With these motives in place, she approached the website again, tanked up on drive and motivation.
“You have ten messages,” the website joyfully informed her. Rifling through the scant profiles, the lack of photos, the zero-effort one word messages, she noticed that one profile shone out as particularly promising. Looking at his photos, he was tall and slim, with a lazy slanted smile, dark hair and he was certainly good looking. Their messages bounced back and forth. Not beating around the bush, he asked for her number, requesting that they chat on WhatsApp. Sasha wondered why guys preferred to chat on WhatsApp. Surely it made no difference whether a message appeared in text form, WhatsApp or a dating site message? However, she pondered that perhaps a WhatsApp was more immediate. The message popped up on her phone straight away, so she was likely to reply more quickly, rather than waiting until the next time she logged on to her dating profile.
Acceding to his request, she dutifully gave out her number and then watched with quizzical interest as a barrage of texts appeared.
Him: Hi, how’s you?
Her: I’m good thanks, how’s you?
Him: Gd.
‘Gd’. That meant ‘good’. Really? He couldn’t be bothered to give more of an explanation of his day except to write ‘good’? And even at that, he couldn’t be bothered to type the two essential vowels in the middle of the word, reverting instead to lazy text speak? What did this say about him as a character? If he couldn’t even be bothered with his texts, how bothered would he be on dates or in a relationship?
An hour later, he texted: How are you now?
Her: Good. Just watching a bit of telly. What are you up to? x
Him: Same x
Wow. This was hard going. Was this really going to continue like this all day? An hourly check-up on what she was up to?
Him: How are you now?
Her: Grand. Just cooking dinner. You?
Him: Same x
An hour later:
Him: What are you up to now?
Her: Just gonna run a bath.
Him: Nice.
Sasha really couldn’t believe her eyes. When had men become so…. Needy? Was it just an online thing? Were they so socially inept that they had to hide behind a computer screen, an iPhone and a lack of social etiquette?
Her patience well and truly tried, Sasha replied to each and every text with the tolerance of Mother Teresa on a bucket load of ecstasy pills.
Her: Good thanks. Just chilling, watching a bit of Made In Chelsea. My guilty pleasure! What are you up to?
An hour later:
Her: Good thanks. Did a bit of exercise, had a lovely bubbly bath, what are you up to?
An hour later:
Her: Good thanks. Just feeding my birds and doing my bit to help nature, LOL. What are you up to?”
She was tempted to write:
Her: Good thanks. Just went to the toilet and wiped my bum – was that enough information on how my day is going?
But she didn’t. ’Cos that would be rude.
Instead she thought, well hey, he’s obviously keen. So I might as well bite the bullet and suggest we meet up. No point in texting constantly all day, let’s just meet and see how we get on.
So she did bite the bullet. She texted, she suggested they meet for a coffee, he agreed, a date and time and place was arranged. It seemed that all systems were go.
Except that the date was six days away. Which meant that she had six days of hourly, needy texts to endure. However, armed with her (slightly battered) hope, she fielded each question, like a soldier in battle lifting his shield to each blow.
She was calm, pleasant, courteous; flirtatious even. Admittedly, with each inquisitive text, her interest levels in him decreased – with increasing momentum.
Does he really have nothing better to do with his day than text me constantly?
Is he really the good-looking, tall, slim guy behind that photo or is he in fact a fat, balding, lonely old man who is using this façade as bait to try to get comforting texts from a girl?
Sure enough, one hour before the planned date, Mr Needy feigned sickness.
“So, so sorry. Not going to be able to make it today. Feeling so sick. So sorry to let you down. Could we re-schedule for next weekend instead? X x”
Sasha momentarily considered another week of texting this guy on an hourly basis. The drudgery of it dragged out ahead of her like an unwanted week of work.
And have to put up with another week of constant texts? No thanks.
Instead she decided drastically just to delete and block his number. She could not prolong the misery any longer. She could not endure another week of hourly texts to an imaginary guy who probably looked nothing like his photo. Putting Mr Phantom Needy text guy in the bin, she neither reacted to him nor made any explanations. She simply blocked him and stuck him in the ‘never to be communicated with’ section of her brain filing system.
Unfortunately, just as her hope was being battered that little bit further, her mind started to play negative tricks on her. It started to prod her gently with good memories of Kirk.
‘Remember the good dates you had with Kirk,’ the negative recesses of her mind taunted her. ‘Remember how easy it was. The pleasant messages, the easy chat; the fun of each date. How different it was to these awful online daters.’
The thoughts crept up on her like unwanted weeds in a garden, threatening to depress her and pull her down into a pit of negativity.
As if to totally push her over the edge, a message from a guy called Will popped up on her dating messages. Looking at Will’s photo, Sasha realised that she recognised him. To her surprise and horror, Sasha realised that Will was the first guy who had ever messaged her on an online dating site – and that was maybe ten years ago. Ten years. To think that her rotation of men was now coming round to full circle depressed and frightened her. Had she really fished the pool dry? Were there really no more choices, was it just regurgitating old rejects?
