teh wasteland

My Sydney friend is excited at the prospect that I might go ‘on sabbatical’ to another city, as I put it.  I’ve been contemplating a move to southern climes for a while, tho there hasn’t been much action in that direction yet. For my friend, it might mean the possibility of shared Easters once again, and maybe reciprocated accommodation in a place where she used to live. 

She also has plans for me to hit the internet dating scene.  (‘Dating’ for want of a better word, given that we don’t quite have the same sense of this convention as Americans – in fact, we don’t have as many manners or conventions as Americans, period, unfortunately.) 

‘You will try and go out with straight men?’ she says.  As opposed to consorting with gay ones – one of life’s true small pleasures. 

For the last few years, I have tried to explain to her that apart from being Lesbos Central, all that Alice has to offer in terms of men tend to be mechanics, mechanics and more mechanics, prison screws and tour operators.  Call me choosy, but I’m probably one middle-class professional woman who really is too esoteric for The Farmer Wants A Wife/Mr Average Aussie Bloke as opposed to say, a fresh-faced ABC regional cub reporter, a bank manager who likes water sports or a heart-warming salsa-dancing secondary school teacher.  

Besides, any available men who land in Alice tend to go for women 10-15 years younger than themselves, simply because they can.  So unless I want to go for someone with early stage prostrate cancer, I’m out of luck, and even then, I’d have to get my skates on.  Recently, there was a bun rush in Alice reminiscent of the wedding bouquet skirmish scene in For Love Alone, where middle-aged women flocked to check out a 58 yo secondary teacher who’d just arrived.  Could anyone sound more unenticing?  I envisaged a strong dose of male babyboomer self-important pedantry about a dull and ultimately irrelevant area of knowledge, an untrimmed bushy grey beard and homeopathic sandals.  (Anyone but a Mr Collins, eh? –Ed.)

This reality is often hard to convey to those not surrounded by thousands of kilometres of desert and the prospect of an expensive once-daily flight to most capital cities.  Basically, I’ve given up. Apart from the fact that my biological clock has in all probability tocked (any eggs I might have left will have gone off, as my mother keeps reminding me), I’ve come to see the Desert Idyll as a time to make the most of some difficult experiences in my life and to concentrate on some of the things I’ve always wanted to try, like writing.  In some ways, I glad to have excuses to avoid the whole dating thing.

Even if I move away, it’s not clear the options will be much better.  But my friend is keen, very keen for me (I suspect an element of vicariousness, as she’s been in a long-term, intermittent relationship for twenty years.)  She goes online to a dating site and begins hunting for me in a capital city, then asks what age parameters to set. I say, ‘35 to 55’. 

‘Oh Elly, 55 — you don’t want that!’  (She’s a nurse; she probably has a very hands-on understanding of age.)

‘Don’t knock the mid-50s — they’re my fanbase,’ I say.  True: it often seems there’s a 50-something wanting to do coffee and talk to me about some intellectual or cultural issue. 

But does she really not realise what a wasteland it is out there? And how a woman my age is supposed to be grateful for all comers (despite the fact that women my age generally take better care of themselves than their male contemporaries, many of whom are searching for women as young as 25, according to the website).

There are gasps as she sifts through the profiles. 

‘”No baggage” – they’ve obviously got it then!’‘Too short!’  I’m prepared to go shorter than she will on my behalf; I’ve never understood how one physical characteristic like ‘height’ or ‘weight’ or ‘hair’ or ‘youth’ is supposed to somehow sum you up in entirety.‘Want kids of my own.’ Roughly 90 % of the men wanted kids, which was worrying, given the thought of the continent being populated by drongos.Also of note were the number of sable-haired gentlemen who describe themselves as ‘Clooney-esque’.

‘God, this is just awful!’  My friend says over and over.  I’m surprised how choosy she is, especially since she’s traditionally been even more a patron of lost dogs than me.  In the end she finds two men out of 600 whom she thinks might be possibilities for me (one of whom is really more her type –- a total eccentric rather than closeted one) and orders me to write a profile, so I can wink at or nudge them or whatever you’re meant to do (tho I’m 1000s of kilometres away, and may stay that way).

The website has a template and instructions for writing a profile, but I can’t say that I really warm to the task.  It’s a bit like writing a high school essay or a press release on a dull subject that one leaves until the last possible moment.

‘Have you written that profile yet?’ My friend starts saying.

I’m dragging my heels.  Watching the box set of The Goodies seems like a much better option.

She looks over my shoulder.

‘No, not a perverse sense of humour!’ says my self-appointed PR expert.  ‘You are not perverse; you are quirky!’

