This one time

The phone rang again. It was an unknown +227 number trying to call me through Whatsapp. I hadn’t answered so they were trying again. Two messages later, I blocked them!

I took your phone number off Instagram and I find your words very interesting.

According to google, the call was coming from West Africa. I don’t want to seem uncaring, but why would a guy reach out to me in Australia from West Africa via phone call?! What was his agenda? I am interesting, that much is true, but I’m sure there is other interesting people in Africa. If he was trying to engage with me because I’m single, there’s a lot of single people closer dude. This will not work out. I’ll never know. This one time that someone tried to contact me from West Africa, I blocked them!

This one time I went on a date in the park. We brought our dogs along and walked and chatted. It was great! No awkward eye contact as we just strolled on as our dogs ran around. They weren’t really the right size to play with each other but they were both females so everyone was getting along. At one point, his dog was playing with another Staffordshire Bull Terrier and he had to call it back. Close call, or so I thought. He text me the next day:

I’ve had to take Tara to the vet. She was bitten on the head at the park. The wound has been bleeding and infected.

I sent back empathetic pleasantries and asked about his dog again a few days later. I never heard from him again! I didn’t bite his dog…

Last weekend I was stood up!

We arranged to meet around 9pm and when I left my house I messaged my old friend that after travelling by public transport I’d get to the venue at 9:50pm. She said no problem…. yep, it was a girl friend. She knew I was travelling into the city by myself but when I arrived, she wasn’t at the bar we had planned to meet at and wasn’t responding to my messages. 30 mins later she contacted me with a reply to one of my first messages…. not answering ‘where are you’?

I text everyone else that would respond. It was a real low point as a single girl. To have gone to the effort of getting ready, head out by myself, 50 mins into the city and then standing alone at night. Luckily I had a number of friends that offered me moral support. So I had a beer by myself and listened to a busker before I decided to head home. It took my friend that I was meant to meet another hour to ask me where I was?! She was heading to a different bar now. I didn’t want to chase her around the city, I was done.

It just so happens that one of the people I reached out to that texted me back was a new guy friend. We are going to catch up this weekend…

Advertisement

Mr Big

I had my first Hinge app date last weekend with Mr Big. He described himself as 6 foot 3 inches but didn’t have many full body photos. He used words like lovely and proper sentences when chatting. The famous Mr Big from Sex and the City is notorious for being Carrie’s love of her life but also seriously noncommittal. I hoped he’d bring some excitement but not be that hard to get.

We hadn’t chatted online for long as I wanted to see what he was like in person. Earlier that day I had my nails done and therefor had nothing to do but sit and think. I ran through some date conversations and thought through some insightful answers to ‘why are you still single?’ and ‘how would you describe yourself?’, ‘tell me about your family’ and even ‘what’s it like being a teacher?’

He asked me…. nothing!

The date began finding a table in the air-conditioned pub as it was 38 degrees and organising beer. He then spent ten minutes telling me about his favourite TV show ‘American Gods’ and talking over my shoulder. Well he certainly wasn’t looking me in the eyes.

He said get me any beer. My approach was that at least I’d enjoy two beers if nothing else- I’ll get the first and then he can buy me one. If it’s not going well, we part ways. Well that’s a bit like the drunk trying to decide whether to drive or not… you think you’re not impaired and all is well. So after two, we said let’s find a spot on the water for another beer! We also need food. This is probably where it went wrong (if we didn’t already know in the first five minutes).

We surprisingly got in to Arbory, a very popular floating bar on the Yarra river but it was clear from the start there would be no seats- standing room only. I couldn’t imagine him casually standing and sipping a beer, and us both squeezing into a corner somewhere, he was big. Tall but also had quite a girth. I had a game plan. We made our way to the toilets to suss out the layout and on the way there he walked behind and placed his hand on my hip (Controlling, possessive? It was nice! Bit of a spark, of a spark). The short walk pushing our way through the crowd made up our minds that this wasn’t going to work here, let’s move on.

The problem with leaving one place on a Friday night with the after work crowds on a great summers evening is you’re pretty much shit out of luck finding anywhere else to get in. We ended up at TGI Friday’s! TGI bloody Friday’s. Clearly impaired. Hungry.

He squeezed into a booth with him remarking “isn’t there any normal tables?” We quickly ordered more beer and food. The food wasn’t good. The ambiance for a date was appalling. We were by the river but we could have been in a shopping centre. I can’t even remember what we talked about here. He started yawning. At one point he threw into conversation that he didn’t really know what he was looking for. I realised the initial excitement of the unknown possibilities had quickly died.

I walked him to his train station, possibly trying to overcome the fact that we’d just been to TGIs, and stood on my tippy toes to plant a quick kiss on his mouth goodbye. As I turned to walk away, he giggled!

Photo by burak kostak on Pexels.com

It’s been a week now and we haven’t spoken. Neither of us cares enough to even say I don’t think we should pursue another date. The whole evening, he spoke at me. I spoke back of course, but he didn’t ask me any questions about myself. I learnt about his family, his housemates, his work, his friends….  was it nerves or he couldn’t even be bothered to get to know me? Do you know what, I’ve got nothing to lose here. I’m going to ask him! This will be an interesting social experiment… stay tuned.

Finding Nemo

For the school holidays, my goals were to go to the beach every day and do some writing every day. Instead, I have found myself on apps for hours at a time! The apps that sucked me in the most was Airtasker, Instagram, and Canvo. There’s some hilarious tasks on Airtasker and some really promising odd jobs to get some extra cash. I found myself applying for:

• Type up some old letters
• Write a timeline (A couple’s history)
• Letterbox Distribution
• Babysitting
• Resume and interview preparation
• Transcribe 30 one hour interviews

I had a great laugh at:

• Remove dead mouse- $50
• Buy me cigarettes- $30
• Buy and deliver Coles shopping – $5
• Buy and deliver Coles shopping (with the 17 specific items listed)- $30 and only offer made was $50!
• Write key selection criteria for a government job (spelled incorrectly) – $50
• Puppy time – $25
• Unload 40 foot container of noodles – $260
• Wait in line at the MCC for AFL grand final tickets from 4-7am- $100

I vowed to set myself some screen time rules and stop applying for these tasks as none of them came to fruition. After being ‘recommended for tasks’ and proceeding to the next stage, messages back and forth, three jobs were cancelled. I had rearranged my day for these. The ‘Letterbox distribution’ had me drive to a warehouse to pick up flyers that had never arrived! ‘Typing up old letters’ never responded even after I was shortlisted and we discussed the days and method for completion. The other two tasks remain unknown in status. Just like online dating, you need to put in significant time with no reward. It was like Finding Nemo– setting off on an adventure with many obstacles along the way, even with a goal in mind. In this case, I’m going to have to leave Nemo out there for someone else to find on Airtasker.

I’ve been undecided if I need a break from online dating as well. Finding ‘Nemo’ online has been unsuccessful for over 5 years now. I go on and off dating sites with FOMO (Fear of missing out) and then get over it and get on with real life, then I think I’ll try again for fun and thus goes the vicious cycle. It’s like I turn in to Dory, the character with short term memory loss. I recognise guys that I’ve matched with previously but can’t remember what went wrong.

I’ve paid for a Bumble subscription for a week that lets me see who has ‘liked’ me so I don’t have to scroll through the ones that aren’t interested. I’ll then decide if I’m interested to make it a mutual match. I’m calling it the 200 guys in 7 days challenge. Let’s see if I find ‘Nemo’ this week…..

Photo by Tom Fisk on Pexels.com