Will seemed charming enough in his messages but a warning voice inside her, the battered voice of hope, was screaming That picture is ten years old. He does not look like that any more!
He invited her for coffee and the voice continued to shout, It will be a disappointment. Don’t bother!
The voice, she realised, was on the other shoulder from hope. This was the voice of doom. It was negative, fearful, pessimistic, realistic and moreover… bruised.
The voice of doom, she realised, was so bruised by the Kirk incident that it acted like a guardian of fear.
‘Hold on!’ doom said. ‘Kirk was like being in a car crash. He broke you. You fell to the ground, almost dead. Your self-esteem was in bits. You were depressed. You surfed the sofa for months. You wallowed in DVDs. Still he tortured you. The doctors fed you anti-depressants. You crawled through each day, one day at a time, like a slug in a marathon. You’ve only just picked yourself up. Do you really want to put yourself through that again? Do you?’
She realised that doom was screaming at her. Loud and angry and forceful. Hope, meanwhile, was small and tentative and tiny. It was a losing battle.
Sadly, with depleted energy, Sasha realised that she didn’t want to put herself through that again. Her subconscious had a large and very forceful magnet pulling her towards being single and that’s why she was single. She didn’t want to get hurt again. She didn’t want to get into another car, if it meant a car crash of epic proportions.
She relayed this reasoning to her friend, Jason. Qualifying her fear of dating, by reasoning that it wasn’t good for her health to put herself through all this again.
“But what if you could go for a test drive in a few cars?” Jason advised, when she spilled out her realisations to him. “What if not every driver was as bad a driver as Kirk? What if there are drivers out there who would take you for a pleasant ride, without any crash?”
What if? Sasha wondered. Are there really any left out there? She was beginning to doubt. Still, she had made a promise to
herself. One year. One year of taking chances. One year of living dangerously. Gingerly, she replied to Will’s messages, ignoring the fact that his photos were ten years old, reasoning with herself that she had also picked her most flattering photos, and not necessarily her most recent.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sasha’s date with Will went surprisingly well. The sun was shining; she had just been to the hairdresser for a wash and blow-dry and her hair swished with a controlled glow as she arrived at Caffé Nero. He was waiting outside, looking exactly like his photo ten years before! How had he not aged at all? What face cream was he piling on each day? What vitamin supplements was he taking? Whatever he was doing, she was keen to copy, if it meant she’d share his age-dodging skills.
Sitting side-by-side on one of the comfy sofas upstairs, Will regaled her with stories of his life; his upbringing, his family background in farming, his marriage and subsequent divorce. He was chatty, friendly and easy to talk to, but he also listened attentively when she spoke. A couple of hours later, she sailed out of the coffee shop, assured that the date had gone exceedingly well. She was sure he was going to follow up with a ‘Thanks, great to meet you. Would love to see you again?’ text. He might wait a couple of hours or maybe even a day, erring on the side of playing it cool, but she was sure a text would appear.
But the next day; nothing. How peculiar, she thought. She really did think they had got on pretty well. Perhaps he was playing it really cool. Perhaps he was playing the three day rule? But three days later, still nothing. Surely he wasn’t expecting her to make the first move? An unnerving feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. Was she going to have to concede to her innermost self that he, in fact, was not interested in her and had no intention of contacting her? Perhaps he had looked at her photos, several years out of date, and had noticed that she had in fact put on at least a stone (possibly two)? Perhaps he had walked away, disgusted at yet another fake profile, and swearing off online dating sites forever more?
Her toes curled in embarrassment at the thought of this rejection.
However, despite her disappointment, Sasha was determined not to give up. She had signed up to a Year of No Rules and by God, she was going to persist! She couldn’t just fall at the first hurdle, could she? No, she had to pick herself up and carry on.
So when Mark sent her a message, she thought that this could be her happy ending. He was cute – very cute – with arms that looked like pistons. He must work out for hours every day, compared to her measly half an hour, three times per week. Perhaps he could become her new personal trainer, sitting patiently beside her on the yoga mat, working her body into all sorts of flexible poses while they worked themselves up into a pre-coital position? She would emerge from their early relationship days with a healthy glow, a stone lighter and with an air of confident girlfriend-material happiness.
His profile stated that he was fifty-one – ten years older than her. But he was the youngest looking fifty-one-year-old she’d ever seen. Unless it wasn’t a recent picture. He had that ‘silver fox’ look about him. As though he had been around the block a few times. As though he could teach her a thing or two.
Marvellously, he seemed quite smitten with her too. He told her how gorgeous she looked, and complimented her on all her photos. He then asked to see more photos of her.
Uh-oh, here we go. Sasha thought. This is where he’ll be looking for nudie pics.
However, deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt, she sent him a couple of photos of herself (non-nudie, of course). To her pleasant surprise, instead of him texting back “Er… I meant naughty ones?” he replied with “Aw, you’re gorgeous!”
Sasha felt her hopes raise despite herself.
