Around the World in 80 Dates (3 page)

What else? An interest in music was good, too much interest in TV was bad. I am a vegetarian, and although I don't mind meat-eaters, anyone with a love of offal should probably not apply. I don't like smokers (good-bye, Jean Pierre) but distrust anyone who doesn't drink. They don't have to have their own library card, but a few books on the shelf would be good (science fiction and self-help don't count). I don't mind guys who are slightly overweight, but “man breasts” are a complete no-no. Skinny guys are out: If their waists are smaller than my thighs, it's not going to work. I quite like laid-back guys, but absolutely no slackers, potheads, or wannabe poets (if I want to see the beauty in anything, I'll go to the Mac cosmetics counter, thank you very much). Sporty is good, but don't expect me to come watch if it's raining.

Having said all of that, I
was
open-minded and probably needed to challenge what I thought my type of man really was—with the exception of man breasts and offal; they were non-negotiable.

The next step was to assemble my network of Date Wranglers (DWs), including Belinda, Charlotte, Simon, Cath, Ian, Eleanor, Sara-Jane, Hector, Jeannette, Jo, Posh PR Emma, Paula, Sophie, Madhav, Jill, Matt, Lizzy, Grainne…All old friends, either in the travel industry or journalists who have worked overseas for years. These First-Generation Date Wranglers all had an extensive network of contacts and friends around the world, who would be either Dates or second- or third-generation Date Wranglers in their own right. I'd already talked to everyone about my plans, but it was now time to send out a briefing email and get the team to work.

The response was instant, overwhelming, and very reassuring: everyone was fired up with suggestions and ideas. Maybe all my competitive friends just wanted to prove they each had the best contacts, but I actually think everyone genuinely wanted to help and believed that they had just the person for me.

Queries started flooding in. Sophie bluntly asked:

I have to be honest, this panicked me a bit. My journey had already been dubbed “Around the World in Eighty Lays” by most of my friends. I automatically replied with an
It's not about sex, it's about romance
mantra but was secretly worrying whether every date was going to end in a wrestling match.

Posh PR Emma rang and asked in cut-glass tones if I wanted to date a count. Her impeccable accent made the
o
completely silent. Realizing how it sounded, she kept repeating the question, which drew attention to the mispronunciation, making it worse. I felt like replying: “Ems, I've already dated so many.”

As my DWs went to work and word of what I was doing began buzzing around, potential dates started pouring in. Every morning I would log on to find up to a hundred emails from people looking to get involved.

First-generation DWs introducing me to second-generation DWs:

Third-generation DWs signing up and asking for basic clarification:

Giving me a
wake up and smell the fertility
reality check:

And forcing me to face the facts:

And so read the email trail between Alex and his friend Beaver in Lithuania.

At the same time that I was being contacted by DWs and their Dates, I was also out looking for myself, spending hours on the Internet researching places or events that might yield my Soul Mate. Anything to do with Love or a love of mine should have potential, I reasoned. I scoured the search engines like an intrepid love detective sleuthing for clues that would help me identify and locate my missing man. In some instances, this threw up dreadful red herrings. I am a huge devotee of the yeast spread Marmite, for example, and thought this might make me compatible with the man who ran a Marmite appreciation website in America:

Thankfully, other leads proved to be more fruitful, such as the Costco Soul Mate Trading Outlet, one of the theme camps at the annual Burning Man Festival, held in the Nevada desert. I didn't totally understand what they were about, but I did manage to establish that Costco was a kind of anarchic dating agency at the festival. The CEO, Rico Thunder, agreed that I could be part of their camp and work on their “front desk” in exchange for some light flirting duties. I felt I'd have some useful expertise to contribute by the time I'd made it through Europe and the West Coast of America to Nevada, plus I fully intended to skim off any suitable Soul Mates for myself. Rico also put me in touch with a Seattle-based audio engineer in TV sports who was one of the Costco crew. He matched my Soul Mate Job Description perfectly and emailed:

The only way I could cope with the huge volume of correspondence was to ruthlessly compartmentalize. In the process of establishing a tentative rapport with the desirables and gently filtering out the inadvisables, Europe was given priority over America, which in turn took precedence over Australasia.

Big picture, that was how I saw my route working: Europe, U.S., Australasia. It wasn't logical from a geographical point of view, but it made it possible to attend specific events at certain times, plus—as importantly—ensured that I'd always be traveling with the sun. This meant I could stay warm, pack light, and see people at their/my most foxy. There are valid reasons that all the feel-good songs—“Summer Breeze,” “Summer Lovin”—“Summer of '69”—are written about the summer rather than the miserable winter months. Who looks good with chapped lips and a scarf?

Communication all had to be via email: It was the only way I could keep track of what I'd said to whom, and reply to people in my own time rather than real time. Most people were fine with this but occasionally someone insisted that we had to speak on the phone:

This always put me in a spin. I didn't really have the time for more than a single conversation with any one person and there was no way they'd just want to talk once; inevitably they'd want to know all about me as well as when I was coming over, how long I was staying, and all the other details of my trip. But I didn't have answers to these questions yet, and the stress of organizing this mammoth undertaking was taking its toll as I comfort-ate, putting the “ate” in “date” just at the time I really needed to look my best.

I was tentatively working toward a route that would start in the Netherlands, head up through Scandinavia, then down through Mediterranean Europe and central Europe and on to the States. This was just guesswork, though, because—for example—until Henk in Amsterdam got back from his skiing trip, I had no way of knowing if he was free on the 27th? If he was, that would mean I'd be able to make it down to see Frank on the Belgian border, thereby arriving in Barcelona in time to meet Carlos before he set off for his conference in Russia:

I just needed everyone to stay still long enough to give me an answer that would allow me to include them in or eliminate them from my itinerary. Then—knowing they were locked in—I could work out who, logically, I should see next. And that was just the dating side of it. My friend Karin, who worked at the Netherlands tourist board, was hugely helpful in trying to work out how I would get between three dates spread over two hundred fifty miles:

I felt guilty, as she clearly wanted me to make a decision and all I could do was be vague and noncommittal. The problem was that she was asking about the minutiae of one aspect of three dates while I was in a totally different place, struggling to get the big picture straight on
all
aspects of
all
eighty dates. It felt akin to being dragged from a burning building by the emergency services, only to have them demand back an overdue library book.

With so many options and nothing actually nailed down, I started feeling the enormity of what I was attempting. I was getting a tad tense trying to stay focused while having to remain upbeat and chatty corresponding with the avalanche of potential dates. I knew I wouldn't get much in the way of sympathy (
“Help, I am being hounded by an endless supply of eligible, international bachelors, all wanting to date me….”
), but even if I'd been foolish enough to ask, I wouldn't have got anyone's attention at this point. Brimming with enthusiasm and support, the DWs had gone off on a mission of their own.