High Sobriety

by Jill Stark

  Each time a new email arrives, a sound like a harp being played goes off. I assume this is meant to signify Cupid at work, but it’s quite incongruous with the contact I’m getting from all manner of unsavoury men. Some have instructive names like insatiable7 (presumably insatiable one through six were already taken), rodtherock, romeohadjuliet, and beast. One guy, calling himself Triggerhappy, includes a picture of himself on a plane trying to open the exit doors. It’s captioned ‘Escape!’ Several are holding their crotch (cos the ladies love that shit), while one has posted a montage of scenes of himself frolicking with his dog, including one shot in which they appear to be French-kissing. In one bloke’s picture, he’s shovelling a foot-long Subway sandwich into his mouth. Another has chosen the seductive ‘YOU ARE ALL FULL OF SHIT’ as his profile headline. It’s every bit as dispiriting as I thought it would be.

  But what’s even sadder is the desperation and despair evident in some of the profiles. Shattered62 asks, ‘Why can’t an overweight guy have a cute girlfriend?’ There are a lot of broken men out there. I can only imagine what sort of self-esteem problems led Worthalook, WOULDuSETTLE4less, and NotGoodLookingSorry to choose their online names.

  I decide to move swiftly past those who are obviously on the rebound, still pining for a lost love, or in need of emotional first-aid. I’m looking for a relationship, not a renovation project. I also bypass anyone who’s pictured shirtless and pouting, or lists sex under the ‘What I’m Looking For’ section, which is a surprisingly large contingent. It’s a challenge trying to pick someone that you might click with based on an eight-centimetre square photo, and a few hundred words of what is probably an imaginative sales pitch at best and a complete fantasy at worst. I try not to be superficial, but find myself dismissing any bloke who’s wearing a wife-beater, thinks that scanning the racing form guide counts as reading, cites Two and a Half Men among his favourite television shows, or doesn’t know the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’. It’s a brutal culling process, but it works both ways; I’m rejected by many of the men I contact. My perception of my place in the dating hierarchy takes a battering. Am I destined to be matched with beast or with the sandwich-inhaling guy?

  Then I’m contacted by someone who seems normal. His email is fun, flirty, and grammatically sound. He’s a self-made businessman and an animal lover. And he’s cute — which, let’s be honest, is important. As this is my first online date, and essentially a blind date, I arrange to meet him at work. It means that I don’t yet have to navigate the awkwardness of refusing a drink in a bar, but I also figure that if he comes to the Age cafe, there will be dozens of hacks there to bear witness should he turn out to be a grave-digging sex offender.

  When he arrives, I’m impressed. He’s well groomed, and dressed in a sharp suit. He has a warm smile, and a calmness to him that’s appealing. There’s no getting around the weirdness of the situation, though: we are complete strangers trying to make a romantic connection over coffee at 11 o’clock on a Tuesday morning. I don’t even know his surname. But we are, at least, fully clothed. I probably already know more about this guy than I ever did about some of the inebriated boneheads that I got naked with hours after falling over them in bars.

  My date starts by telling me he’s relieved that I look like the pictures on my profile: ‘I’ve had a few bad experiences.’ Oh, really; how so? ‘Mostly with women lying about their weight. They’d say they were slim when in actual fact they were very large. I’ve learned that photos taken from the side can be deceiving.’ After being misled by five big girls whose pictures had portrayed them otherwise, he went on a sixth date, and when she turned up he took one look at her and said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go.’ I’m pretty sure this is what David Brent did to a woman in an episode of The Office. It was an awful thing to do, even in a fictitious setting, and I can’t help but think less of this man for being so cruel. He says he now uses a microscope to study the online pictures, and we laugh, although I’m not sure he’s joking.

