By Lizzie
My first foray into the world of internet dating wasn’t wildly successful. I messaged him on Gumtree and we emailed back and forth. We discussed meeting up, I suggested going to a Mexican movie at the Edinburgh Film Festival, he never replied. Ever. I guess he must have really had something against Gael Garcia Bernal.
I moved to London and things didn’t really pick up. I tried Gumtree again and this time got to the actual date stage with the first man I messaged, but again films were my downfall. I casually mentioned I didn’t much care for the work of Pedro Almodóvar. I was met with disbelief and an aggressive reply of: “Well, what films do you like then?” Put on the spot I literally couldn’t think of a single one I’d even seen, let alone enjoyed.
I persevered with the whole online thing on various sites and had a mixed bag of generally terrible dates. There was:
- the Mexican banker who wanted to set up a business back home because he didn’t have to pay people proper wages there;
- the raging Tory who didn’t look anything like his (deceptively flattering) profile picture and insisted we’d have a better society if we all had a pot of money to spend on pet projects rather than contributing to education and healthcare for all;
- and then the worst of all – the guy who licked my neck when I went for a hello peck on the cheek, who insisted he could guess which of the things I liked on each of the stalls in the market we were visiting (he couldn’t. It was a big market), and then kept his hat and sunglasses on when we went to a dark and dingy pub for one very quick drink before I ran away.
There were some more enjoyable evenings but ultimately, I didn’t meet anyone I would particularly want to see on a regular basis or have sex with. Fortunately for me, I realised I was in love with my best friend and was able to knock the whole dating game on the head. But at least I know if I need to try it again I can collect some more good stories.
Lizzie
Everything But The Kitchen Sink 