Raven (18 page)

*

My next date was probably the strangest yet. I'll call him Nigel because that's a suitable name for a strange person. Don't get me wrong. Nigel wasn't scary-strange like MaxE8, the strangler; or exasperating-strange like Jabir, who was due to meet me at an Indian restaurant but was sipping tea instead at McDonald's across the road; or even hurtful-strange like
SpecialOneForYou
, who was indeed special, but not for me. No, Nigel was strange in a way that was totally his own and oddly disarming, and for a person like me who relishes human eccentricity, he made for an intriguing encounter.

Nigel was thirty-two and – let it never be said that I am a snob – he was a construction worker, the kind who digs up roads and then covers them up again, often for no discernible reason. Although he'd had a couple of long-term relationships, he had never been married or had children, and was temporarily living back at home with his parents, where he preferred to sleep on the floor instead of the sofa. He was no matinee idol but neither was he homely, and he was in pretty good shape – all that physical work paid off, obviously.

He told me he had been using the dating site for only three weeks; a woman friend had written his narrative because he ‘wasn't much good at that type of thing'. I told him that maybe his friend should also have chosen better profile pictures to upload, as the ones he had on there were less than captivating, to put it mildly. The main shot showed him in hi-vis jacket and hard hat. Really! He admitted that I was the first woman to respond to a message from him, none of the others had given him the time of day, and I wasn't all that surprised.

Nigel had left school at sixteen with few qualifications. But although he was uneducated, he was by no means thick and he had a lot to say about the things which interested him, such as the cinema and television shows. He also gave me the inside track on the corruption at the heart of the industry in which he worked as a sub-contractor to various public authorities. I found that stuff quite illuminating.

It did amaze me when he told me – halfway through our drinks at the same trendy West Hampstead dive where I had met my little stand-up comic, Benjamin – that I was his very first date.

‘You mean your first internet date?'

‘No I mean my first date.' He took a sip of his rum-and-Coke.

I was baffled. ‘
Ever
? But you've been in relationships, so you must have been out on dates with those women. I mean, you didn't go straight from meeting them to living together, right?'

‘No, but we never did this.
Dating
. Going out someplace for a drink or a meal.'

‘Oh, okay. So I'm the first! How nice.' How weird.

He also admitted that despite his being English and working-class (a Londoner born and bred), he didn't drink beer or like football. In fact he had never watched an entire football match, he said, before making a grimace of disapproval to drive the point home.

Even more surprisingly, he didn't own a passport, as he had never travelled abroad and had no desire to do so. A curious proclivity for a Brit in the 21
^st
century, the era of cheap foreign travel, multiculturalism and the EU.

As we strolled up the road to have dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant, Nigel looked around in wonder and confessed that he had never before been to West Hampstead. ‘It's really decent around here, isn't it?'

Later, seated and perusing the menu, I asked him what type of wine he would like to have with his spaghetti bolognese.

He looked at me and shrugged. ‘What do you think I should have?'

‘A nice red. Chianti?'

‘Okay! I've never had wine before so it's all the same to me.'

‘Come on.
Never drunk wine
? I don't believe it.' I gazed at him. This was becoming surreal.

‘My mum likes it. But I've never been interested.'

‘Nigel, you're a one-off.'

‘Do I seem strange to you?'

‘Yes, you definitely do.'

‘Other people have said that.'

‘I'm sure they have.'

It was evident that this evening of firsts for him was making Nigel more than a little nervous, and he admitted as much. Throughout the evening he fidgeted with his clothes and his wallet and gave occasional nervous little laughs.

‘Come on, Nigel,' I tried to reassure him. ‘Relax. You needn't be nervous of me. I'm not too intimidating, am I?'

He gave another nervous laugh. ‘No.'

In the end, though, he was too nervous to eat and left most of his spaghetti untouched. But he did fairly well on the vino front. ‘Look at me, all posh!' he quipped as he downed another gulp of Chianti.

We chatted about Breaking Bad and The Wire and some of the films we were both passionate about, such as In the Heat of the Night, and it turned out that although he was half my age he loved Citizen Kane and The Third Man just as much as I did, and for the same reasons. So we did have some things in common, after all.

