HW vs Fate: Part 1

Fate.

As a regular on this blog, Fate has always been welcome in my life and her opinions on finding Mr Right have been taken with the greatest respect. Her world experience and deep understanding of the human condition lend her wisdom beyond her years and besides, she makes a wicked vodka jelly.

However, over the course of 2008 my relationship with Fate has steadily deteriorated to the point where we are no longer on speaking terms. My counsellor has advised me to be specific about my anger, so my issues with Fate can be summarised thus:

1) She is inconsistent in her cosmic interference in my life.
2) She has the dress sense of a 1983 Eurovision transvestite version of Amy Winehouse.
3) She’s a fucking bitch, and when it comes to Romance she likes to get on top in her best faux-leather chaps and remind me who’s boss.

Well, she can fuck the fuck off. This is war.

Now, I know that the last conversation we had on the topic of Romance ended with an agreement that there was to be no Active Pursuing of Men this year. This meant an enforced ban on speed dating, internet dating, nights out alone and subconscious flirting with strangers in toilet cubicles. I stuck to my word rigorously on this, but unfortunately the lavender stain of ManHunt ’07 leeched into the early months of 2008.

It was therefore not entirely my fault that one week in March I found myself contacted by two men I had emailed last year on a dating website, and one man who was a reliable friend-of-a-friend setup. Coincidence? I think fucking not. Even single-cell primordial slime with the barest flicker of sentience, with vision impaired by a love of humanity and a comedy eye-patch could see which bitch’s gnarled claw was at play here.

Having to juggle three men at once caused me to experience something of a mental meltdown. The friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) got in first so I arranged for drinks the following week. The first online dater was an American chap who had recently changed his online profile photo to show off a bit of buff flesh, so clearly there was no way I could turn that down. Damn these weak homo genes.

Option three - the second online dater - was slow to respond, but after a bit of banter emailed me from his work address. Armed with the company name I discovered that he is the owner of a successful health food chain, is a keen musician, looks good in boardshorts and is as posh as the Queen. God bless the Internet. I emailed The Best Friend and she confirmed that yes, he was out of my league and that yes, this made a nice change (she may or may not have said this last bit, but she was definitely thinking it). In her bizarro logic she also christened him The Wonderhorse.

With The Wonderhorse established as the favourite I decided the only course of action was to cancel the other dates. An attempt to implement this plan was hampered by my being a yellow-bellied invertebrate, so I landed upon a better option; cowardly duplicity.

My cunning plan with The American was to make myself as unpleasant as possible so that there would be no risk of him wanting to date me subsequently. At dinner I steered the conversation onto the Arab-Israeli conflict, and we had a fight about American international interventionism. Then we had a fight about racism in America. And then I made him pay for dinner. It was bloody brilliant. He hated my guts.

The FOAF was more complicated as I don’t want to offend the common friend. My solution was to call him while he was in France and leave a voicemail message explaining that it’s all terribly embarrassing and I’m so very sorry but over the weekend I met an old flame I’ve always fancied from OZ and now he’s single and we hit it off and isn’t it wonderful but terrible at the same time and would you still fancy a drink ha ha despite the awkwardness ha ha yes yes right must be off bye now bye.

And that. Was. That. Brush off the hands, push open the saloon bar doors, and ride into the sunset to meet The Wonderhorse without a shred of guilt. Genius.

A sinister cackle echoes from the darkness as HW walks offstage. The curtain falls. Intermission.