“And you’re sure you don’t mind the age gap between us?” he asked again, sounding unsure of himself.
Normally, Sasha preferred confident men, but actually his self-doubt was quite endearing. It made him seem vulnerable.
Throwing the question back at him, she asked, “So, do you have any more pics of yourself?” Thinking that if he was making her go to the bother, she might as well get him to do the same. To her surprise, a video suddenly popped up in her messages. She opened it to see that it was a video of him talking. Result! she thought, an actual 3D image of him before meeting him in person. But wait… what was he doing?
He was on all fours, about to do press-ups. “Okay guys,” he was saying, “This is day two of my twenty-two challenge…” Sasha’s first observation was that yes, in fact he did look older. Facially, she could tell that he was in his fifties. But his arms – oh my God, they were massive. I wouldn’t mind them on top of me, pumping me, Sasha found herself thinking distractedly.
But to her horror, he dropped to the floor and began doing twenty-two press-ups!
Has he really sent me a video of himself doing twenty-two press-ups? Sasha wondered. Yes, it was an achievement, and yes, he had great arms, but, well… it just seemed so… posey.
I wonder if he’s one of these obsessed-with-himself gym bunnies? Sasha pondered.
Sasha didn’t know how to respond to him, other than to say, “Wow, you obviously work out a lot.”
“Yeah,” he replied.
She didn’t know if he expected her to say, ‘wow, wouldn’t mind those arms pumping me,’ but she just kept silent. Later that evening, she noticed she had a friend request on Facebook – and sure enough, it was from Mark.
Goodness me, he seems keen. Sasha thought. He’s obviously been searching out all the Sashas in Belfast to find me.
But something strange happened after that. Sasha couldn’t put her finger on it but the vibe just went cold after that. The texts stopped. It just went dead.
Obviously he’s seen something on my Facebook that he doesn’t like, Sasha thought, with panic.
Was she as guilty as all the other online dating users, of only putting their most polished, most flattering photos up? Perhaps now he was browsing through her Facebook, he was looking at her less flattering photos. Perhaps the photos with an extra couple of pounds on. Perhaps the lighting wasn’t as generous as her filter-applied photos on the dating website.
She could sense a cancellation coming. It was in her waters, same as when she felt a period coming.
Sure enough, on the morning of their date, two hours before their scheduled appointment, the text arrived.
“Morning gorgeous girl, would it be okay if we rescheduled? X”
No explanation. No reason. No excuse. Just ‘can we reschedule?’ Sasha knew that in the dating world, reschedule meant cancel.
Rapidly firing off a reply, she wrote “no worries,” then deleted his contact details and blocked him. Timewaster, she hissed.
She noticed that it was possible her mind could go down one of two routes.
Either the negative route, angry at him for cancelling, wondering what it was in her Facebook that he didn’t like; self-pity kicking in – why me? Every time I try to pick myself up, I get knocked down. It’s not fair. God is not looking out for me at all…
But this time, Sasha was determined to stop these thoughts. She was determined to choose the positive route.
Okay, he has cancelled, but it’s his issue, not mine. If he has a problem with my photos then he’s shallow, and I would be better off without him. I need to be able to be myself and not let someone try to change me. If he’s the type of guy who doesn’t approve of me or support me, then I don’t need him in my life.
Perhaps it’s his issue.
Perhaps he’s afraid that, because he’s ten years older, I’ll turn him down after the first date.
Sasha felt encouraged. Even though it was wasn’t ideal that he had cancelled the date, she was pleased with herself for dealing it with it so well. She had stopped her negative thinking in its tracks. She was determined to choose positive thoughts. She was not going to let herself spiral down into a pool of self-pity and depression.
Putting on her trainers, she decided to head out for a w
alk. The fresh air would help her – would clear away the cobwebs. The movement of her legs and arms back and forth would stimulate some adrenalin running through her body. She would repeat positive thoughts in her head; that if he was put off by a few less-than-perfect photos then he wasn’t the man for her. If he couldn’t accept her as she was, then it was absolutely pointless dating him. She would pick herself up and carry on. This was her year of taking risks.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I’ve got to try and move on. I’ve got to try and move on. Sasha repeated it like a mantra.
Could it really be over a year since Kirk walked out the door that final time? Was it really that long? How could she have stuck so vehemently in the past, when he had so effortlessly moved on? She had to catch up with him. She had to procure someone to be her ‘other half’ and dangle him on her arm like a proud trophy. Where was this Mr Right that everyone proclaimed was waiting around the corner, like some sad weirdo in a deserted alleyway, ready to pounce on her? Where was he?
Sasha began to lose hope that he even existed at all. After all, she was now forty-one. If he hadn’t presented himself by now, it looked like he wasn’t going to bother, was he?
Trust me to get stuck with a lazy bastard, she thought. One who doesn’t show up for years.
It didn’t seem fair, in her humble opinion. How come some girls met their childhood sweetheart at the tender age of seventeen, married him and lived happily ever after? How come their Mr Right showed up so early, while hers took forever?
The Year of No Rules Page 13