I also used the kind lie on the man who had a very particular vision of what his woman would look like (despite closely resembling a fruitbat himself). He went into detail so specific that it even considered her fingernails (short, but shaped, and painted with clear gloss). He wanted to know if I’d consider dyeing my hair red, and whether I was even-tempered. ‘The woman I’m looking for will make me smile continually when we’re together and will ensure that I miss her when we’re apart,’ he wrote. I told him I was in the early stages of talking to someone, and wished him luck. Ordinarily I wished people luck, though I didn’t to the bloke who wrote to assure me that being the bit on the side to a sexless union (his) would prove glorious and liberating. I got his picture back up and stabbed him in the heart with a chopstick.
I’ve had the kind lie used on me, by men who considered themselves out of my league. In one case I knew it was ‘the kind lie’ because I saw the person in question’s online light lit night and day for the next six weeks, as he scoured the listings restlessly for someone better. On one occasion I was caught out doing that myself, by a man I’d delivered the lie to. He called me on it. He’d seen my green light lit for days on end, after I’d said I was only there checking my messages. I felt bad about this. I had to apologise. I had to admit that it was just a useful shorthand. ‘It’s because you’re almost 70,’ I confessed. ‘And you live on the Isle of Wight. It wouldn’t be worth making huge journeys to see one another, because it wouldn’t work: as you say yourself, you don’t read, and you don’t like music and you’re allergic to dogs, and that makes us incompatible. You see, it isn’t better if I give you the real reasons, is it? I’m sorry. Don’t take it personally. There’s someone for everyone. Perhaps start with people who live on the same island as you.’
‘Don’t be so fucking patronising,’ he responded.
I went through a period of getting a whole series of approach emails from men over 60, men approaching 70 who were aware that they were fighting the odds. They arrived in such a cluster that I wondered if one of the sites had put me onto a Seniors Site of some sort somewhere (and yes, this does happen – sign up to one outfit and you can find yourself repackaged elsewhere without permission being asked of you). I felt sorry for the men of 69, pretending to be 59, pictured looking caved-in and dejected, in an ill-fitting suit at a wedding, the ex-wife cropped out of the frame. Their way of approaching me was faultless and unappealing. They assured me they were gentlemen, that they were solvent LOL, that they had their own teeth haha, that they loved to travel and wanted a partner to spend their twilight years with. They were unanimously in search of a Lovely Lady. The trouble they were having in looking after themselves was sometimes mentioned, since being widowed, and it was clear that the lady being sought would be kept busy in the kitchen and at the ironing board. Though not all the seniors were merely in search of apple pie. There were plenty who were determined to get laid. I wasn’t charmed when a 75-year-old man told me he wanted to lick me all over. My response to an invitation from a 68-year-old, one written in textspeak – ‘how r u, u luk gr8 to me’ – was, frankly, openly snotty.
‘Was that message even in English?’
‘Love it, love a bitch,’ he wrote. His profile was headed: Looking for a quiet trustworthy woman – does she exist? He went on to say: ‘I should state right away that trousers, jewellery, high heels and makeup do nothing for me.’
I was tempted to tell him that I didn’t think they’d suit him, either.
Sometimes there’s a revealing little nugget hidden in an otherwise bland self-descriptive passage. ‘I have no objection to helping in the kitchen at weekends, but detest dinner parties and draw the line at home-baking.’ (Okey-doke. Well, have fun, won’t you, drawing your line and being single for ever.) ‘I’m widely and well-read, and can be relied on not to make embarrassing remarks in art galleries.’ In a way he was saying the right thing, but it was the way he said it. It wasn’t even that – it was the way I read it. The trouble with the written word is that it has no tone, or humour; there’s no corresponding facial expression. Both statements could have been meant jokingly. Among the sea of Man Vanilla, sometimes a person of strong individual flavour leaps out from the page. Sometimes a statement patently isn’t meant to be funny. ‘I’m looking for someone who has slept with fewer than six men,’ one man declared. ‘Apologies if this seems harsh, but I need someone I can feel morally confident about.’
Sometimes, it’s okay to ignore people.
When I joined a new site, a fairly new site that didn’t charge (yet) to list yourself like an old painting at an auction, I thought I’d hit gold. Zowie! There he was, on page one: Peter, an interesting-looking man, not handsome but interesting-looking, 56, and tall and sturdy in a cricket-playing sort of a way. He worked in education (despite my intended avoidance of men in education, I kept coming back to them, a moth to a flame). He had kind eyes and a nice mouth, a broad face and a big brain and a silvery patina; he had deep smile lines, and an expression of complete and benign friendliness, like a cow that comes to a fence. He was slightly bedraggled, unmaterialistic, disorganised, clever: that was my reading of him, in the lines and between them. I had an immediate feeling, an intuition. I looked at other pictures he’d uploaded: in one of them he had an attractively sceptical expression, and in another an expectant, amused look, like he’d said something mildly outrageous and was hoping I’d find it funny. His profile made me laugh because it was so guileless and rubbish and uncrafted, and he was four inches taller than me. I wrote admiring his writing style and didn’t expect to hear from him.
I got a reply the following morning. ‘Hello to you too,’ he wrote. ‘You look very interesting. I see we have things in common. We probably have mutual friends. What a pity we’re 100 miles apart. But let’s talk some more. As it happens I’m going to be in your neck of the woods in two weeks. Lunch?’
This gave me a thrilling idea. He wasn’t really going to be in my neighbourhood. He made that bit up, because he’d had the same intuition.
At Exciting Date Minus a Week it was proving difficult to think about anything else. I kept looking at Peter’s dating profile, saved onto the laptop, and rereading his emails, as if I’d notice something new, some small detail that would feed my expectation, or undermine it. I needed to know everything. We swapped real-world email addresses, and the letters kept coming, short but regular ones, at coffee pauses in the day and longer in the evening. I Googled him, reassured to see his identity confirmed, and saw him pictured in various online contexts: a slightly creased, almost-handsome, linen-suited academic. He had a bit of a food-loving, France-loving midlife belly, and eyes full of irony and warmth, eyes that hinted at arcane knowledge and originality. Irony, warmth? Arcane knowledge, originality? I was making huge assumptions about him, I was well aware, but couldn’t seem to put a stop to it. He might hate France; he might be well educated and stupid; he might be a wife-beater. I’d taken scant facts and joined the dots. I’d developed my own idea of Peter from the little fragments he’d given and that I’d collated from elsewhere, building up a picture, and Peter, no doubt, was forming his own idea of me. Until we could meet, nothing could really be done about that. It’s what happens. The mind rushes on.
I Googled myself to see what he’d see if he were to search for me. There wasn’t much, certainly nothing controversial, and there weren’t recent photographs, because I’d been hiding from cameras for five years. I was a good deal less slender than I was at 45, but shrank from mentioning this; I mean, why draw people’s attention to something they might not even notice? ‘Oh, PS, just so you know and aren’t surprised, I’m fat and probably sexually undesirable; I’m one of those overreaching overweight midlife women the nameless vampires of the bloke-internet enjoy disdaining. Just so you’re aware.’ So I didn’t mention the weight issue. It would be fine, I decided. I just wouldn’t eat any bread between now and then, and I’d wear a black dress with cunning fat-clamping