Monday, February 27th

The only problem with going to bed with Reacher is being able to stop. He probably could have kept me up all night, but I forced myself to bookmark him at 3am. So, a later start than planned today.

For anyone hoping for an update from Saturday’s post: The prawn curry was delicious, the wine was divine, Lee Child worked his Reacher magic and the beam is once again just a beam, upon which sits my ridiculous collection of kitschy snow globes. (This is not so obvious from the bed or my desk, but quite obvious when I glanced at the beam from the kitchen whilst washing the dishes Saturday evening. The sight of them made me smile and whatever spell Stephen King had spun was completely broken.) All systems normal.

A friend of mine who follows this blog sent me an email yesterday urging me to try online dating. Said friend, whom I must add, lives in a large city, had met her current occasional but apparently very good lover on one of these sites. The very idea made me cringe which I stated firmly in my quick reply. It was, I said, lovely that she’d been lucky, but I’d also heard a number of horror stories. (The online dating suggestion was also made to me by the counsellor I saw for a while early last year. The idea made me cringe then, too.)

I don’t think I have ever been on a date in my entire life. And by “date” I mean some sort of exploratory outing such as dinner, a film or a play, designed to assess one’s level of interest in having sex with someone else. I have never done any of these things with anyone I didn’t already plan to take to bed or anyone I wasn’t already reasonably confident planned to get me into bed. I just don’t do that.

I have known men and women who flirt incessantly, as if it’s their default setting for social interaction. I look at these women and just shake my head. Don’t they know how potentially dangerous it can be to flirt with men they barely know? Don’t they have any idea what could go so hideously wrong? Well, I know, so I do not flirt with anyone who isn’t already a strong candidate for my bed. Pity the men who’ve tried to strike up a conversation with me in a pub over the years – and that’s assuming they’ve come up with a better opening gambit than “Good book?”, a line which will earn them a fuck off look and nothing more. Even with a better line than that they will get short shrift from me. I do not talk to complete strangers in pubs. (Other than the times in my life when I’ve been pulling pints for some extra income, but that’s different. There’s a bar between me and them. And it’s my job.)

The idea of signing up to some website with the express purpose of meeting strange (and I do mean both definitions of the word) men who are hoping to get their leg over by the end of the evening just makes me want to gag.

All of that said, I had an hour between reading my friend’s message and the time I needed to go to rehearsal. Against my better judgement I went to the website she’d suggested. There was the message on the home page: Sign up for free. Okay, if it wasn’t going to cost me anything, then I really didn’t have anything to lose (other than my self-respect). I found a recent photo of myself that I don’t absolutely hate, then I started answering the profile questions, an excruciating exercise. Before I’d finished answering the questions I had supposedly attracted two “likes”. Seriously? Either this entire site was rigged or there were some serious fucking trolls operating on it. Neither of these possibilities was particularly agreeable, but, what the hell: in for a nonexistent penny, in for a nonexistent pound. I clicked on the Like icon and was sent immediately to another screen informing me it would cost me $20 (US) to find out who was interested in me. Ah. For this same $20 I could see who was out there. Oh, god.

That was the end of that. I’d reached the cringe of no return. It may not sound like much, but, damn it, it’s the principle of the thing.

I shut the webpage down and went off to an excellent rehearsal. When I came back, there was another message from my friend, saying she totally got the cringe making angle. She also admitted she’d had to kiss a lot of frogs before she found her hot-in-the-sack prince. Really? Oh, no, no, no.

Fortunately, I’ll have Reacher in bed with me for at least one more night. Could be worse.