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 5th 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.
