Have you ever been stood up?
You had planned to meet. You’d set a time and a place. You had butterflies in your stomach. You spent three days deciding what you were going to wear. You muttered in hushed tones to your girlfriends, each word heavy with the anticipation of meeting the mystery man; after all, this one might just be The One. You spent hours reflecting on how it will go; will he smile, will he make you laugh, will he kiss you goodbye, will he call you again? You shaved your legs and everything else that might be exposed to a living human male for the first time since the Internet was invented. You made sure it was a hairwash day and cracked out the heavy artillery to whip it into shape. At the end of it all, you look about as perfect as you might if Glinda the Good, your Fairy Godmother and Tinkerbell drowned you in magic and enchantment.
At no point, not once, ever, did you imagine that he wouldn’t show.
I’ll go you one better…I flew half way around the world…and he didn’t show.
More about the Douchebag later, let’s focus on what’s been filling the endless hours I spend on conference calls wishing that the floor beneath my desk would transform into a sinkhole and suck me all the way to Sydney.
Tinder.
Loosely dubbed Grindr* for straight people, Tinder is the latest, greatest thing that happened to Smartphones since, well since the Smartphone was invented.
Using your Facebook profile, you upload an App that picks out your photo and your basic information then sends you the profiles of others in your immediate vicinity. Sounds simple right? You ‘match’ with people and start chatting, then you can arrange to meet up, set a time to hook up or in my case (for the second time in a week) be stood up.
I have friends in London who swear by Tinder. It is the latest bandwagon to jump upon since the Olympics. London’s single Tinderers date a different person every night. They assured me it was the most time effective way to meet decent men who live nearby, decent men who are interested in meeting decent ladies.
Of course, I live in Paris; a place that is, in every imaginable way, the diametric opposite of London, so the same cannot possibly apply. Just as Parisian cars drive on the opposite side of the road, or that Parisian palaces have no Queen, Parisian Tinder is designed to light fires in adulterous hell, rather than in my Victoria’s Secret knickers.
The first guy I started chatting to seemed funny, which in my life, is the single most important characteristic of any person, most especially someone who might consider intimacy with me. His photos certainly demonstrated his humour, one with jokey sunglasses, one with gaffer tape over his mouth. This guy, thought I, could make me laugh. If I were permitted to write anything about my professional situation, you’d understand my craven need to laugh, regularly, to giggle away the sinkhole (and AK47) fantasies that invade my consciousness. To protect his anonymity, let’s call this guy Patrick. Patrick as in Bateman, not Swayze.
Patrick was the first guy I matched with. He made me laugh, and he was patient. He kept chatting through the 14 days I was far, far away. He was anxiously counting the days until my return to Paris. He was a writer, he voted Left, he had a preference for brown haired women and messaged in near perfect English. We joked and texted and in the third week, we planned to meet up that Saturday.
At that point, after three weeks of flirtatious messaging, he decided to share a minor detail that until now, he hadn’t deemed important enough to share. “Oh by the way, before we meet, I should let you know, I’m married.”
At least now I know to ask…and I do…every time…and have now been matched with three more married men who messaged their interest in me. Three more married men, looking for a quick and easy shag, with a quick and easy single lady. Preferably, I assume, doted with her own abode; after all, we wouldn’t want to be discovered in flagrante in the spare room while little Jacques snoozed in his IKEA cot.
So Patrick was a colossal knob. Marcel, as in Marceau (he who does not speak), was not so much a knob as plain frustrating. I don’t mind if someone is an introvert; I’ve got enough personality for three others and relish a captive, tacit audience. But have you ever tried having a text conversation with someone who says nothing, who divulges nothing, but who responds to everything with only one word. It was kind of like texting a French waiter; oui, non, bon, d’accord, ok…Marcel, I can reduce it to less than one word. F.O.
More recently I met The Chef, ostensibly the only other unmarried (never-married) person my age in France. He was Italian, we both love Pacino and De Niro, we both love food and wine, he made me laugh, he never called after we met. Next!
Those among you, who know me personally, know that I am not a dater. I don’t have enough patience to waste more than an hour with someone who does not immediately declare his or her undying love for me. Besides, I am far too busy during the week with the Clan of Unmitigated Neurotic Tools^ to waste my time with pricks, knobs, dicks and cocks… unless of course it was a real one attached to a man with a brain. So being dicked around for a whole year by someone so intrinsically sadistic he’s in the Army, has given rise to a rage-fuelled righteousness burning white-hot within a woman so scorned that hell hath no fury#…and any other Shakespearean quote you can think of.
That a man passes weeks and months at a time laying in ditches staring down (and then I assume annihilating) the Mujahedeen of Central Asia but that he cannot show up for a date in New York City, is unsettling. Is a woman with a full-time job and an opinion so terrifying? Was it me? Is it you? Was it the full moon? Should I have not shaved my legs?
And that is why I’m not a dater; the flood of insecurity that accompanies every rejection or unsent text or unread message or missed date tests the strongest swimmer… and I am landlocked. There are enough people in my life (and some dead ones) who make me sad, who make me question myself, who make me angry; I don’t need to lengthen the list by inviting new people in to be cruel to me. This Aries warrior is polishing her armour, sharpening up her sword and fighting only the good fight.
Like Candy Crush.
*If you’ve never heard of it, you don’t know any gay people. If you don’t know any gay people, we can’t be friends anymore and you should stop reading.
^See what I did there?
#Yes, at risk of offending the whole Blue Mountains, maybe even hotter than the bushfires.