The old adage “if it looks too good to be true, it probably is” will serve any dater well. I learned this the hard way as a newbie dater. I had just joined Tinder and was trying to negotiate my way around the site. I had no clue what the world of online dating was and what the so-called rules were. I took to it like a job application: filling out all the boxes, picking good photos, spending days labouring over my sales pitch and then finally I published my profile. I reckoned everyone sweated over their profile to encourage the maximum traffic of potential dates - NOT SO. I read every profile that was presented to me, mentally weighing up the pros and cons before swiping left or right. I thought it was a quick and fun process, but a week in, I felt I had another part-time job. I lost hours to marking up each profile like an Olympic dater in training, sweat pouring off me - cue training montage and music. The most galling part was that although I was working through the profiles the best I could, there was very little return. I had a few matches, but no-one seemed to make any conversation. If I started a conversation, it could hang there for days and nothing. I was beginning to think the whole thing was a scam. Perhaps, there weren’t really any people, just a call centre of robots pretending to have profiles and talking to different women depending on their shift! Just on the cusp of deleting the app, there was a response. A 40-year-old guy, no job indicated, likes walks (don’t they all?), bit of a gym rat (self-confessed), doting dad of a daughter and lives 35 miles away. From his photo, he looked very much like every other Scottish guy: pale, dad-bod, polo-short with a pint of beer in hand. He had taken time to send me a message so, I was scrambling to open the app to see what my first potential suitor had to say. I open the message and it read “hey!”. My bubble could not have been more burst. What do I say to that? I could bore you with the banal chat we had over a few more messages, but it would put me to sleep typing it up. The outcome- it was a dead end. Delete. A day later, I received another message. I was completely unenthused after the let-down of the last message exchange, so I’ll be honest, I went all Schrodinger’s cat. Whilst the message remained unopened it could be potentially the best message I ever received or not. By the end of the week, curiosity killed Schrodinger’s cat and I opened the message. It was a long message. The guy was from a French speaking, Caribbean Island. He was 38, lived 32 miles away, had no kids, worked in graphic design and (from his photos) he was handsome in a Johnny Depp kind of way. He had brown eyes, messy hair, a retro style of dress in a very deliberate way - SOLD! We chatted for a few days via the app to get to know each other and he seemed very interesting. He shared my love of film and travel and I caught myself running away with the idea that I had met someone who was great. He seemed like one of those naturally cool people who never tries too hard, but you always want to know more about them and be in their orbit. The type of person that makes you feel cool and good about yourself by just knowing them. We’ve all had that crush on someone who made us feel that way whether we want to admit it or not. It happened to me at 13, 16 and now at 38!
I trip over myself trying to appear to match him in terms of smarts, funniness and cool. I proposed meeting to see a film at an art house cinema. It was a feminist, French New Wave film and thought he might like to go and see something in a language that was his own. He quipped he’d seen it before (he hadn’t) and then we agreed on a time and date. I phoned my friend immediately to do what I’d always seen in films. Invite the friend to sit in the back row to make sure he wasn’t a serial killer. Kindly, she agreed. God love her, she snuck about like the pink panther all night: darting behind walls, spying behind newspapers and ducking under chairs in an attempt not be seen. Date night arrived. I was so nervous I could barely breathe. It was my first date (with a complete stranger) in almost five years. I didn’t know what to expect. How was he going to react to me? Would I be what he expected? Would he be like I thought? I walked up the hill and turned right to see the entrance of the cinema. I stood outside by the film posters but couldn’t see him. There was a small boy with his back to me, but that was it. I looked at my watch. I was five minutes late. I wondered if he had left or changed his mind. I was in the middle of agreeing with myself to watch the movie anyway when the small boy turned around to reveal my Tinder date. His hair, face, eyes were all the same, but he was like 4ft 10. At 5ft 1 and a quarter, I have never been accused of being taller than anyone, but here we were, and I was the giant! He smiled, waved, and shuffled towards me before awkwardly hugging me. I was still in so much shock that I could see over the top of his head that I just stood there allowing myself to be hugged. I made gestures to go into the cinema and get the tickets. The first thing I noticed was his volume. He spoke with the loudest stage whisper I had ever heard. Everyone in the line could hear him order his ticket and say to me, “you’re paying your own, I don’t have enough change”. I smiled forgivingly at the line behind me and said I had planned to pay for my own anyway (in a real whisper I may add). We bumbled towards the screen in which was showing the film. I saw the bar on the way past but dared not say a thing in case it caused another scene. I was thirsty but I planned to sneak out when we’d settled into our seats - it backfired. Did he not just go and choose the seats right at the wall. I was thirsty and trapped! There was no way of leaving the row without making everyone stand up and trying not to push my bum in their face. I had to just deal with it, but then I realised I needed to pee. OH LORDY! As luck would have it, it wasn’t just the film. There was a talk about the director by a professor, from a local university, beforehand. My date seemed quite excited about this in a very childlike way. He expressed this through words and clapping his hands numerous times. As he spoke, I observed him in the same way scientist observes lab rats. He darted about, flayed his hands around as he spoke and repositioned himself on the seat with an overexaggerated jump. Not only was he the height of a small boy, but many of his mannerisms also reminded me of that too! An eccentrically dressed lady in her mid-50s walked down the aisle towards the podium. She was introduced as the professor who would give us insight into the many themes and motifs of the film we should look out for - one of which was cats. The lady spoke to us at length, with an accent as proper as the Queen’s, and made very interesting observations. Clearly my date enjoyed her observations too as whenever she said something he really liked, he would stand up and clap in front of the entire theatre. If an invisibility cloak had been something Amazon stocked on Prime, I would have ordered it for delivery ASAP. The talk concluded to a one-man standing ovation, yes it was my date, and then the lights were dimmed for the showing. By this point my tongue was as dry as a sandal in the desert and I was in dire need of the loo. The calamity beside me was the least of my worries. I spent most of the film trying to plan an escape route whilst my date stage-whispered to me that he saw another cat (yes, well done, she told you to look out for the cats in the film). Two and a half hours later, I was spent. All I could think about was going to the toilet and getting some water. As soon as the lights came up, I said I’d meet him outside and maybe we could go for a drink or something (I would text my friend to let her know). He agreed and I sprinted to the loo faster than The Flash. I walked outside to meet my date and see what the rest of the evening had in store. As the ever optimist, I thought the evening could be saved. When I got outside, he wasn’t there. I walked back inside, thinking perhaps he hadn’t heard me. Nope. He wasn’t there. I walked back outside and looked to the bottom of the road. Nothing. I then looked towards the top of the hill and there he was. He waved to me and said in his stage whisper “That’s us. I don’t think we’ll ever see each other again, bye.” He darted around the corner, and I’ve never seen him since. At that my friend came out of the cinema and seeing that the coast was clear said, “Well, he was a curious little thing, wasn’t he?” I said nothing but gave her a look which we both knew meant I needed a drink.
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