But probably every young mid-life, middle-class professional woman on the website describes themselves as ‘smart, attractive and quirky’.

I don’t know; this is online dating after all.  Perhaps men also look at the women’s profiles and think, ‘the horror, the horror!’ 

In the end, just as I press ‘save’, the online connection times out.  How sad.  We didn’t even get to publish.  Sigh…back to The Goodies.  (Her favourite was always Bill, the odd one of course; mine was Tim, the poof – how prophetic!  Perhaps this could become the basis of a Goodies personality test.)

Anyway…I began writing this post when I was on holidays.  I have few half-written posts kicking around from my time en vacance.  I don’t usually like to write this directly about myself in my blog or elsewhere (there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors involved with blogging, believe me). I hoped this one might be amusing.  Maybe I could use it as the basis for a self-deprecatory voice-over for a mid-life rom com.

But I would hope that the end-tocking of Biological Clock might mark a new period where peeps might be a bit more relaxed about the whole relationships thing.  I suspect that so much of the deal about finding the One is just about pairing up so you don’t miss out on kids.  I didn’t search in any frenzied way for the One, and now that I’m without One, I have severe doubts that I would have met him anyway.  The further one gets away from the thirties and the dreaded biological countdown, the more ridiculous the idea of meeting the One seems to be.  An interesting companion…now, that would be more the thing.  Stanley Tucci to my Meryl Streep, etc, tho if the number of 40-something men wanting kids on the dating site is anything to go by, that may be unlikely.

Some of the things I hate about the whole single thing is the way that people feel can pass judgement (often publicly) or pry into your personal life about why you’re not paired off.  Compared to the automatically elevated status that people in relationships have, even if it’s toxic or they’re crappy peeps.  The whole sense of moral imperative or having Failed One’s Duty along with the idea that One Might Not Have Made Enough Effort: that you’ve been selfishly holding out against the possibility of relationship.  Whereas I’m suspect that perennial singletons like me feel they’ve been knocked back or passed over when 90 % of the time, (I suspect for not being ‘average’ enough: either too much of this or too little of that).  Or have just been plain unlucky, tho all of those reasons could be put down to the victim mentality of the Intimacy Avoider Who Didn’t Try Hard Enough.  Interestingly, my mother never pressured me about marriage or children; just made comments from the sidelines like, ‘I got the only good one’, 'You're better off without them" and ‘There’s a lot of weird men out there, and a lot of weird women for them.’

I’m not even sure why we’re so keen to have relationships (but you do overthink things – Ed).  Relationships can seem like useless accessories that everyone wants to acquire although they’ve forgotten why they wanted to in the first place. I also think that many women are quite capable at meeting their intimacy needs through friendships and social networks, so the idea that you might need to find A Relationship to experience intimacy seems almost superfluous.  Or just old hat.  Even dykes tell me there are things they tell their women friends that they wouldn’t share with their partners.

I probably have more hang-ups than an overstuffed wardrobe at this stage, anyway.  But who doesn’t have psychological baggage by the time they’re 40?  I worry that I’m going to become one of those perpetually irritable middle-aged people whose grumpiness masks a degree of mild depression – no, more specifically than that (I don’t always enjoy the over simplifications of modern psychology) – a churlishness at not having got what I wanted or expected to get in life.  The upside of all my independence is that married-up types are beginning to say to me, ‘You’ve lived an interesting life.  You’ve done some interesting things and met some interesting people.'

But who knows: perhaps I will become a saintly, chuckling, Buddhist nun-like figure in later life around whom people will fall, saying, ‘She learned the gift of contentment’, like they did of Drusilla Modjeska’s mother at the end of Poppy.

(Do I need my eyesight checked or is Susan Sarandon looking more and more like Yoda all the time?)

Comments

[Gillian]

did you really mean to write "prostrate cancer" up there ... nice slip ...

btw, don't come to sydney for men, the demographers suggest melbourne is more hopeful, and i've seen nothing to disprove it!

[Lucy Sussex]

I was just reading the reissue of the Lillian Roxon biography. She might have died in 1973, but she didn't see a relationship as necessary to the female existence. And proved it, as a successful Australian rock writer in New York. She was an independent woman, a feminist, with a lot of friends whom she phoned every day. What happened to that sort of attitude? Was it all subsumed by the 'I'm not a feminist'/celebrity football wives? And what's happened to phoning people rather than depersonalized internet communication, I ask? A quote from the book: Lillian was "sexually liberated, a brilliant career person, she didn't need a man. She just seemed to be an extraordinarily productive and professionally fulfilled human being, What better feminist is there than that?"

