‘IspeakFrench, Shazz. Mentioning anything else French is asking for trouble.’
‘Oh, don’t be so picky,’ she say blithely, tap tapping away.
I left the dating scene because it was so horrendous and because I’d largely relied on the comfortable route of meeting men via friends. Internet dating scares me. I don’t want to swipe my way to love on my phone – Shazz has swiped left many times since she’s been a single mum and frankly, I don’t know why there aren’t more crime shows on how much guys lie about themselves on their profiles, not to mention using other people’s photos so that they are entirely unrecognisable.
Shazz found the love of her life, Zephaniah, online, which is why she’s keen to get me set up again. She’s aborn-again romantic. But I’m stalling. I havepost-traumatic dating syndrome.
The nail in the coffin, so to speak, was at a party held by Moira, a woman I once worked with. She met me at the front door, utterly excited: ‘Bea, I have just the guy for you. Trust me.’
Trust me is what people say when they’re about to lie to you.
Startlingly, the guy in question wasn’t a weirdo. He was nice, just not my type in the slightest because when it came down to it, I thought ruefully, my type was lying in the cold ground.
The problem turned out to be a guy called Joe who was there with his wife, about whom Joe conveniently forgot as soon as he set eyes on me.
After many glasses of wine,Iwas Joe’s type. He happily decided that I was there for him. The nice guy and I agreed that we weren’t each other’s dream date, so he went off in search of craft beer and a long conversation with some other people about the Champions League. I decided to find my coat with Joe following me around like a dog snuffling for biscuits.
I wanted to escape quietly and I didn’t know where the coats were being kept, and Joe followed me into one of the bedrooms on my search. Worse, his wife thought I was encouraging it.
‘Leave him alone,’ she said, finally pinning me in a corner.
‘I do not want Joe,’ I said angrily. ‘In fact, I have no interest in Joe. I came here for a few drinks with my friend, and it turns out she has a man lined up for me.’ I pointed towards thedining-room table area where the food was laid out. ‘There he is over there, talking about football and beer. While your husband,’ Joe was slinking further and further away all the time, ‘has decided he is for me. I have no interest in him. So why don’t you bring him home, sober him up and tell him not to run after strange women at parties.’
‘It’s your fault,’ she screeched. ‘You skinny bitches with your long hair and no baby fat! You dangle yourselves and your breasts in front of him!’
Clearly this was an ongoing problem and one of the reasons it had not been nipped in the bud was because Mrs Joe always blamed whatever woman Joe had got in his sights, instead of getting Joe and nailing his knee caps to the floor. Also, I am on the bosomy side and Mrs Joe was not. Having big boobs is not all it’s cracked up to be but clearly mine had sent Mrs Joe over the edge.
I pushed away from her and said: ‘Next time, blame your husband, don’t blame the poor woman he is pursuing.’
Still shaking, I found my coat in a chaotic pile in a spare bedroom, walked up to Moira and said hotly, ‘I am never coming to your house again. You left me to that mad woman.’
‘She gets a bit like that when she’s had drink...’
‘What’s Joe’s excuse?’
‘Over-excitable, loves women.’ She looked guilty.
‘Why didn’t you rescue me?’ I demanded. ‘In future, we meet for coffee and only coffee. You’re buying!’
In the taxi on the way home, I pondered that hitting men like Joe over the head was the only answer. Then, I came to the conclusion that really, the only answer was not going out to parties until people decided that I had actively chosen the celibate life.
But Shazz was convinced in her lovestruck state that I needed pairing up too. Christie – lesbian mother of two exquisite twin girls born via IVF and now living with a female police inspector, Gloria – was on Shazz’s side.
Theget-Bea-dating-again adventure has been going on for weeks now and I have already seen more dating profiles than I ever cared to. From my glimpse into this world, every man is a hiking,scuba-diving dude who has an Idris Elba/Lionel Messi thing going and plays guitar, or else, they’resex-starved maniacs who imply that what’s in their trousers can also be seen from space.
‘Can you play a musical instrument?’ asks Shazz.
‘Does the ukulele count?’ I enquire.
‘No, smartarse,’ she replies. ‘Playing the spoons is out too.’
We both laugh.
‘I’m going to put saxophone,’ she says, concentrating.
‘So it’s a complete tissue of lies?’ I say, the laughing actually beginning to hurt my sides now.
‘Absolutely. My cousin Tonya said she kept fit by pole dancing and she went on loads of dates.’
