The monsoon had kicked off it’s shoes, turned off it’s phone and settled in for weekend and after finally quitting boozing and smoking I found myself with way too much time on my hands. After years of singling out skinny white musicians and pursuing them with the single-mindedness of a mining lobbyist at a climate change forum I decided to try and break the pattern, which led me, curiously, to signing up for an online dating site.
At least that was the rationale.
Your online virginity, like all membranes, is delicate and slightly painful when it tears. Creating an online dating profile is accompanied by a bizarre mixture of shame, excitement and confusion.
“Is this it?” you wonder to yourself “Surely I’m not this desperate.”
“Hell, every things online” another voice counteracts “Just think of it as Facebook for singles.”
“Except that you’re trying to friend strangers” another voice chimes in
And you find yourself muttering to yourself “Shut the fuck up! I’m trying to think of a witty tag line.” And you wonder if this kind of crazy schizophrenic self talking behaviour is the real reason why your single.
If the websites are anything to go by the single men in Darwin are overwhelmingly miners with an obsession for the gym and being photographed with dead things. Despite an abundance of claims about “loving life and a laugh”, men with actual wit are pretty thin on the ground; the jokes I was cracking about emoticons in a recent chat session had my friend and I crying with laughter but seemed to pass over the my FIFO suitors head.
Despite this I did go on a date with a man who looked rather handsome in his profile and seemed nice enough in his email exchanges and professed to know how to make eggplant schnitzels. In reality though, the intricacies of his obsession with all terrain vehicles were lost on me and I was a little unnerved by the glint in his eye as he recounted the details of the property settlement with his ex (“I got EVERYthing!). 20 minutes into our early morning coffee date I excused myself and scuttled off to work.
“Plenty more fish in the sea” I cheerfully reassured myself, and certainly the adage has been no truer than in the world of online romance. But as any fisherman will tell you, the ocean is full of mullet, and it takes several tonne of by catch to net yourself a decent meal of prawns. And truthfully I’ve ALWAYS found cooking the fish a whole lot more fun than sitting around waiting for it to take the bait.
But for all you hunter gather types, as they say in the business, tight lines.
TuckaFukka 