Update on Mr #39

Howdy folks. Well, I think we all know how great I thought Mr #39 from last week was, and how much I was looking forward to meeting him again this weekend. So, rather than include this in a future post affecting another future date, I thought I'd let you all know how it went, as so many of you were kindly rooting for me.

Well...

I didn't meet him.

Why I hear you ask, since it went so well?

Beats me.

Since the date, there had been a couple of text messages, but all of my own instigation. He clearly wasn't a boy to banter, which is fair enough, as at least we'd have this Saturday to re-banter. But earlier in the week, I got a funny feeling that perhaps I had maybe got my hopes up a little too much too soon, which were further confirmed when I casually enquired if we were still on for Saturday, and I was met with radio silence. That old chestnut...

From past experience, I have learnt that when men don't want to reply to a message, ie to let you down or whatever, they opt to ignore you instead and hope that you just disappear. Why do they do that? It's not only hideously obvious, it's childish and rude. I wasn't going to disappear that easily. We had a lovely evening on the date, got on really well, and heck, I'd given up a whole Saturday day and night for this date #2, so I needed to know what was going on. That's only polite isn't it?

So late on Friday, I casually asked again as to whether we were meeting up, because if not, I would quite like to make alternative plans. Pretty swiftly he replied to apologise for the delay, but he'd been waiting to see if his dad was coming to London. As he was, he decided to cancel our date. It seems I'd inadvertently given him a get out clause, and there was no mention of rescheduling.

Game over.

I have no idea if his father was a genuine reason or not, I suspect that actually he's been going on other dates and found some younger, thinner, hotter models in place of yours truly, and you know what, I'm actually fine with that. Internet dating is ruthless. He could've dealt with things more tactfully, and I blame the Y chromosome for that. But I suppose what I'm not fine with is the fact that I had such a lovely evening with someone who couldn't have been more keen in person, and I foolishly let myself get my hopes up. And that is absolutely my fault rather than his. Perhaps it's because for the first time since starting 52 First Dates that I genuinely met someone that I felt a funny little spark with, and with that glimmering away in my sub-conscious, I let myself see beyond that one date and the chance that I might be able to quit 52 First Dates while I was ahead.

The world of internet dating really is a cut-throat one, and although I've known that for a while, I've not really experienced the wrong end of it yet. And bitter disappointment stings. Since I've been on 39 dates, I think I've been pretty bloody lucky. Everyone gets crushed romantically every now and again, some more than others, and of course it was always going to be on the cards for me sooner or later in going on so many dates. Hell, I'm surprised it hasn't happened more often! 

I won't lie, it didn't feel very nice, and of course I dealt with it in phenomenally mature style by getting embarrassingly wrecked. Funny how a skinful of Sauvignon Blanc takes the edge off, although I wouldn't recommend it, my hangover was brutal. But you know what? I'm a big girl, and I just need to suck it up, slap a grin on it and get back in the game. It was just one date, albeit a really good one. But there'll be more. Not everyone will want to see me again, just as I don't always want to see them again, so I just need to deal with it.

So the moral of the story is just to keep calm, and carry on dating.

...and I don't care what anyone else says, drowning one's sorrows does help.

Catfish Strikes Back

Hello dear cherished readers of 52 First Dates. How are you all? Good? Lovely. So I’m writing this entry as means of an apology, as I have decided not to go on a date this week. The reason? Because I’m meant to be going on a second date with Mr 39 this Saturday. I know what I started out this dating challenge I proposed in a somewhat ruthless way that I would carry on with the first dates regardless of second and third dates. As it turns out, I don’t really like that idea at all, especially since Mr #39 was such a thoroughly lovely guy, and in the event that I should eventually come clean about my dating undertakings, I wouldn’t want to spoil things by having felt obliged to carry on my serial dating just because of some silly rule I made up myself to make the challenge more interesting. I know this feels like I’m being a bit of a party pooper, and maybe I am. But how would I feel if I knew he was carrying on dating in between our dates? Pretty shitty I guess, especially since things went so well on our first date, and I’d hate to do the same in return. And even if he does carry on dating, presumably I won’t know about it, so that’s fine, unlike here where it’s all terribly public. But fear not folks, if our second date doesn’t turn out well, I’ll go on two dates next week to make it up to y’all, can’t say fairer than that, no? But secretly (actually not so secretly) I hope I won’t have to.

But, in other news, remember the Catfish debacle of 2011? Well if you missed out on the weirdest experience of my dating life, perhaps you should catch up here. Or, if you can’t be arsed to read all that, here’s a potted version. In the third person, for some utterly irrelevant reason...

CTS meets Mr #2 online, and they embark on multitudinous chats and text exchanges.