  We chat about his business and his travels, and how he has changed careers several times already. He seems nervous, but the conversation goes well. I tell him about my job, and somehow, although my strategy had been not to disclose this until at least a second date, we get around to talking about my year without drinking. He doesn’t seem immediately horrified, so I explain the situation further. Then he surprises me by telling me that he doesn’t drink at all. When I ask why, I’m stunned by his response. He used to drink a lot. He was putting away a bottle of whisky a day from an early age. By the time he was 21, his doctor told him he showed signs of liver cirrhosis. After one massive bender, he was so ill he ended up in a psychiatric ward. After that, he stopped drinking for six months, but he was soon back on the piss. He says he realised that he’s the kind of guy who can never stop at one drink. He quit permanently three years ago, and hasn’t touched a drop since. I’m amazed that he’s sharing this with me on a first date. I don’t judge him for it — I know all about the nature of addiction, and I’m impressed by his fortitude — but it’s a risk telling a stranger such a personal story. What’s even more astounding is that on my first attempt at sober dating, the guy I meet with is a recovering alcoholic. You couldn’t make this shit up.

  As we make pleasant small talk — about our pets and our heritage and what we do for fun outside of work — I’m trying to figure out if I like him. Am I attracted to him? Sort of. He’s cute, but I’m not getting that fire-in-the-engine-room kind of feeling. Do we have a lot in common? Probably not. He seems like a nice guy, barring the fat prejudice, but we’re very different. There’s no spark, or even the promise of a spark. As we stand up to say our goodbyes, I think, if he asks to see me again, I might give a second date a go just to be sure, but if he doesn’t, we’ll leave it at that. He doesn’t. Perhaps he sensed our difference, too.

  But over the next two days I receive a number of texts, emails, and a Facebook friend request, making it clear that he’d like to take things further. He’s a tad too keen; I’m indifferent at best. I have to politely let him go. It seems a bit like breaking a business contract. When you meet up sober and you haven’t already kissed, swapped bodily fluids, or seen each other tear up the dance floor to ‘Highway to Hell’, the whole situation seems quite dispassionate. I’m not sure that I handle it very well. And I’m not convinced that dating without alcohol is going to work. I think I need some advice on how to navigate this strange new world.

  I contact John Aiken, a ‘dating expert’ who is also the official relationship psychologist for a leading matchmaking website. In his promotional material, couples talk about how he helped to save their marriage, while singles credit his advice as being the key to breaking their disastrous dating habits. One woman claims that she met her husband just a few months after being coached by John. This sounds like a man who knows his stuff.

  When I call John at his Sydney-based business, I tell him about my year without alcohol, and that I want to know how big a part drinking plays in the way singles interact and couples relate. I don’t fess up that I’m looking for advice personally. He says having a couple of drinks can put people at ease when they’re dating, but there’s a fine line between relaxing and losing control. Getting blind drunk on the first date can set up an unhealthy expectation for the relationship, where alcohol becomes the key to the way the couple communicates. For first dates, he says, moderation is non-negotiable: ‘It’s quite bad when someone’s slurring, unsteady on their feet, being loud when they’ve drunk too much. My advice is always to try and show the other person that you have control over drinking.’

  But how much of a negative can alcohol really be in the dating game? Judging from my experiences and those of many of my friends, we might not interact with anyone we were interested in if we were to go completely booze-free, or even just stick to a couple of drinks. Is alcohol really the reason so many singles are unlucky in love? John tells me that the people h
e counsels (male and female) are usually in their early to mid thirties, and had thought that by this point in their life they’d be married and have kids, or at least have met their future partner. They’re baffled as to why they’re having no success. When he questions them, it’s often clear that they’ve been engaging in what he calls ‘problem dating behaviours’. They include having sex on the first night or going out with people who are unavailable — those who are married, attached, commitment-shy, or damaged from previous relationships. They also try to push things along too fast by texting or ringing too soon and, too often, writing long emails — generally, showing too much intensity early on. The trigger for these behaviours is frequently alcohol. ‘You might start talking about sexually explicit stuff when you’re drunk. You might try and get physical with them there at the bar. You could start discussing feelings or the future, or getting too far ahead of yourself, wanting to plan the next date, or to meet their friends, or all that sort of stuff,’ John explains. ‘You can get caught up in it all, and because alcohol’s on board, you lose that filter and you move it far too fast.’

