The International Writers Magazine: On-Line Dating is real...

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Virtually Real • Karen Saxby To believe or not to believe your internet date Okay ladies, so you’ve heard that Monica in accounts, 42, divorced, interested in gardening, cinema and camping in Bavaria has just got engaged to a six foot five, bilingual fire-fighter she met through an internet dating site. You ponder awhile on a lonely evening in front of The Bachelor on Channel Five and think, "Well, no harm in just looking".

Google presents you with a list of sites and, before your brain has time to engage, you go to www.ready-and-waiting and your fingers are eagerly filling in all those little boxes under Woman seeks Man. Harmless enough.

So, having logged in, it’s senseless to log out without having a peep at the selection presented in a preliminary search. And wham bam, there are literally dozens of them. You scan photos and profiles and are surprised to find that there are several similar-aged and serious-relationship seekers within five miles of your post code. How come none have them has ever popped in to borrow a cup of sugar, you wonder. Your head tilts from side to side, eyebrows rising and forehead furrowing in turn as you giddily consider The Potentials. He looks quite nice. Never! If that’s his taste in décor, forget it. No - too good to be true! If he can’t even get up off the sofa.. nah. But hmmm.. hardly a looker, but funny and interesting. And he spells ‘you’ in that quaint old-fashioned way using three letters instead of just one. Yes. This man is worth sending a line to.

Then you discover that in order to reach out and touch Ted/Mike/Jack, 39/45/52, divorced/widowed/separated, you need to join the www.ready-and-waiting line-up beforehand. No prob. You put on some lippy, change your top, mess with your hair and take half a dozen photos with the digital camera that came free with the computer. You choose the best one (left profile/smiley/confident) then call your 13 year-old nephew in exasperation for instructions on how to reduce photos from 2117 millibits of somethings to an acceptable 623 and it’s done. Photo posted, profile cut and pasted, subscription paid. Now where was that bloke? No time like the present. Carpe diem and all that.
Why not? It’s non-commital after all. It’s far more exciting than playing spider solitaire at midnight. And writing a quickie response is as easy as falling off a keyboard. Harmless enough.

Hi Ted/Mike/Jack
I’ve never done this kind of thing before but saw your profile and decided to write. How astonishing that you went to Oxford/work as a manager/write children’s books in your spare time. I have friends in Cambridge/work as a manageress/am doing a creative writing course on alternate Tuesday evenings. What a coincidence! If you like the look of me too, please write back.
Jane/Sylvia/Kate
Some dare to add a kiss.

Then you wait like some forlorn fisherwoman on a soggy day watching the float bob up and down on-line. Then joy oh joy. There’s an email alert - You have received a message from Ted/Mike/Jack. You’re surprised that your fingers are shaking a little when you open it. Then smile when he says how lovely you look in your photo. And suddenly, you’re not the one who’s doing the hooking (no pun intended here whatsoever).
Sister, you’re hooked.

Several messages ensue. Tell me more about yourself. And he does. And you do. And after a respectable amount of cyber-bantering, he suggests you call him on such and such number at such and such a time if you’d like a chat. You watch the clock. You wait until two minutes past five/six/seven. Your heart in your mouth, you dial. Twice. You make a mistake first time because your fingers are shaking a little again. But you’ve worked out your tactics. If his voice is squeaky or spooky, if his words are too corny or slick, if he doesn’t pronounce his t’s, if he talks about football or mentions his mother or you hear someone calling him to the dinner table, you’ll just hang up. Harmless enough.

But he is guilty of none of the above. He’s charming, in fact, and there’s not even a passing mention of a Forward Half or Away Game. You fix a time and a place to meet.
You buy something new to wear in your lunch break. Why not? Perhaps you stretch the budget to a cut and blow dry. You lie in the bath and work out Stuff to Say. And suddenly, it’s D-time.

You arrive at the Rose-Tinted Inn. You know, the one on the corner of Daredevil’s Lane. You scan the car park for ‘his’ car. Perhaps it’s the red BMW/black Audi/blue convertible jobbie in the corner. Whatever. With heart high enough to threaten the connection between head and shoulders, you open the door and there he is. He’s reading a newspaper so he must be intelligent. He’s better looking than you’d imagined. There’s a suggestion of fitness when he springs to his feet to greet you. Tick, tick, tick, in the three first boxes. Harmless enough.

He smiles. "Hello, you must be Jane/Sylvia/Kate. Your photo doesn’t do you justice."
And then, with a glass of red wine (just the one), you both do the Well I never!/That’s funny, so do I!/Really? I’ve been there too! thing. It’s a delicate and delightful dance. You seek out similarities and bypass differences. A million of your mother board nerve endings joyously weave about in the here-and-now trying to make connections with this virtually real man.
And you have a great evening and say yes (hesitating only for a moment) when he asks to see you again in three days. Harmless enough?

© Karen Saxby March 2005
karen.saxby@mac.com

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