Rosana goes speed dating, part 1

Oh, I've hit rock bottom at last

This is part I of a three part ‘Single for Christmas’ feature about Rosana trying to combat loneliness and find romance just before the big holiday season hits.  

The location is one of those posh Soho hotels. 

‘I’m here for an event,’ I say, keeping it vague, to the caked-up blonde front-of-house. 

‘An event?’ she asks and raises her eyebrow. 

She wants me to go into more detail, but it’s too early on the night to face facts and separate from my dignity. 

‘Yes, an event.’ I repeat. 

‘What event? We have many events here…’ she repeats with the expected, condescending tone accompanying any London front-of-house. 

She wants me to say it out loud, the little vixen. For some reason, I simply cannot say it out loud. I cannot. 

‘I am here for…a social event…relating to…the endeavour of dating.’ I enunciate each word in a manner suggesting I’m a woman who’s taken ownership of her own life, and has not a single plum to hide. 

‘Is it a speed dating event?’ she asks. 

I nod solemnly. 

‘Over there.’ She points behind her. 

A giant blonde man with a massive smile approaches me quickly from the other side of the room like a deathly arrow heading towards me. Before he’s anywhere close, he starts shouting. 

‘Speed dating, yes? You’re here for speed dating?’ 

A crowd of people gathered in the hotel’s cocktail bar all turn to look at me. 

‘SPEED DATING?’ he repeats once again. 

I ignore him, looking to the side. This is unbearable. 

He’s shouting now as if I’m deaf. I’m a deaf woman who’s come to attend speed dating. 

‘Yes…’ I answer as if I’m not sure. ‘I think….I’m here for an event of that sort. Is that what it’s called? Speed dating? I can’t remember; it’s been a while since I booked it.’ 

I booked it two hours ago. 

The caked blonde diverts her eyes in amusement. It’s pitiful. Pitiful. 

The blonde giant pats me on the shoulder atop my leather jacket. 

‘Oh brilliant, brilliant. It’s going to be brilliant, don’t you worry. We’ve got lots of men lined up.’ 

I wasn’t worried until I met this guy. 

He takes me to the entrance of the cocktail bar, where a small crowd of men has gathered. So, no secluded space then. We’re going to court like sea horses, out in the open. 

The cocktail tables are populated by extremely symmetrical and well-looked-after women. It looks like the backstage of a model casting. 

With my silicone-covered glasses and my blue cap, I look like the geeky engineer called in to fix the air conditioning unit. 

For a moment, I find my mouth curling in amusement at the fact that these women, with looks all in their favour, had to resolve to the murky depths of a speed dating event in order to meet someone. 

Then I recall that I am one of these women, and my mouth uncurls.

I chat to a few of them. They all claim the same thing, which annoys me to no little extent. 

‘No, I’ve never done it before.’ 

‘Oh my God, me neither.’ 

‘It’s my first time too!’ 

Like hell it is, I think to myself. Like hell it is. 

‘Oh yeah? It’s my first time, too,’ I lie, and I follow that up with another lie. 

‘Quite exciting, isn’t it?’

A speed dating event is obviously not exciting, but I am talking to English women, so we all agree it’s rather exciting, isn’t it, whilst our brows wrinkle and our prolonged eye contact gives way to absolute and utter dread.

There’s a group of three Irish friends who came together, and Shannahgh seems to think I am some sort of a maverick. 

‘You came alone? Jesus fucking Christ.’ 

Why wouldn’t I come alone, I wonder. 

‘It doesn’t make a difference. We’re all going to go home and cry on separate train carriages anyway.’, I say.

This acts as a brake to the flow of feminine chit-chat until Shannagh laughs and clicks her glass of wine against my pint of water, and I am grateful. 

Kyle, the blonde giant, keeps circulating the tables, interrupting conversations and giving people pep talks. 

‘Don’t worry, it’s going to be just fine…Remember to have a good time. Remember to flirt.’ 

He snaps his fingers at us. 

‘Flirt, flirt, flirt.’ 

He reminds me of a football coach with his pacing around and his whistle bouncing around his neck.

‘ARE - YOU - READY?’

I hold my right ear as he’s standing right next to me, shouting. 

‘ALRIGHT. STRAP IN! We start in 5 minutes, ladies! 5 minutes! Last chance to refresh that lipstick!’

As I catch a glimpse of the men at the back forming a line, I start to feel a dish of nausea percolating in my stomach. 

I’m at a speed dating event, in a leap of optimism, surrounded by single people who all believe that it is possible to find a lasting, meaningful connection in a group of absolute strangers, and I’ve never felt more alone in my entire life. 

Oh God, oh God. I’m gaping into the jaw of my own solitude, the pathetic, hopeless quest for companionship. I grip the couch cushion in an attempt to ground myself. Oh God. Kyle blows his whistle in my ear.

He’s standing next to Shannagh and me and shouts out into the room. 