On parting, we agreed that perhaps we would go to the cinema together one day, and who knows, it might yet happen…

But it was unlikely. Because the bald truth of it is that those who have travelled all their lives tend not to go out with those who have never owned a passport.

As I said, Nigel was strange but not bad-strange. Just
very
strange. As I drove home I shook my head in wonder at a man who, for all his tough outdoor labour, had been living an extraordinarily sheltered life. It was hard enough to understand how a fellow could reach the age of thirty-two without having gone abroad or out on a date, or drunk a glass of wine or watched a footie match. But a man who had never,
ever
been to West Hampstead? How the hell did he manage to avoid that?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The next time I met Vanessa she had important news to impart and wasted no time on idle chit-chat. In the bustling changing room, as we undressed for aqua class, she told me about Gerald, the new man in her life. They had spent the previous weekend together, the sex was fabulous, he had treated her to bucketfuls of champagne and lobster thermidor, ordered cabs for her right and left and generally treated her like a princess. As she packed her huge bosoms inside her bright pink swimsuit, Vanessa's face glowed with pleasure. ‘He's taking me on a romantic break to Brussels next month, five-star hotel, the works.'

‘How wonderful. Who is he? Not that last bloke on the site who said you look like Mae West and wanted to “come up and see you sometime”?'

She guffawed. ‘No! We didn't meet through the site. Got introduced by a mutual friend.'

It turned out that she had met him at her high-class haunt in Belgravia one night when she was out on the lash. So after that long parade of online daters, hundreds and thousands of them over the years, and all the wink-winks and nudge-nudges and the computerised wizardry, she found her fella the old-fashioned way. Over a drink in a bar.

I knew Vanessa was after a stable, committed relationship, so I asked whether she thought a fabled LTR might be in the offing.

‘It's early days but the signs are good. And he really is perfect for me. Easy to talk to. And well-behaved.'

‘Well, congratulations.' As we padded off towards the pool I asked: ‘What about the dating site? Will you be coming off it now?'

‘My subscription ends in a few weeks and I won't be renewing it. Gerald doesn't want me doing that any more. I have to respect that.'

She jumped into the pool and for a minute I stood at the water's edge, watching as she launched into a warm-up lap. I felt a stab of melancholy. She had been my internet dating companion-in-arms and co-conspirator. Now I would be going it alone.

I was pleased for Vanessa. But of course I knew this new relationship might not last. She might be back on the site again before long, giggling once more over the gallery of chancers and their predictable profiles, sharing with me the more fatuous of their messages over wine and dips at her kitchen table. It had been fun. And that fun had neutralised for me any discomfiture or tedium. Now what?

*

The immediate ‘now what' was a date with a 36-year-old TV producer. We'd had a long phone conversation during which he told me he was up for some ‘thrills 'n' spills' and I hoped his understanding of the phrase was more or less the same as mine.

Crispin lived in the East End and we met for a sundowner at a riverside wine bar near Tower Bridge. Judging by appearances alone, Crispin was not what I was looking for. On the short side, with slightly feminine features, hands a little too small and bottom a little too broad, voice not quite manly enough. Yes, I know I was being superficial and pernickety. But that's what months of ether-dating does to you.

Oh all right, the truth is I've always been like that. At the age of sixteen I went on a first date with a boy from my year at high school. A sweet-natured kid. He'd just got a brand new car and was keen to show it off, so he asked me out for a drive in it. It was a shiny red 1968 Ford Mustang fastback. Coolest set of wheels going. The boy wasn't bad-looking, either. Tall, fresh-faced, with wavy, sandy-coloured hair. It was a sunny summer's day. Car windows open, pop hits blaring on the radio, warm breeze blowing in my face. What could possibly be amiss? But after that ride I never wanted to see him again. And all because he was wearing a silly, frilly, see-through shirt which looked to me like a ladies' blouse and I couldn't take him seriously in it. I mean, I could see his nipples and chest hair through it. Gross! So I wouldn't even let him kiss me. Literally in the blink of an eye, he was yesterday's boy.

See what I mean? Utterly superficial and pernickety. In my time I've been hopelessly beguiled by some lying, cheating bastards. Love rats, scoundrels. No problem. But if you put the wrong shirt on, be you ever so saint-like, it's
hit the road, Jack
, Mustang or no Mustang.

