When I was new to the Internet, I would sit online and chat happily to anyone who wanted to say hi. It didn’t occur to me that in the main, people who randomly chat to young women online and then invite them out for drinks are a little odd. Or they were back then, when the Internet was not as widely used as it is today. Meeting people from the internet was largely the same as going to a Star Trek convention.
I “met” a man called Paul, who lived about an hour’s drive away, I think. We would chat online when I was bored and had nothing better to do. As I say, I was new to the internet and the whole chatting online thing was a complete novelty. He seemed nice enough, and offered one day to drive up to town and meet me for a drink. I agreed, despite the fact I had no idea what he looked like, and he didn’t know what I looked like either. He had my mobile number (oh, how naive I was, to give my number to a complete Internet stranger!) so we agreed to meet in town at around 8 one evening, and he would call when he arrived. I got dressed up in a shiny new black top, and went and sat in the pub with my dad and his girlfriend. I didn’t tell them I was off to meet a complete stranger; my dad would have chained me to the chair to keep me from going! So my phone rang, and I told them I had to bail because I had a date, and off I went to meet him. I found him standing next to his car in the car park, a lot taller and chubbier than I had imagined. I am quite short. This did not bode well. We said our hellos, rather awkwardly, and went to the nearest pub.
I think I was only about 19 at the time, and hadn’t had much experience of meeting up with men I barely knew in dark car parks – actually something I still don’t have much experience of now. The conversation was awkward to say the least. All I remember of that evening is him sitting on a stool at a table that made him look like a giant. He had shaggy mousy brown hair that looked like it had once been a pudding-bowl classic. There was nothing wrong with him, he seemed nice enough, but I really didn’t fancy him, and wanted to get away from this nightmarish situation as soon as I could! After a couple of drinks I said I had to get home. He offered me a lift, and I offered some hastily thought-up excuse as to why that was a bad idea, and then left after a very awkward hug in the car park.
I thought that would be the end of it. We’d met, we obviously hadn’t clicked in a romantic sense; perhaps we would remain friends and chat online from time to time. How wrong could I be? It seemed I was the only one who noticed the distinct lack of spark in our meeting. When I got home I received a message saying it had been lovely to meet me, he liked me even more now that he’d seen how gorgeous I was in person. I didn’t know how to respond. I’ve never been very good at turning people down; I worry about hurting their feelings or making them cross with me. I thought perhaps I’d not given him a fair chance, perhaps I’d missed something and he was actually really sexy and gorgeous. You know when you meet a guy, and he’s lovely, and kind, and he treats you nicely, and he’s always well presented and always smells nice, and always holds the door open for you, and you think, oh if only I fancied you, you’d be my ideal man and we could walk off into the sunset together. But I never fancy those ones!
So I agreed to meet him again, just to make sure I hadn’t missed something. This time he offered to get a take away and come to my house. Alarm bells should have rung – do not invite someone you met on the Internet and do not know, to come to your home. But as mentioned before, I was young and stupid and hadn’t done things like this before. I also had a friend at work who regularly met men online and had them come into work to meet her – at which point she would come running into the kitchen with a panicked expression, asking to exchange name badges with someone so that this week’s man didn’t recognise her. She also had a habit of meeting up with men late at night, and having sex with them in their cars, or in other public and quite inappropriate places. In comparison, I thought what I was doing was quite sedate and acceptable. So he came round with a curry, and we sat in my bedroom and ate it. Why my mother didn’t make us sit at the kitchen table, or even allowed me to invite a man none of us knew into the house, is beyond me. It’s entirely possible I lied to her and had her believing he was an old school friend or something.
I don’t recall anything other than him turning up with the curry. I know I knew instantly that my first appraisal of the situation had been correct, and that the rest of the visit was spent with me carefully avoiding eye contact or any sort of touching, before finding a way to usher him out of the door. The following week he sent me a CD he’d made me, full of mushy love songs with not-so-hidden meanings. It made me cringe.
He was, I must say, a very nice bloke. He didn’t try anything inappropriate (other than another embarrassingly awkward hug goodbye on the doorstep) and did not make me worried for my safety, with him now knowing where I lived. He wasn’t creepy or anything, I just didn’t fancy him. And I didn’t have the heart to tell him.
I don’t recall what happened next, and do not appear to have written much about him in my blog or diaries. I assume I must have eventually told him I didn’t fancy him, and didn’t want to see him again. And then he got whiney and very self-pitying. Nobody ever likes me, why don’t you like me, what did I do wrong, is it because I’m too fat, poor me, nobody loves me, I’ll never find a girlfriend. On and on it went, every time I went online, there he would be, whining and moaning and begging me to see him again. He told me I was the girl of his dreams. I told him to shut up. He said, “You don’t want me because I’m ugly.” I said, “I don’t want you because you’re wet and irritating and have no self-respect.” Then I told him to go away and come back when he’d grown up. This is the way I dealt with unwanted attentions from men when I was younger. I didn’t have the self confidence to be able to just say, “Look, you’re a nice guy but I don’t fancy you” so I would fob them off with bad excuses until their pestering became unbearable, and then I would lose my temper and behave like a royal bitch. Needless to say, he did go away, and we’re not still in contact.