‘READY - SET -’

He pauses, then turns to a few women on the other side of the room, pointing at them one by one as if challenging them to a disco dance. 

‘Are you ready? Are you ready?’

Then he turns to me and actually crouches down to shout into my ear. 

‘ARE YOU -’ 

I hold my ears in agony. 

‘- REEEEEEAAAADY!’

He blows his whistle. I’m still holding my ears when I see the men marching in and taking the first few seats. I let go of my ears then because the game is about to begin.

What strikes me the most about speed dating, after going through the first few men, is how infinitely tedious a person can seem in the very finite time frame of 5 minutes. 

Most of these men seem like comatose ragdolls, platonic shadows of men, bad actors who are projecting a soul that is long dead and has to be summoned through a summary of a few lines of a profession. 

It was like sitting through a job interview of talking features. 

A French pouty mouth, see-through eyelashes. 

‘I sell wine. I used to work in catering, but the hours were long, and I liked wine, so it was a natural move.’ 

A Roman nose, stainless steel glasses. 

‘I work for the UN…No, not that part…no, not that part either…mm…so it’s - if you could just let me finish…that’s okay…it’s sort of like a civil servant, so I do the spreadsheet and the planning of the budget.’

By the 4th speed date, I wanted to throw in the towel, overturn the table, storm out and call my mommy. 

The next man to take a seat at my table is Tim, and the first thing I notice about Tim is his giant forehead. I have never seen a forehead so prominent before.

Tim works in M&S, but I want to suggest he could get paid a lot more doing extras work in the movies as there’s something very cinematic about his forehead. 

Tim’s shirt is buttoned all the way to the top, and he leans in ever so slightly everytime he answers a question as if he’s at a job interview. 

‘My dream is to work in head office, in supply chain.’

The cocktail tables are small, and I keep worrying I’m going to bump into his large forehead. 

‘What do you do in supply chain? I ask. 

He leans in; I lean back. 

‘Ehm yeah, so it’s where you order the products…for the supermarket.’

‘Oh, right. So you would find that appealing…ordering products, I mean, for a supermarket. Would you find that interesting?’ 

‘Oh yes, yes, I think so. Very much so,’ he says.

A profound silence descends upon the table. I ask myself what kind of a man dreams of ordering razors and kitchen rolls for a supermarket chain. A man deeply ingrained in the fabric of capitalism. A man, presumably, not worth saving. More to the point, a man who can not be saved in the short time frame of 5 minutes. 

Still, I give it a try. I am determined to uncover Tim’s real passion or whichever debilitated, broken dream is concealed and buried beneath this absurd M&S facade. 

‘What is it that you like about ordering products? I mean, what is it about the act of ordering a product…that mmm…appeals to you?’

He stares at me and pauses for a few seconds as if confused by my question. 

‘Mmmm…you get to order the products for the store, don’t you? You get to decide what’s sold in store.’ 

‘Ok…but what is it…I mean, what kind of decisions would you look forward to making?’ 

‘So I would decide what kind of sandwiches we order in…’

Timothy looks up at the ceiling, clearly deep in thoughts about sandwiches. 

‘So say…cheese and onion, or Cheddar and Chutney….or New yorker on rye…or egg and watercress…or…classic BLT…’

It occurs to me that all we’ve talked about is Tim’s ambitions to work at the M&S head office. I glance at Kyle’s stopwatch. There is 1 minute and 43 seconds left of our date. 

‘Prawn cocktail…or classic cucumber…or tuna and gherkin or…no, I think that’s it, really.’

I smile supportively, thinking this is what it must be like to have a son. 

I don’t need a baby anymore. I’ll just adopt Tim and try to get him on the right path, try to expunge him from the world of corporate M&S. 

As we near the last minute, I ask him which store he works in. It’s the one near Green Park. 

‘Do you…do discounts for friends?’ 

‘No, it only applies to me. The discount doesn’t apply to friends…’ 

His lips purse. Interesting. In the last 5 minutes, I’ve wondered what it would take to find an edge to a man who rocks back and forth in his chair like a polite pendulum. 

This is what it took. The gentle insinuation that you wanted to get your hands on his M&S discount.

It was time to make a call. Tick or cross? 

Timothy seemed like a nice enough guy, but the question was, could I deal with a lifetime of Timothy? 

A lifetime of pretending I was not appalled by his sycophantic obsession with M&S. 

I imagined what our child would look like. A child, no doubt with a giant forehead, and wearing a T-shirt with the front print reading, ‘My dad works in M&S head office’, and the back print reading, ‘He decides which sandwiches you eat for lunch!’. 

I took a deep breath and sighed loudly. 

‘Are you alright?’ Tim asks. 

‘I’m….okay.’ I respond, and the whistle blows. 

Thank goodness for Kyle’s whistle.

I’ve only got 5 seconds before the next man arrives at my table, and I spend this time holding my head in my hands, closing my eyes and thinking about the inevitable. 

Who the hell is next? Who the hell could possibly be next?