Stella Grey - The Heartfix - An Online Dating Diary

The first real-world meeting was for a coffee in town in the afternoon with an HR manager, between his meetings: a short, sharp interview that I failed. I didn’t mind too much. He was pursed-mouthed, unforthcoming, with dyed black hair and the demeanour of a vampire. Determined to exorcise the bad first date, I agreed to another, with an apparently jaunty tax specialist. Ahead of me in the queue, he bought only his own cappuccino and cake, leaving me to get mine, and then for twenty minutes I heard all about the many, many times he’d seen U2, told one concert at a time. By then my cup was empty. In all sorts of ways my cup seemed to be empty.

It wasn’t just the bad dates that were ending badly. I had a good date that also ended badly: a success so tremendous – dinner that led into dancing, and after that a walk by the river, and then a glorious snog – that I couldn’t sleep afterwards, but lay awake imagining our life together, a fantasy outcome put to an end by his cutting me dead. Sometimes people have one great date with someone and that’s enough for them. A series of great first dates is all they’re hoping for; that’s all they need. I hadn’t anticipated this, not anything like this. I came from a much more straightforward, more traditional dating culture in which people got together at discos and parties and via friends of friends, and stayed together for a long time. We were open with one another, back then, and love was fairly simple.

I decided that what I’d do was establish a real friendship with men, over email and text and sometimes even over the phone (I’ve never liked the phone), before agreeing to meet them. Talking people into being interested in you before meeting – that’s where you might expect the internet to excel. That could be a process designed to work in a middle-aged woman’s favour, circumventing the shock of her physical self when a man met her in person. Undeniably, I had been a shock to some men I’d met, and I wasn’t the only one to have had that experience (look, I’m not particularly hideous). I’d been talking to other women of around my age who had found the very same. It was agreed that there were notable (noble) exceptions, but in general men had expectations that a woman who’d ‘put herself out there’ would dedicate time, effort and money to her appearance, so as to compete. Some men are of the opinion that the whole physical manifestation of a woman on the earth should amount to an A–Z of efforts to please, and that we’re all madly in competition with one another. There are men who think that’s all that lipstick means. There are tabloid newspapers that suggest that’s all that clothes mean, and who divide women into goat and sheep camps, the frumpy and those who flaunt themselves. There have been men, in the course of this quest, who have been openly scandalised about my lack of commitment to looking younger. But then as Jack kept telling me, ‘Men are visual creatures.’ He was doubtful about the Scheherazade strategy, one involving telling stories and general email-based bewitchment. Nonetheless, I resolved to stick with plan A. I decided that I would be quirky, and bright, and a little bit alpha, and I was going to be my real age, for as long as it took. Initial disappointments wouldn’t deter me. I was going to beat the system and find the man I’d want to be with for the rest of my life. I was just hoping it wouldn’t take another 1001 nights.

Here’s my first attempt at a dating profile. The additions in bold in brackets are my reactions to reading it now.

ABOUT ME

Tall, dark, reasonably handsome woman, just turned 50, hoping for second love after the end of a long marriage. (Is tall, dark and handsome a bit of a macho way to introduce yourself? I’m trying for witty, but I think I’m just coming off as annoying, to misquote Rex the dinosaur in Toy Story.) Intelligent, lively, curious, bookish. Not a skinny person. I’m just saying. Not obese either, but if slender is your type, then I might literally be too much to handle. (Christ, no, that’s not even funny.)

WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR

A tall, clever, funny, loyal, lovely man. (Not much to ask, is it?) Ideally, someone to grow old with. Someone bookish, good-humoured, sociable, kind. (You should probably have written: ‘Happiness; not interested in flings’. That’s probably enough.) I have a bit of a thing for big sturdy academics who rock a linen jacket. (Oh no.)

MUSIC

My music likes are catholic, as in wide-ranging and not as in Vatican City. (You’ve just offended somebody.) Jimi Hendrix, Kathleen Ferrier, Pat Metheny, Philip Glass, Rolling Stones, Talking Heads and all the usual classical. Not really an opera person. Fond of seventies and eighties tracks that remind me of being a student. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Glen Campbell, Velvet Underground, John Martyn, Blue Nile, Marvin Gaye, Blondie, Pretenders, The Cure, David Bowie. Very fond of wordless film scores and ambient. Favourite guilty secret: Fleetwood Mac. (Accurate enough, though you’ve completely omitted the jazz you listen to all day. And I’m not really sure why you’ve written all this.)

BOOKS

Usually have a book stuck to my face. British and American nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the usual retinue of greatness: Dickens, Austen, Brontë, Wharton, James. Oh, and those Russian chaps, and those French chaps (that you don’t read much. Plus, your cuteness is already annoying). Currently on the bedside: Michel Faber, Richard Ford, Kazuo Ishiguro, Fitzgerald, Franzen, Forster, Iris Murdoch. Larkin and Eliot. Art books. A.N. Wilson’s The Victorians . (This is true but you might be trying too hard. Perfectly nice men who read only 99p Kindle thrillers will be deterred. It doesn’t matter what you read or what other people read.)

FILMS

Twelve random Desert Island films: Local Hero , Some Like It Hot , Philadelphia Story , Annie Hall , Hero , Blazing Saddles , Two Days in Paris , Stranger than Fiction , Rocky Horror , Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday , A Night at the Opera , All About My Mother , Blade Runner . (Except that’s thirteen.) I’m a big fan of world cinema of all sorts. Guilty pleasures: The Bourne franchise, popcorn thrillers.

FOOD

Basically Nigella. (You are embarrassing.) Very greedy and eat almost anything (you’re saying you’re fat). Cooking and eating are important, as you will see immediately you meet me. (You keep telling the boys that you’re fat, you know.) World food rather than just traditional British, though in reality there’s a lot of chicken. In summer, fish and chips out of the paper while sitting on a sea wall. Restaurant pick for a blowout dinner – mussels to start, venison or duck, lots of cheese, a clever chocolate pudding. And wine. Lots of wine. Garlic with everything except custard. Death Row meal: steak and sweet potato fries. (Really not clear why you’ve written down any of this.)

ART

I’m an art nut and go to galleries a lot. I have trouble with some of the conceptual stuff but am not completely ungroovy. (Oh God.) I’ve even admired the occasional video installation. I like primitive art, Renaissance art, nineteenth-century art, early/mid twentieth-century modernism. I like abstraction, colour, some expressive work. Howard Hodgkin. (At this point you’ve probably deterred people who think this is a spec, rather than just your own ramblings.)

HOME

Home means a lot, physically and as an idea. I like to decorate, in different senses of the word. (No, me neither.) Having said that, heading off with a rucksack and being forced to be a world citizen would probably be good for me. At home I feel the pull between sleek functionality and a more cluttered, wildly coloured nineteenth-century approach with some Moroccan-boho touches. (A chap might wonder if you’re asking to be housed and to be given a furnishing budget, at this point.)