The Toxic Bachelor

I've been on a dating site, a well known dating site, for several months and despite the plethora of choice and numerous dates with a lot of lovely women I can barely muster the enthusiasm to continue with it.

However, it's not them, it's me.

No, really, it is!

I think I'm becoming what the women's mags call a 'toxic bachelor'. However, I don't mean to be, it's not intentional, and I would love to find a way to puncture the thick vapour of apathy that seems to fog my every decision nowadays!

I find reasons not to see them again almost from the moment I meet them.

One girl, who was pretty and had a good personality, didn't make the grade because I decided she was too tall, and her perfect bob was too perfect and in the wrong light resembled a wig. It didn't matter on the first date, she was nice enough, and I was charming enough (which is something I can do when I'm pressed) to ensure there was a second date. The second date went well but the height and wig-like bob gnawed away at me with annoying persistence, like a terrier gnaws at a rubber toy. We kissed at the end of the second date and a third one beckoned. But when the day came round I didn't bother to shave, turned up looking much scruffier, and assumed an air of aloofness.

On the third date, the girl's bob no longer looked like hair, it was simply a mannequin's wig badly placed on her head and, at that particular moment in time, no woman on earth was taller than her, she was like the Gulliver of females, even though she was only an inch taller than myself. I had blown these random observations up into enormous deal breakers. Needless to say, the third date was the last.

She texted me later to say she didn't want another date and I breathed a huge sigh of relief!

Still, I hope she has found a guy who actually appreciates her because she had bags of personality, really was rather attractive, and was bright with it.

Another girl was actually quite taken with me. We had two dates and she was keen for a third, but I never called her back. She was pretty, slim, shorter than myself, bright, had great taste in films and music, and she even had her own place, but she looked too much like Cameron Diaz for my taste. On the first date it was a slight resemblance, but on the second date she was Cameron Diaz in all her annoying, sparky glory. It was yet another stupid gnawing 'foible' expanded to a full-blown existential crisis. I didn't want to hear people say, "Hey, Nameless, your friend is the spitting image of Cameron Diaz!"

And for that, and that alone, I had created an escape clause for myself.

Pathetic! Another word for me would be - cunt!

There are plenty of other girls too, but it seems pointless to catalogue my litany of errors and insecurities.

However, the upshot is that the problems are mine and I seem to be suffering from Groucho Marx Syndrome: ie. I don't want to join a club that would have someone like me for a member. But, I also don't want end up like those fat, fifty-something single blokes, with their red, saggy jowls, pissing and moaning about the state of the world around them, weeping into their pints with their other single mate in some forbidding east-end pub.

And maybe I just need to finish the first draft of my interminable never-ending slog of a novel. Maybe then my libido and self-esteem will return with a crashing of hearts and bedsprings. Who knows?

I just know my current cloistered life is starting to look pretty fucking dull!

Ennui

Jesus, I'm bored!

I'm so fucking bored you wouldn't believe it.

I took two extra days off this bank holiday weekend and used them to achieve the sum total of...

Fuck all!

My flatmate went off to Budapest this weekend, on his own, stayed in some hostels, explored, ate, drank and had a good time. He made it sound great, like nobody else on earth could have that much fun in Eastern Europe without also getting laid! Bastard!

As for me, I stayed in my room; listened to copious amounts of rain fall on the roof of my flat; read; ate fast food; fretted about my novel and did only a small amount of writing because of said fretting and met, and bonded through adversity, with my downstairs neighbours.

Firstly, fast food. I've eaten so much useless shit this weekend I can actually fucking hear the free radicals as they proceed to undertake a revolution and violent coup of my internal workings. Before the weekend started I was able to run up the three flights of stairs to my flat with barely a change in my heartbeat. After a weekend of burgers, dirty chicken, delivered curries and pizzas, I wheeze and gasp like a sixty fags a day asthmatic and my heart pounds like a drum kit that has been kicked down a flight of stairs. And I really can see my head getting rounder and fatter as I write!

I wouldn't mind so much if it was a lifestyle choice and I really enjoyed what I was eating. But it wasn't. It was laziness.

Yesterday, I had a choice: walk for ten minutes to my local Sainsburys, buy some nice food, some vegetables, salad, fish and meat or walk two minutes - in my slippers - to the local dirty chicken shop and have a greasy, mayo smothered, chicken fillet burger with chips that were smothered in a vaguely radioactive looking chilli sauce. I took the latter option and felt like a right arsehole when I realised I didn't actually like what I was eating. All in the name of saving myself time - being efficient, in other words.

Do you know what I did with all that time I saved?

That's right. Bugger all. What. A. Tit!

I realised something, though. What is the point of all these labour saving devices when all we do with the time saved is a sweet load of nothing? Do you know what? I think I'd rather spend my time filling my life with useless tasks if it meant I could avoid the spirit and will sapping boredom of sitting around in my room.

I did go out on the Sunday, for a date, but that was sadly nothing to write home about either! I went to a gallery with a girl who, whilst a very nice person, wasn't really my type and didn't exactly thrill me with her personality. But, I can say, without fear of contradiction, she felt the same way about me too. We tried chatting in the gallery cafe after we'd had our fill of the exhibition, but the conversation was fairly stilted and at times I felt like I was trying to draw blood from a stone. She discussed her job, I asked her questions about it, along with a few others about her hobbies, but the conversation was a real stop-start affair with no natural flow, and as I wasn't that attracted to her I found it difficult to muster the enthusiasm to keep the words and questions coming. So that was that! We said goodbye, kissed each other on the cheek, and went off in our separate directions. Oh well, back to the drawing board I suppose.

And at least it got me out of my flat!

One good thing about these days off, though, particularly when you're hanging on by the skin of your overdraft!

I can't wait to go back to work. I'm actually excited at the prospect!

On a further down note: the new series of Big Brother starts again this week. Oh great, more conversations with people at work and after work drinks about the teachings and sayings of a bunch of cunts whose opinions wouldn't even hold water in the boozy confines of a fucking pub. Fandabidozi!

I've been trapped in a flat long enough without also being trapped in a flat with dullards who are trapped in a house!

And now my DVD player's gone on the blink. Great. I'm going to be doing a lot of reading over the next few weeks. Anything to avoid the idiot-fest that is Big Brother.