The politics of online dating
The subject tonight is internet dating. Over the next few weeks I’m going to be recounting some of my more hilarious and disastrous experiences. Initially I went internet dating to write an article that then turned into a book that then turned out to be rubbish, so instead I’m going to serialise some of the high and lowlights for you here. What follows is a drunkenly-penned musing on the politics of online dating, which may or may not shed some light on the current domestic disturbances at 10 Downing Street. With the clarity of sobriety I’m airing on the side of ‘not’.
“When did men start expecting us to, not only go Dutch on the first date, but actually pick up the entire bill?”
After doing a little research I discovered that Guardian Soulmates was the place to be for middle-class, liberal southerners working in the arts. I bravely went on a collection of hair-raising dates with a variety of actors, artists and media vagrants. More on them to follow. After trawling through the subterranean supermarket of Lost Souls for some time, I met a rather charming chap, with a ‘proper’ job, two feet on the ground and the courtesy to pay for dinner – I may be liberal, but when did men start expecting us to, not only go Dutch on the first date, but actually pick up the entire bill? Been in Brighton too long, clearly.
Well, things were just lovely. A cyberman of my very own. Imagine! It wasn’t until a few months in that he casually mentioned that he was… a Tory. I laughed. He was joking. He didn’t laugh. In fact, he looked deadly serious as he lay in my bed, in my house, which is incidentally located in the heart of the only Green constituency in the UK. The unthinkable had happened. I’d shagged a Tory. How was I ever going to live this down? My poor parents! The social shame!
What I just couldn’t understand though was why, in the name of all that is forward-thinking and righteous, would a Tory be on Guardian Soulmates? I’d done my research… I knew that The Times had Encounters Dating for… men like him. You see, one of the perks of internet dating is that politics and lifestyle are separated for you depending on which site you go for. When I filled out my profile for GS there was a field to include my political persuasions, and it’s true, one of the options was Conservative, but… equal opportunities, right? Wrong.
After I’d sent my boy in blue back to his beautiful West London (should have known) home, I began to piece the puzzle together. He did pay for dinner, open doors, walk on the outside and was generally a perfect gentleman. Oh God, perhaps it was right in front of my eyes all along. But then that would mean that I was attracted to a Tory! And, what’s more, he was attracted to a liberal. Not only that, but he’d actually gone all the way downtown – cybertown you understand – to Guardian Soulmates, (the clue is in the ‘soul’) where he’d neglected to fill out the field stating his political persuasions – naturally, I went back and checked. He was prowling for a ‘loony-liberal’ as he took delight in calling me that morning. A Tory on the lookout for a liberal? Here was an oxymoron if ever I saw one. Moron being the operative word.
So, my questions are these:
1. Do all Tories secretly wish they were liberals in a classic example of transference behaviour? He’s living out his liberal fantasies through me. While patronising my ‘idealistic’ politics and chucking me under the chin I’m actually his trophy liberal.
2. Am I attracted to Tories? I’m staring into the abyss. It would sort of make sense… I’ve lived the life of a super-liberal wildchild. I was brought up by a pair of actor hippies, in a world where rules were made to be challenged. I’m an over-educated-bourgeois-middle-class product of a collection of confused ’70s Dogmas. I’ve made my living as a dancer, a roadie, a poet, a model and now, in the autumn of my twenties, as a writer. I remember going to friends’ houses when I was a kid and seeing with envy and awe the polished dining table, wide-screen TV and immaculately vacuumed thick pile before going back to my higgledy-piggledy, art-infested home and Steiner School… Perhaps all I really want are the Tory-style rules and structures I lusted after as a child.
Where does this leave our not-so-happy couple in No. 10? I mean, Cameron’s clearly gagging for some freedom, beauty and truth so why doesn’t Clegg bring it? Dave is clearly crushing Nick’s delicate confidence and not allowing him to flourish and equally Nick’s not defending himself against an over-pumped strategist who really wants to chill out with his inner child. I suggest a course of relationship counselling because, you never know, it could turns out to be a match. If that fails I understand that every Tory home has at least two wings, so if I am destined to end up with one at least he can live in the right wing, and I’ll live in the left wing.