CTS arranges many dates with Mr #2, but Mr #2 keeps cancelling slash standing her up.

Mr #2 arouses CTS’ suspicion, and through a bizarre chain of events involving sinister texts and a reflective perfume bottle, it turned out Mr #2 didn’t exist. Mr #2 is told under no uncertain circumstances to fuck off.

CTS posts vitriolic post and pictures on blog to expose the aforementioned Mr #2, aka Sebastian Pritchard-Jones

Detective friends identify the photos of the alleged Mr #2 as belonging to a Mr CT on Facebook.

CTS contacts CT about his stolen identity and freaks him the hell out.

CTS is then contacted by Miss D, who was on the verge of going away with Seb having embarked on a relationship with him, but after her mother’s suspicions were aroused that she’d never met him, stumbled across my blog. Miss D is understandably devastated, and invariably tells Seb to fuck off.

I think this is as far as you all know, yes? Okay.

Well whilst the latter part was going on, there were ongoing police investigations into Seb, but because the case was still active, I wasn’t able to write about it. As it turns out, stealing someone else’s photos and posing as someone else online isn’t actually a crime unless they defraud the victim out of money or murder them, essentially. But the one thing they could investigate were the mysterious threatening texts I had that one night, which could count as harassment. 

After months and months of investigation, the police were not able to pin anything on to Seb, but they were able to caution the owner of the phone that sent the texts...a lady whose name I had heard through Seb and other victims many times before, who was based in Wales. So that’s where it ended...my suspicions confirmed that Seb was responsible in some way for the nasty messages, but still none the wiser as to Seb was. Case closed. Or so I thought...

Last week I had an anonymous comment on my blog from someone claiming to be another victim of Seb. I was surprised that after 9 months that this had cropped up again, and initially I was suspicious it might be Seb trying to play games. I have no doubt that he knows I’ve been writing about him and has long since changed his name, but there will be other women out there familiar with his name, and I still hope to find more. I encouraged the commenter to email me, and sure enough, she did. So I was introduced to Miss M.

Miss M got in touch with me after watching a programme on teachers, and randomly Googling Seb’s full name. And lo and behold, she came across my blog. It turns out Miss M was Seb’s victim immediately before me. And her experience with this mythical beast was considerably worse than mine. She had been going through a terrible time personally, and when Seb popped into her life, he appeared to be her knight in shining armour, making himself totally available when she needed him, albeit only over the phone. Like he did with me, they’d speak for hours on the phone, he knew everything about what she was going through at that time and she thought she knew the same about him.

Miss M’s suspicions were first aroused by cancelled dates, and when she’d try and arrange spur-of-the-moment meets in London, he could never make them. She started to doubt he even lived in London, as he’d been claiming. But the rest of his life had been told to Miss M in the same frightening detail that both Miss D and I knew all too well, the dead ex, the niece, the job; a sickeningly well-rehearsed routine.

Despite many attempts to meet, Miss M was always stood up or had Seb cancel.. But Seb, the charmer he was, even sent a massive bouquet to the place she worked at at the time by way of apology, a seemingly sweet but sickeningly OTT gesture. All the while, he was trying to suck her in and mess with her head at a time he knew she was most vulnerable. He even tried to book a cab to pick her up and take her to meet him, as he tried with me, but of course she wasn’t having any of it. It seems Miss M was made of much tougher stuff than that.

Miss M eventually caught Seb out by setting up a fake profile on the same website, and giving him her flatmate’s mobile number. But the messages she received were seedy, sordid and explicit, nothing like the cheeky Welsh guy that all three of us had got to know. He also started to get aggressive and nasty, which isn’t a side we’d never seen to him. 

In the end, after a final attempt to see once and for all who the hell he was, Miss M arranged to meet him in London, but he never showed up. She never spoke or messaged him again.

 
The frightening thing is when Miss M and I compared dates, it seemed Seb had been lining me up as the next one even before things had ended with Miss M. And likewise, Seb had moved straight onto Miss D the day after I told him to leave me alone. There will have been more women before and after us. So if you or anyone you know has been duped by someone on online dating sites seemingly posing as someone else, male OR female, then please let me know. Seb’s used a woman’s name and photos before, and has no doubt changed his fictional name now, but there are only so many intricate lies you can weave, and he must still be using some of them. If these stories ring any bells for you then please get in touch. I thought this was over, but it’s not. And I am determined to find out more...

Mr #39 - Leap of Faith

The preamble:
There had been relatively little preamble between Mr #39 and I, but he had a great profile, liked lots of the same things I did plus many more I could be tempted by, and looked nice from the couple of profile pictures he had up on the dating site. So, since Mr #38 had pretty much fallen off the radar since last week which is a bit of a shame since there had been a certain amount of promise, I didn't think twice about accepting Mr #39's offer for a drink. There was a limited amount of text banter, but what I instantly loved about him was not once did he call me babe, he used full and proper English in his messages and he had a cracking sense of humour. All the signs pointed to a pleasant evening, regardless of chemistry.