  It’s as if he’s just described the last 15 years of my romantic life. Those things he listed: the text messaging, the physical contact, the clinginess — I’ve done all of that after a few too many drinks. My alcoholic truth serum has removed my filter and made me act in a way I never would while sober. ‘If alcohol is one of the triggers for these behaviours, which it often is, then you need to put some strategies around it,’ John suggests. ‘So that might be you give yourself a limit in terms of how much you drink. You look at perhaps drinking water in between each drink, or you slow the speed of your drinking down, or you make sure you drink with friends that can keep an eye on how fast you drink. You might also put a time limit on how long you want to stay out before going.’

  Once again, just as with Jon Currie, I’m being told to place boundaries around alcohol for my own protection. It’s time to come clean. I tell him that the behaviour he describes is identical to mine. I’m not stupid; I know that meeting a guy when you’re pissed in a bar is not the ideal starting point for a relationship. And that taking them home that night is also unlikely to be fruitful. But it can work sometimes, right?

  ‘If you were really drunk, a guy would think the signal is [that you’re a] party girl, looking for fun, not particularly serious,’ Jon tells me. ‘If you have sex with them on the first night, the guy is thinking, if she’s going to shag me on the first night, she’s shagged plenty of guys on the first night. From a guy’s point of view, it goes against what you expect if someone’s wanting a long-term relationship.’

  Put so bluntly, it seems gobsmackingly obvious. Getting drunk has been my standard method of meeting and hooking up with guys for as long as I can remember, and to date it has brought me little satisfaction — and often left me feeling empty and cheap, not to mention horribly hung-over. Isn’t that what Albert Einstein said was the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results? John says that being sober or drinking moderately allows you to weed out the men who are interested in you for the wrong reasons, rather than adopt the ‘scattergun’ approach, where you fall for anyone to whom you’re moderately attracted and who pays you attention.

  ‘If you’re not drinking or if you’re a light drinker, it does send a really positive message to members of the opposite sex. But for some reason, people in Australia think it sends the wrong message. They think it means you’re a bit boring or maybe a bit uptight, and that’s not the case at all. When you drink, you misjudge how loud you are, or you have beer goggles on and start making bad judgements — it’s not a great way to try and impress somebody. When a guy meets a woman who’s in control of herself, who’s good with the banter, and who isn’t going to be persuaded by some sort of sleazy one-liner or can give as good as she gets, then that’s a turn-on.’

  That all sounds good, but my new serene and controlled state has not brought the men flocking. Over the past few months, some guys I’ve encountered have physically recoiled upon learning that I haven’t had a drink since January; flirting comes to an abrupt stop. Their reaction probably says a lot about their intentions, not to mention the extent of their shallowness. But I guess that’s John’s point. Previously, I may have taken one of those guys home. So how do I change these habits? ‘Don’t have sex for the first four to six weeks,’ he advises me. ‘Just take it completely off the table because if a guy’s keen he will wait for you. And that’s a great way of essentially weeding out any of the players. Then you’re focusing on a guy’s personality and how you’re clicking, rather than, “Are we going to get into the sack?” If you’ve got a four-week rule of waiting and getting to know the guy, then you’re essentially saying, “I’m serious, I’m in it for the long term, and if you’re interested in that then go ahead. If not, move on because I want something better.”’

  Sobriety has certainly helped me to weed out the players. They’re so easy to spot they might as well be twirling a pack of Durex round their head and dry-humping the furniture.

  John tells me that he’s counselled many singles who think alcohol is a magic love potion that will bring them together with the man or woman of their dreams, when in fact over-reliance on it can have disastrous effects. ‘I’ve seen women have their hearts broken many a time, sexually transmitted diseases — there are pregnancies that can happen, as well, through this. When you’ve got a lot of alcohol in your system, you don’t tend to think of the big picture — you’re very much about immediate gratification. If you took alcohol out of the equation, people would make better judgements, and they may do fewer things that they regret.’