[Pavlov's Cat]

My own casual observations also tell me that there are more single men in Melbourne (or at least there were twelve years ago, when I was the same age you are now). But they were, and no doubt still are, single for a reason.

I haven't got all of what I wanted or expected in life either, but fortunately that wasn't a hubby and bubs. And I can't think of a single marriage/partnership I know well, not one, that I can point to and say 'I'd rather be her than me', and that includes the two full-on, licit, public ones I've been half of myself in the misty past. (Or, as a friend once said, 'It's bloody hard work being married to Matthew.') I agree with you about the interesting companion thing, but those blokes all want to marry 25-year-old blondes and have more bubs so they can make up for having neglected the first lot -- a desire that makes one question whether they really are as interesting as one thought.

Most of the people over 40 I know who are mad keen to partner up feel that way because either (a) they are scared (if not incapable) of being on their own, (b) they're sick to death of being inappropriately pitied oddments at Noah's Ark dinner parties, which one really cannot believe people are still holding in the 21st century but there you go, or (c) they've got rom coms confused with documentary realism. So the sought-after but elusive Other becomes a commodity, to which one then attaches a list of specifications. (Black hair, green eyes, GSOH, way with words, kind heart, perfect pitch, mad computer skillz ... somebody stop me.) If this Quest is going to be the torture you make it sound, I think you should definitely pass.

[elsewhere]

G -- I wouldn't be going anywhere 'for men'; that would be bound to end in tears. And the suburb where you live is supposed to be the worst in the country for meeting men, demographically (tho there is such a thing as a bus). Sydney in general is too pricey and has too arduous lifestyle for me to contemplate after Alice.

LS -- thanks for the tip about the Lilian Roxon book. We're definitely living in more conservative times. I think there may have been some respect for the spinster/single working girl in the past that's been lost, too. Incidentally, I saw a plaque in Kings X commemorating the studio flats built for single working girls so they could be close to the city after WW1, when there were many less men. I'm afraid I'm not really a phone person (being able to text people to meet up with them in Alice because they're nearby suits me well), tho abhor the office thing of emailing someone next door to you rather than visiting.

PC -- on reflection, probably (b) if at all, and the idea of going on orchestrated 'dates' seems like torture and a huge waste of time (tho there is a certain anthropological curiosity to the whole deal plus more potential writing material). I am overly susceptible to other people's opinions/judgements, and have to ask myself if I'm just disappointed by being the social reject, as usual, rather missing out on some humdrum reality I wouldn't have enjoyed.

Ten years ago, the general opinion was that Melb men were better than Sydney ones, because they had manners, could dress themselves, hold conversations, etc. Supposedly, there is still a huge discrepancy between male and female popns in their 30s and 40s in Australia (many more women than men) . I do think there is a new phenomenon of primadonna-ish men in their 30s, fluffing about saying, 'who is worthy to be the mother of my children?/ I can always get a 25 yo when I'm 45,' etc, which is underreported...tho maybe it is the 'lost boys' thing and I'm out of touch. I agree, tho -- some men can be weird about kids: they want the status symbol, not the responsibility. Suspect it's still the same old deal: that men get more out of formal relationships, including 'intimacy', than women.

[Suzoz]

I was recently helping a 52yo woman friend look thru Guardian Soulmates at men aged 45-55 - of the 10 or so profiles that we took a closer look at, they all specified women aged under 40. Yes I know this is a well-known cultural phenomenon but it's still astonishingly under-analysed and under-critiqued. And I wonder if these men are getting anywhere - ie. is there a corresponding group of women who will respond to ads from men who are a decade older then they are? I don't know many men who are with much younger women, though interestingly, I have several straight woman friends who are with men 5-10 years younger than themselves. But maybe, as usual, my life and friends are not typical.

[elsewhere]

Yes, I also know an increasing no of women with substantially younger male and female partners.

Maybe the kind of person who frequents online dating sites has certain more trad expectations of inventing the nuclear domicile (or is looking for s&x). I suspect a lot of these people have very idealised notions of themselves and what's possible.

I remember a 50-something student who was also a therapist doing a reading at Gopher based on a series of exchanges she had with a client of same age as her, who went on about how he couldn't date a woman the same age as him but needed the 'youthful muse' in order to create. It was hilarious but grotesque!

I think that things like health and general outlook become more important than chronological age, anyway. A fit 55 yo with interesting interests is always going to be more attractive than someone several years younger without these attributes.

[Zoe]

All they need is their shit in a pile and a sparkle in their eye.