Crispin told me about his TV job and his family and upbringing, and his past jobs and his travels around the world in between jobs, and his skills in Oriental cookery and his last failed relationship and why he now preferred older women (they were more stable and less exasperating). He was pleasant and well-mannered and smiled a lot and I didn't dislike him. And I smiled too and was pleasant back and was perfectly tolerant of his physical shortcomings. And in this spirit of tolerance and easygoingness, a couple of hours later I found myself at the small maisonette he shared with his two house-mates, being invited into a neat, cosy bedroom lit with red fairy lights, which gave it the feel of a dainty courtesan's boudoir.

He could, of course, have been a Jekyll and Hyde character, suddenly turning nasty and trussing me up with ropes. Or he could have been another sicko with a mummy fixation and penchant for strangulation. But fortunately for me, he interpreted ‘thrills 'n' spills' to mean his continued niceness and doing everything I told him to do in bed, with a smile.

At the end of it I slowly got up and put my clothes back on. Resisting his entreaties to spend the night or at least stay on a while and have something to drink, I took off for home. He offered to walk me halfway to the tube station (this was his only failure of etiquette; he should have accompanied me all the way) and we carried on conversing agreeably whilst he took my arm and pointed out a few landmarks en route.

Although it had been a harmless exercise, I knew it was a mistake to sleep with Crispin, a man I didn't even fancy. But I had been borne along on a comfortable current of geniality, which had led me to his bed with a sort of passive inevitability. I had had sex out of politeness.

Really, I rebuked myself, I would have to stop being so blasé about the act of intercourse or it would lose all meaning.

*

A few evenings later I was waiting at a West End watering hole for Erik, who was Swedish. He was roughly the same age as Crispin, but a wholly different type. He had texted me to say he was running late so I had time to speculate on my latest date. His online profile presented him as a Scandinavian intellectual, a psychologist, no less. Clearly a man of substance, with a serious expression and dark, thoughtful-looking eyes behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. You wouldn't catch him sullying his messages with puerile emoticons and the loathsome lol. He was the sort with whom you could discuss the finer points of Nietzschean ethics, should you know anything about them. Which I didn't, obviously.

So there I sat, imagining what might happen when Erik walked through the door. He would be manly, smart and sexy, and all in a quiet, Nordic way. Strong but also warm. He would see me and smile and kiss my face on both sides, while giving my arm a gentle squeeze. And we would look into each other's eyes and just
know
. Something special was about to begin…

Naturally, when he arrived there was none of the above. What actually happened was that we had a ‘shirt situation' again, as with that boy when I was sixteen. The first thing I noticed about Erik was that he wore a tailored shirt over his trousers which was clearly designed to be tucked in. Sartorial faux pas of the most elementary sort! But worse was to come. He smiled when he greeted me and in an instant that pleasingly serious expression was blighted by crooked teeth and I realised that he was one of those people who, for dental reasons, look much better with their mouth closed. But there we were, in a bar, the evening was just beginning and there was drinking to be done, conversation to be had.

Erik, as I discovered, was an amiable bar-room companion. After the usual first-date chinwag we progressed to more brainy fare, such as his expert dissection of self-help gurus and their facile utterances, and his rubbishing of pseudo-psychologies like graphology and neuro-linguistic programming. I enjoyed listening to his analyses and we sniggered together at the quacks and crackpots.

If only he had been a friend or acquaintance, instead of an aspirant to milady's bedchamber. All would have been well and we could have met up again for more drinks and stimulating discussion. But I knew that wouldn't happen. As we strolled down Oxford Street on the way to the tube, he put his arm around my waist, for all the world as if we were already an ‘item'. Premature actions of this sort are always a mistake.

A couple of days later he sent a text: ‘So you didn't write to me after our date. I hope that doesn't mean you were kidnapped on the way home! Lol! Xxx.' And he ended with the most asinine of all emoticons, the one with the tongue sticking out. Oh Erik, how could you?

*

Next in line for the Raven experience was an Irishman called Sean. He was from Derry and sounded a bit like Gerry Adams but how could I hold that against him when he was thirty-one and hot and blatantly more into sex than politics. Just another stud with that by now familiar fantasy to fulfil. But Sean had specific requirements which he laid out, good-naturedly, from the start.