The man:
Age: 34

Profession: Works in recruitment

Random factoid: Manages his own football team.

The date:
Sadly the day after the date I had to get up at stupid o'clock in the morning for a shoot, so I forewarned Mr #39 I wouldn't be able to stay out and play very late. I was also  unfortunately only able to meet him at 7.30pm, so he'd had to amuse himself in the pub for a couple of hours before I arrived, which is never a bad thing, I'm a big believe in beer goggles counting in my favour. 

I met Mr #39 outside a pub near Soho, and I was instantly struck by how handsome he was...not in the same way as his picture as he was dressed very differently and was wearing glasses, but he had a lovely manner about him and I liked his style, so immediately I was impressed. We headed off to a lovely little establishment behind Carnaby Street, he rustled up some drinks, and although there was nowhere to sit, we found a cosy corner to hide in and get acquainted.  

It soon transpired that Mr #39 and I have an awful lot in common, taste in music, film, comedy, cake and root vegetables, all the important things of course. In a short space of time we covered a lot of the essential big bases, work, home, singledom, religion, festivals and sport as well as some of the more not-so-essential topics such as murder, peanut butter, my Catfish experience, how he copes with his dog's menstrual cycle, my parrot's masturbatory habits, why no eating establishment should have a name ending in 'Zone' and  things you could legitimately combine with Marmite. 

Mr #39 was utterly charming and a real gentleman throughout the evening despite being a little tipsier than I was on account of his extended time in the pub, but it didn't matter a jot. What I really liked about Mr #39 was how up front he was about pretty much everything. As the evening wore on, I grew increasingly resentful of my impending early start as I was having one of the nicest evenings if not THE nicest evening of 52 First Dates, but by the same respect I also wanted to quit while I was ahead as it was going so well. 

A couple of drinks in, Mr #39 asked me how my date was going, to which I replied 'rather well', and since he thought the same he asked there and then if he could see me again. Without hesitation, I said yes, and he then asked when was a day when I didn't have the Sword of Damocles of an early start hanging over my head, and it turns out a week on Saturday suits just fine. And that was that, second date already sorted! 

With date #1 in the bag and date #2 in the diary, we called it a night and headed off to the tube. As we headed down the escalators I was riddled with potential-snog anticipation, and when we said goodbye I won't lie, I was a little disappointed when it was just a peck on the cheek. But there's always the second date, right? Fuck me, a second date! Steady on CTS...!

Memorable Quotes:
'My dog is currently running around the house wearing a customised pair of mens' pants to stop her making a mess everywhere.'

Re my friend Louise's dessert making habits: 'Your friend mixed butterscotch and chocolate Angel Delight? She's single handedly responsible for the downfall of the economy...' Thinking back on timing, he may have been right!

'Blancmange - what the fuck's up with that?'

Mr #39: 'You don't like asparagus because it looks like a willy?'

Me: 'No...I said woody.'

Events of note:

Since this date occurred on the 29th of February, a leap year, the girls in the office were teasing me that I should propose to my date. So, after one drink, thinking he might find it funny, I brought it up. His answer? 'Well if it keeps going well, yes I'll marry you.' Well that was easy! Nice knowing you, readers...

The Verdict:

I don't think you really need to ask this question, since you already know I've agreed to a second date. Throughout the course of 52 First Dates, I've been pretty cagey about second dates if I've not felt something there, in fact I've only ever been on the one, which was with Mr #5. But a third date with him never happened, because he simply fell off the radar. I don't want someone who's happy to fall off my radar, I want someone who wants to be to be in full beam and making it beep loudly. And although 52 First Dates hadn't turned up the man of my dreams thus far, it has reinforced the fact that I know what I'm looking for and when I did finally meet someone right, I'd know about it. 

With Mr #39, something clicked for me, and very easily too. And without wanting to jinx things, it felt like something may have clicked for him too. I loved the fact that I didn't have to play guessing games, because I'm beyond shit at picking up subtle signals and the eternal overanalysis combined with my innate inability to flirt in return drives me potty. And the fact that he took my utterly foolish suggestion of a marriage proposal in such good humour counts for a lot. I say good humour, he said yes, so perhaps more fool-hardy than good-humoured. But there were no games here, he paid me very sweet compliments, was genuinely interested in me, and then asked me out again. And I have to say, not only am I really looking forward to seeing him again, but the butterflies in my tummy are too. At the moment nine days feels like an awfully long time to wait. Watch this space...