The joys of internet dating

I am on leave this week. I just want to chill, enjoy the sunshine, eat lots of Easter eggs, and hot-cross buns. So I am going to write about something totally frivolous! Internet dating. Well, it is not actually as frivolous come to think of it. This is serious business. For starters it is not exactly cheap. At some R350 a month or even more, depending on the site, that is quite a lot to fork out. That is not peanuts by my standards. Then there are the hours you spend on the internet itself, (more money to the service providers), plus your own time. The latter can add up to quite a lot of person hours, just creating your profile alone. That killer profile that is supposed to get the whole world of possible dates impressed.
That is such hard work I can tell you.

As indicated in my 45th birthday blog, internet dating is now the new way of dating, since men in my age, social class, and reproductive stage cohort are now hard to find on the street - so to speak. It sounds almost like a cliche, but it's true. Men in my cohort, (all the above taken into account), are either looking for 14to 25 year olds, or are already married and all they want is a side salad, or heaven forbid they are actually very single, have always been single, so you are bound to wonder what the heck is wrong with them?

Thanks to technology one can now meet a man who is in Mexico, Bahrain, or even (the latest one), Tuvalu, (where is Tuvalu? I am not being silly, I have no idea where Tuvalu is so I have to look it up on a map soon). Gone are the days when we just had to make do with the MuZezuru in the flat opposite yours, or the very boring guy in the admin. department whose sexuality you can't quite determine. On the net, you are supplied with a vast menu. Lots of embillishments of courseon their profiles, but you get the whole toot. You know how old he is, they are not shy to actually tell you how old they are. It is true then that the older men get the more they actually feel they are much more desirable than they were in their 20s. I am amazed at the honesty. But I shouldn't be. Take Toby, his profile says he is 66. He is a handsome widower, who is looking for a woman (aged 25-45), for a serious relationship. He promises lots of fun, lots of travel, fine dining, and the best things that money can buy.I have seen loads of men over 65 or 70 as well. There is no sell by date where dudes are concerned, the older the better. I still remain fascinated by the age group of women the older guys seem to want. The younger the better seems to be the maxim. Inside every man is a Hugh Heffner waiting to pop out?

Some take this honesty thing a little further. Rod, or Hot Rod as he nicknames himself, all of 58 years of age, tells us that he is "happily married", but he is looking for a woman "full of life, to share life's great joyful moments with".
What am I to decipher from Hot Rod? That his wife has lost her interest in life? What would that be about? Has she perhaps become menopausal and therefore struggles to enjoy endless bouts of sex? Or that she has cancer? We will never know. Hot Rod, remains sizzling on the web. There are many more Hot Rods. They even tell me how many children they have. What their wives do/don't do. I guess it is the same as in real life really. So the fact that they put it out in cyberspace should not come as a shock. It is still amazing though to see them advertise their "availability" like that. Maybe their wives don't know how to access the internet, and or neither does anyone remotely connected to them.

Some of the profiles are quite amusing. Almost all the men I have met seem to be "athletic, sporty, enjoy hiking, the out-doors, gym, very fit". They are also very accomplished, as Jane Austen would say, they like classical music, reading, going to the theatre, and art. Wow! Mr Darcy lives! In Cyberland! So if these 59 and 76 year olds are so sporty, who then is dying of heart attacks and makes up the frightening global statistics of male mortality? By sporty do they mean rooting for Man-U on Saturday afternoons in front of their giant flat screens? I can do that, and in fact I do do that without fail each weekend, but I call myself a couch potato, and I don't go anywhere near stadiums. I support Liverpool, just for the record, not Man-U. I also support Jose Mourinho, not the team he coaches, just him, the man looks soooooooooooooo FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINEEE. So how do I put that on my profile in a way the guys would understand? I also find it hard to picture any of these very high income earners, very acccomplished men hiking up churu chomumunda maVaShine, (that means the small ant hill in my late grand aunty VaShine's maize field). By athletic I am pretty certain they mean their late blooming libido which is now out of control because of Viagra!

As for the love of the arts, mmm, let's see. Classical music? That is meant to be the height of sophistication is it? My repertoire in that department is rather limited. Actually more like zilch. Theatre? Do they mean ala Market Theatre kind? That I can relate to definitely. My son is studying dramatic arts and I love what we used to call "kuekita!" (Acting, not performing, that is new fancy language for the arts pages of the Mail and Guardian). I did my fair share of school plays from the nativity play, (ask my mum I was always Mary, I was never one of the little lambs in the manger, or goodness me, Joseph's donkey!), to the Merchant of Venice in Grade Six, (I was Shylock!), to Horatio, much later in life. I can relate to that. But then I don't think men of that age will be impressed to know that I played Shylock and Horatio because none of the boys in my class cut the mustard. Totally so not the kind of woman they envisage massaging their feet when the arthritis sets in.

The reading bit is fantastic if its true! There are men after my own heart! I can live with anyone of them from Jesus in Bolivia, to Dave in Randburg. Oh, come! Oh come! I mean that literally boys. We can spend all our days, and nights turning the pages. But wait, what would we be reading? That is what I want to know. It doesn't say on their profiles and there is no room to explain what kind of "literature" my suitors like. With one or two I can see they do read good serious literature. Useful stuff that actually teaches them something. The rest I am not convinced. Surely if they were serious readers why, oh why would they be such bad spellers! That is the bane of my internet dating. I know, Jesus and Rahman can not be expected to have perfect Anglaise given where they are coming from. But am sorry, if one is serious, then they owe it themselves, if not to me, to at least do a simple spell check. Surely every computer comes with a spell checker? There is just no excuse, and it is totally insufferable, (is that the right spelling? My excuse is that I can't find the spell checking device on this blogspot. Someone please help!). Eagerly seeking a mate as I am, I just can not bear the bad speller, the bad grammar man. No, somethings are just too important to ignore.
"Why are you QUITE?" asked Paul. "I am waiting for your respond", quoth Sipho.
"You are a very nice looking women. I am a one women kind of guy", bragged Thabo.
Ok you get where this is going. I should not be mean about my current hosts, but really, they are the pits! Woman, women, quite, borrow me your pen. The list is endless. I can not cope with this bad grammar and spelling. I just can't If I dated them for real I would end up taking my red pen and consistently editing them as they spoke. Bantu education or not, bad English is a date killer.

I shall stick to the Sultan over in Bahrain. At least he impresses me with his bling in cyberspace. There is also always Jose the poetic one. I forgive him the grammatical errors, he is after all a sexy Latina. "I am truly loving you. When will you meeting me my love. My angel. My mouth is wait your sweeet kiss. My body is paining your soft touch. Fly, fly, for me here in Buenos Aires".
I could happily produce sextuplets for this man. If only I still had a uterus. Put up your photo on your profile Jose, I will fly for you in Buenos Aires. I have the wings.