Dating Over 60 Dangerously
Monica Porter shares a generous exerpt from her hilarious book Raven: My Year Of Dating Dangerously.
I had grown strangely restless over the months of my internet dating. Once I had been reasonably content lying on the sofa watching TV of an evening or else reading in bed, and in the summer months, with their late hours of sunlight, taking leisurely walks in the park. But now I felt an almost constant urge to be monitoring the doings on the dating site - checking to see who had, or had not, been viewing or winking or messaging me. Browsing through the never-ending parade of prospective matches. Checking the mobile for texts from my conquests (I use that word with irony) and indulging in lengthy texting sessions with any who were around.
It was as if I could never let things slow down, much less come to a standstill, I had to keep them moving, to feel those wheels spinning underneath me. And I wondered whether this was only a temporary character adjustment or I had been altered for good.
I started to receive messages from a tall, grey-haired Aussie in his fifties called Bob. An academic. Jovial but highly articulate, he displayed an agreeable touch of self-irony.
Bob: We men are indeed rascals, so nice that you appreciate us on our own terms. You understand us far too well, which removes any advantage of surprise. Not sure why you women put up with us…although I suppose we have our uses!
Raven: Yes. Jump-starting car engines, checking tyre pressures...
Bob: And cuddling and other such delights.
Raven: Let’s leave those for later, shall we?
Bob: Of course, women can be temperamental and irrational. While men are simply horny. But I will practice being charming.
Raven: Keep practising. It might work.
Bob: Less likely with someone who recognises men for our inherent shallowness and villainy! ‘Tis all that testosterone washing about.
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Once we had begun communicating on our mobiles, away from the supervisory eye of the site administrators, he seemed to go into libido over-drive, telling me how horny he was. Hullo, I thought, here we go.
We set up a date. Bob offered to drive over and pick me up to take me out for drinks and dinner somewhere. An old-fashioned date. These older guys really did have their advantages. Cars, money, their own property, language skills. And the ability to drink and drive without hitting anything.
Bob turned up in one of the larger Mercedes models. It was a balmy evening so I proposed we have a drink in my tranquil back garden rather than at a crowded bar. He agreed. I opened a bottle of chilled white, got out the olives, and we sat down at the garden table.
He was gregarious, in characteristic Aussie style, and enthused about my vine-covered pergola, the exotic palm tree, the towering bamboos along the rear fence and the fish pond. As we sipped the wine he regaled me with tales of his life and times. He was a fluent, intelligent talker and I was pleased that we agreed on the major political issues of the day, because life is easier when I am not compelled to leap into those predictable right vs. left battles in order to 'stand up and be counted'.
A divorcee, Bob and his ex-wife now communicated only through their PAs, and he did not often see his teenaged kids, who had moved abroad with their mother. But he didn’t seem weighed down by these personal tribulations. And on the upside, as he pointed out, his present family arrangements left him free to follow his horny instincts on London’s freewheeling dating scene.
He told me that one of the women he had met through the dating site and gone out with a few times later killed herself. 'Nothing to do with me. Apparently she’d been clinically depressed. Bit of a shock, though, to open the paper one day and read about her suicide.' Yet even the memory of this tragic incident failed to dampen his spirits. He simply popped another olive in his mouth.
He had also had dates with a couple of ‘gold-diggers’ (one Korean, one Nigerian) in search of a sugar daddy. Naturally he was shrewd enough to see through them early on, and his only regret was that he felt obliged to give them the heave-ho before managing to get his leg over. They were 'ravishingly sexy', he said.
Bob was likeable. But I doubted there would be any hanky-panky between us, because I wasn’t sufficiently attracted physically. I’d become spoilt. The seemingly inexhaustible supply of men online had made me highly pernickety. If a chap was too short, too old, too fat, too skinny, too hairy, too hairless, too big-nosed, too small-nosed, or he had bad teeth or piggy eyes or bandy legs…it was good-bye Charley.
Bob had referred to the ‘inherent shallowness’ of men, but I realised I was being pretty shallow myself. Did I care? No I did not.
After the first bottle of wine he seemed in no hurry to drive off to a restaurant, and as neither of us was starving, I opened more wine and brought out the dips ‘n’ crisps. We carried on talking as the light faded and darkness set in. Bob could expound engagingly on a variety of subjects and the hours rolled by. It began to look as if we would not be going out anywhere that night, and I just hoped that he wasn’t working himself up for a seduction attempt.
Every so often I went indoors for some reason and on one of my trips I checked my mobile and found a new message. With a delicious frisson I saw that it was from gorgeous sexy Jake.
Jake: Hey how are you? Up to much tonight?
Me: I'm on a 'date'! But would love to see you very soon.
Jake: Well if the ‘date’ doesn’t go well you’re welcome to come round to mine and we could have a nice night in. [Oh the agony! Tonight of all nights!]
Me: Sounds bliss.
Jake: Come to mine later. I’m in bed naked.
Me, attempting to eat my fist: Arghhh!
Jake: Enjoy the rest of your date.
I staggered back out to the garden, my equilibrium off by a few notches. When I got to the table, Bob’s chair was empty. I looked around. He was sitting on the steps to the pergola, doing something in the dark. As I approached I saw that he was barefoot and wringing out his socks. 'What happened?' I looked down at him, slightly alarmed. Even after numerous glasses of wine, this struck me as a bizarre sight.
But Bob was as unruffled as before. He explained calmly: 'Was just having a stroll around the garden and forgot about the pond. I stepped right in, up to the knees. Hope the fish are all right.' I put his socks in the dryer, thinking: that’ll be another half-hour, then. No way will I make it to Jake’s tonight. I sighed with resignation.
We moved into the sitting room and sat down on the sofa for more conversation. It was getting on for 11 o’clock and I was tired. Bob was still lively, though, still full of stories and little asides (mainly sex-related), but well-behaved. To my relief, I realised that he was not the pouncing type. From time to time my mind darted to Jake and what I was missing, but the more tired I grew the less it seemed to matter. And still the socks tumbled on...
By Monica Porter
Monica Porter is a professional London based author and journalist writing for many large newspapers such as The Daily Mail, The Times and The Guardian to mention but a few.
You can buy Monica's brilliant book "Raven: My Year Of Dating Dangerously" right here (also available to buy on kindle).