Pete (Early 2019)

Agreed a date to meet, I text him the day before asking if we were still on and he never responded. He also popped again in my stack recently, with the exact same photos. What is it with these guys not even bothering to update their photos?

 

8.   Teacher Tom (spring / summer 2019)

I wasted 3 months messaging this guy. THREE MONTHS. He got squirmy at the merest hint of meeting u, but kept kind of putting the idea out there (this folks, is known as ‘bread-crumbing’)  I finally suggested a day, a time and a place. I got a semi anxious response from him asking what the place involved (it was a bar where you go and drink booze and play board games, I thought it was a great idea for a first date) aaaaannndddd…..silence. Nothing. Nada. The man up and vanished like a fart in the wind.

Except when he popped up again in my stack quite recently. This one actually changed his photos!

 

9.   Catio (summer 2019)

On the day we were due to meet, he fell off a ladder building a catio (it’s a patio for cats) and sprained his ankle. He texted me while he was waiting in A & E. I think this may be my favourite pie ever, for its pure inventiveness.  We still texted after that here and there, and when after about a month of text ping-pong I asked him how his ankle was (and not mentioning trying to rearrange the date) he responded with, ‘oh it’s is still pretty bad, I don’t think I’ll be going on any dates soon’

Guess what? Yeah, yeah, you know. Stack, same photos blah blah blah.

 

10.                ‘Let’s meet up this weekend’ Summer 2020

Or, let’s arrange a date then delete my account. I’ll just start another one on another date app and no-one will ever know, mwaaaahhhh haaaaa haaaaaa!

 

11.                 ‘Let’s also meet up this weekend after making a big ole fuss about really, really wanting to meet’ Summer 2020

 

Or, let’s just ignore that message about firming up plans.

 

‘Nice Guy’ of the week award goes to….

The match that called me a slag because I haven’t spent the last four something years of singledom staying in every night, wearing a potato sack and praying for a man like him to come along.

Just three messages earlier he had told me he was ‘a gentleman'