Will Harris on when power dating loses its power

So my posh friend Nick is power dating. He reveals this while we are being served half-price Thai food by a waitress who is precisely the same height standing up as I am sitting down.

“This weekend,” he tells me, “I’m doing a dirty double. Dinner Saturday night, then casual lunch on Sunday. Very chilled.”
“Ah, but what if you like Mr Saturday night so much, you want to spend the rest of the weekend holed up with him? What’s poor Mr casual lunch going to do then?”

“Not going to happen,” Nick answers, his face poker-straight. “I never actually like any of them.”

That, I think, is the trouble with power dating. I’ve been there myself. Last year, reeling from a break up and searching for an emotional elastoplast to cover the wound, I threw myself into the world of internet romance with a fury not normally seen outside of high-security prisons and aeroplanes where the in-flight movie contains Jennifer Aniston. Every evening, every weekend, every moment of my spare time would be spent either out on a date, or in lining up the next one.

“At times it felt like I was working my way methodically through the entire gay community”

At times it felt like I was working my way methodically, systematically, and without an iota of sentiment, through the entire gay community. This is known as power dating.

Wincing back at those few months now, I realise I actually met some decent matches. If I’d been in a healthier head-space, one or two might even have gone somewhere. But the bruises of my break up aside, it was the sheer number of dates I was going on that killed any chance of that. I had climbed aboard a Casanovan conveyor belt, where the faces changed but the drinks prices stayed the same, and I would find myself telling the same stories, the same jokes night after night. I was a modern day Sisyphus, only instead of pushing a boulder uphill, I was doomed to spend all eternity picking up the bar bill. It nearly bankrupted me.

Nick, on the other hand, has all this ahead of him. Nick who, I realise, is still trying to tell me about his love life, as unaware of my musings as he is of the diminutive waitress patiently waiting to refill his wine at somewhere around nostril level.
“…and I suppose I could’ve warmed to that guy I met the other week, but it was a bit off-putting when he said he was always going to Hunt Balls.”

I nearly choke on my battered prawn. “To…?”

“You know, Hunt Balls? Stately home, warm champagne, closeted viscounts with only a passing acquaintance with bone structure trying to feel you up on the veranda.” Nick affects a shudder. “If I wanted to be goosed by a married man, I’d go to The Amsterdam and save on the train fare.”