SEAN: Will you dress up for me?

RAVEN: As what?

SEAN: As a sexy older woman!

RAVEN: I didn't realise that required a costume change.

SEAN: I mean stockings and suspenders, high heels, lipstick, painted nails and sexy make-up. And what about lacy lingerie beneath your dressing gown?

RAVEN: I don't paint my nails and I hate lipstick (it would only get on your collar, ha ha). But I can do you some nice stockings and suspenders underneath my slinky little cocktail dress. Would that do?

SEAN: Def. Looking forward to having you sitting on my knee giving me a kiss. Are you going to talk dirty to me?

RAVEN: Um, how about ‘show me what you got, big boy, me love you long time, hmm, you so hard'?

SEAN: Ha ha. Yeah let's start with that.

Raven: See you soon, my little Irish crumpet.

We had fun, Sean and I. He was thrilled with the discovery that I was sixty-one and a grandmother. ‘That's such a turn-on!' he enthused. Men are a complete mystery.

This was the sum of our ‘dirty talk' whilst doing the business:

SEAN: You're a naughty little granny, aren't you?

ME: Yes I am!

SEAN: Am I your favourite toy boy?

ME: Yes you are!

Not much, but it seemed to keep him happy.

Afterwards we talked for a long time in bed, with our glasses of wine, me still in stockings and suspenders, which felt rather silly after a while. He asked whether we could do a three-in-a-bed with one of my friends, as that was a supplementary fantasy of his.

I tried to dissuade him from pursuing this line. ‘Listen, Sean, women friends of my age, whether or not they are grandmothers, aren't really like me.'

‘None of them?'

I pondered for a while. ‘Well, I do have one friend I think you would like. Jill. She's very pretty, blonde. She's divorced. And she's way ahead of me in the grandchildren stakes – she's up to five already!'

Sean perked up. ‘Would Jill be up for it?'

‘I doubt it. She wants a serious relationship, if anything. Don't think she does toy boys. And anyway, why would I want her to get in on our act when I'd rather have your undivided attention?'

‘Oh don't worry, I would give you plenty of attention. But the thought of being in bed with the two of you – one blonde and one brunette – doing things to me at once, wow, that's so exciting.'

‘Hmm. Dunno, I think Jill and I would just collapse into giggles.'

‘Will you ask her?'

‘Okay. I'll ask.'

After this I entertained him from my fund of sex-adventure anecdotes and he said he really appreciated being with a woman he found interesting and intelligent as well as attractive. I liked the way his words made me feel and asked him to stay the night. It would be lovely, I thought, to fall asleep together, all entwined.

But he wasn't keen on the idea, saying that it had only been a couple of months since he broke up with his girlfriend, it was all still a little raw, and spending the whole night with someone was a very ‘intimate' thing to do. It would make him feel guilty so soon after the break-up.

I reckoned having sex with someone was fairly intimate too, but that obviously hadn't posed a problem.

In the end he fell asleep so heavily that he ended up staying the night anyway. He took over most of the bed and I nearly rolled off the edge twice. But he did clench his hand around mine several times, which I took to be a warm,
intimate
thing to do. Unless he did it without realising, of course, which was altogether possible.

I hoped we could have coffee together in the morning, and maybe talk some more. But he awoke very early, got up and put his clothes on without further ado. He bent down and gave me a kiss. ‘I'll text you,' he said. Then he left.

He did text me, several hours later. ‘It was lovely meeting you and I loved those stories you told me! Don't forget to ask Jill. It would be a lot of fun for me and for you too.'

‘Okay, will speak to her tonight.'

When I called Jill and explained the proposition that Sean had placed on the table, she burst out laughing.

‘Hey you've got nothing to lose,' I said. ‘He's tall and has a great body, you should see his six-pack. He's cute, good in bed. Come on, it would be a riot!'

She finally stopped laughing. ‘You'd seriously do it?'

‘Oh why the hell not?' After a pause: ‘I promise I won't go down on you.' I giggled, to show her I wasn't taking any of it too seriously, and she giggled back.

‘Well, it's not
my
kind of thing. And if that's really what he wants he might have to pay a professional to provide it.'

‘I'm sure he wouldn't do that.'

‘No, the younger generation don't want to pay for anything.'