  I ponder this as I head off for my second online date. He’s quite different from the last guy: a creative type who works in the arts and loves touring wineries. On this occasion, I arrange to meet him in a bar. It’s a Sunday afternoon, which seems like a safe time. When he turns up, he’s tall and attractive, but not what I expected. He’s got a few prominent tattoos and piercings (which I quite like), and is wearing baggy combat pants hanging down over his arse and exposing his boxer shorts (which I don’t like at all). But he’s an interesting guy, and chatting to him is easy. He orders a Jameson and dry. He doesn’t seem too bothered by my abstinence, but talks a lot about how wasted he’s been at recent parties, gigs, and festivals. His laugh is pure Beavis and Butt-head. It’s been so long since I’ve had a drink that maybe all this talk of getting shit-faced is weirder to me than it would be to anyone else, but it just seems sad to hear a 36-year-old man carry on like a teenager.

  When he asks me why I’m not drinking, I tell him the story and he quickly shifts into a different gear, saying he knows a lot of people who drink too much. He tells me about an ex-flatmate who used to lock herself in her room and stop paying rent when she went on drinking binges. Sometimes they’d come home to find she’d drunk their beer, filled the bottles up with water, and put them back in the fridge. After she went missing for a few days, they eventually had to break into her room. They found her unconscious on the floor. Her room was littered with bottles. She survived, but, not surprisingly, had to move out.

  Why does every guy I meet sober have a horror story about drinking?

  I bring the date to an end after a couple of drinks (mine soft, of course) because I know this is not the guy for me. I can tell he’s not overly impressed by me either, and as we leave, he pecks me on the cheek and tells me he’ll call me when he gets back from an interstate work trip. ‘That would be lovely,’ I say, knowing that both of us are lying. Sober, I can see that although he’s an attractive guy, I’m not attracted to his personality. If I’d been drinking, I probably would have persevered, matching his Jameson and dry with vodka and soda until alcohol made him hotter and that familiar pang of longing for a physical connection took care of the rest. I might not be hooking up with as many guys now I’m sober, but it’s so much more empowering to
be making choices based on logic and good sense, rather than on alcohol-tainted emotion.

  Things become a bit trickier with my third date. This guy is really nice. Within minutes of meeting him for a mid-week after-work drink, I feel completely at ease. We talk about our mutual love of the Hawthorn Football Club, and we share a common taste in music. He is courteous and sweet, and very interested in my job, my writing, and my year without drinking. He’s quite handsome, but I’m not instantly attracted to him. When he asks to see me again, I agree to a second date. This time we have dinner, but rather than being grateful that I’m sober, I start wishing I could have a few drinks to move things along more quickly to the kissing stage. Maybe that way, the fuzziness of being tipsy would help me to know whether we had a spark. In the end, although it’s clear he’s keen, I leave him with just a hug and tell him that I’m too busy working on my book to go on any more dates. It’s a cop-out. When he texts me later, saying he’d like to catch up after the book is finished, I have to come clean and admit that I just don’t have romantic feelings for him. He’s the kind of guy I’d like to watch footy with, but I’m not sure it could go any further than that.

  By my fourth date, I’m growing weary. It takes a lot of effort to meet strangers sober, and I decide that this will be my last date until I finish the book. But this guy is great. We hit it off at once, and he shares a love of all the things that make me tick — politics, media, literature, and football. He’s passionate and smart and has a great smile. And he makes me laugh. We talk for nearly four hours — two or three times longer than any of my other dates. There’s a definite spark. He understands what I’m trying to achieve with my year without booze and the book that will flow from it; he took his own three-month break from drinking recently and gained a lot from it. After having one beer, he tells me I’ve inspired him, and he starts ordering water. I think this is a good sign. But I’m confused; I’m so unfamiliar with these circumstances. How do I move the evening on from great conversation and subtle flirting to a kiss? If I were a bit drunk, I’d have my hand on his leg by now, or would perhaps employ a light touch of the hand in the small of his back.