59.

A woman sits behind a table just inside the door – she’s maybe fifty, with curly silver hair, pink horn-rimmed glasses, and wearing this mauve cardigan that weighs down her shoulders until they’re sagging. I want to say she looks good for her age, but then realize I’m her age, but just don’t see myself that way.

I give her my name, she consults her iPad, ticks me off, and then points me to a table in the corner with the number “8” on it. There are other tables, too, guys seated at each, nervously smoothing out their hair or their blazers or whatever, a few of them even talking to themselves like they’re rehearsing some spiel. In the corner are five or six women I don’t take too much notice of them because I’m still worried that something’s going to happen.

When I sit at my table, I have this horrible fear that Lana’s going to be here – not that I think she ever would’ve signed up for something like this, but some friend might’ve coaxed her. But it’s too early for her to be on the prowl. We’ve only been broken up a few days. That makes me awful, but I guess I’ve been breaking her up for years in a way.

The woman who registered me rises and comes to the middle of the room, ringing a little bell until she has our attention. She introduces herself as Gloria, and explains the rules: we get twenty minutes with each person. At the fifteen-minute mark, she’ll ring the bell once to signal there’s just five minutes remaining. Then at the twenty-minute mark, she’ll ring it again, and each woman is to then rise, and move one table to their right. Gloria coyly adds that they rotate who sits and who moves – sometimes the women get to sit at the tables and the guys rotate, but today it’s opposite.

Then she tells us we’re to commence …

 

Charlottte

She has three Ts in her name – that’s what she tells me even before she’s completed the action of sitting down.

“Hi!” she says. “I’m Charlotte. That’s with three Ts. I know that’s strange, but I’m built a little bit different.”

She’s a cute little thing, maybe only in her thirties, petite, her dark hair done up in a braid, her cheeks overly rouged and lipstick done to match, and her perfume some cross between lilac and desperation – of course I kid; I don’t know what lilac smells like.

“Did you change the spelling?” I ask.

“Uh uh,” she says, shaking her head so emphatically, that I think she’s trying to convince me she isn’t so pretentious to change her name, and can only get that point across in the most pretentious way possible. “Mum wasn’t so good at spelling. She put three Ts down on the birth certificate, and it’s stuck ever since. I used to correct people when I was in school, get them to spell it with just the two Ts, but when I graduated and started my band, I thought, To hell with it! And the third T came back.”

“You’re in a band?”

“No! I mean, I was in my twenties. We didn’t really get anywhere. I work in fundraising in the private sector. Well, that’s what I do now. I used to be a veterinary nurse. But I just never got over the sick animals – especially when we put them to sleep. That would just break my heart. Then I was a receptionist at this medical clinic. And then I actually worked in road traffic control – you know the people who hold up signs to slow or stop when roadworks closes a lane? That was kinda fun. But now, it’s the fundraising.”

I don’t get to talk much for the fifteen minutes, as she details in exhausting detail every facet of her life. Part of me envies her. She’s done so much, and is obviously passionate about all of it. But I wonder what that suggests about her generally – if she’s flitty or something. Or maybe it’s suggests something about me.

When the first bell rings, she exclaims, “You’ve barely told me about yourself!”

“I’m a writer,” I say.

“I used to write,” Charlotte says. “I still do, sometimes. Journalling mostly. But sometimes I think I should write a book. Is it hard? I’m sure it’s hard. Journalling’s hard enough. But that could be something to talk about. Writing a book, that is. I think I should do that. Yes, I should!”

Once the bell’s rang to signal the end of our time, she hasn’t even thought to ask for my number, and she rises, smiles brightly, and wishes me luck for the rest of the event.

Then she moves across to the next table.

 

Angel

If there’s a Patron Saint of Goths, it’s Angel, a woman of indeterminate age who’s so pale, moonlight would risk giving her a melanoma. Her deep purple lipstick and overuse of mascara are a stark contrast. The rim of left ear is a string of silver ear-rings that looks like the spiral binding on notebooks.

“So …?” she says.

“So,” I say.

Then we sit there awkwardly for maybe a minute, both of us unsure what to say, and neither of us are good enough, or interested enough, to make small talk. But, to her credit, she doesn’t avert her eyes from me, like she’s shy or embarrassed by it all. I do that, because on top of the awkwardness, she intimidates me.

“You’re not very good at this, are you?” she says.

“Does it show?” I say.

“You’re funny.”

You’d think that’d be an opening for something more, even though she doesn’t say it with any good humour. But she just stares at me, and now I not only have no idea where I can take this, but I don’t really care.

So we sit there, quietly, until the bell rings.

“Nearly done,” she says.

And now I think I’m awkward, but she’s not – she’s enjoying this. She’s intended to come in here and fence. I see her maybe into bondage or something, strapping some poor sap who probably expected a bit of kink, but instead got lots of something that rhymes with kink and isn’t very good – sorry, I just can’t think because of the flustering she’s giving me (even if I’m aware that’s not how flustering should be used).

When the second bell rings, she smiles, reaches across the table and pats my hand, rises, and moves on.

 

Arlene

I won’t keep going into such detail, because it’s not all that important, and I want to get to the one speed date that is significant, which I’m sure you see coming, so I’ll stick to the highlights.

Arlene’s cute, in her forties, and while she’s dressed in a smart, casual blouse and slacks, she has the blouse unbuttoned maybe one button too low, although I’m probably sexist or something thinking that.

“You’re a writer?” she says after I tell her that, yes, I am a writer.

I nod.

“Written anything I’ve read?” she asks.

“I don’t know what you’ve read,” she says.

She laughs – it’s not unusual in its syllables or anything, but has a strident pitch that’s grating.

 

Monica

Monica is a gorgeous, voluptuous woman in tight faded jeans a low-cut blouse.

She’s also maybe only twenty.

“You pick the wrong event?” I say.

“I like older men,” she tells me. “A lot older.”

“Easy with the lot.”

“You probably think I have daddy issues.”

I didn’t, but will now.

“I don’t. I just like older men. A lot older.”

“You practise this?”

“Practice what?”

“This schtick.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“This routine.”

“What routine?”

“Never mind.”

“I just like older men,” she says.

“A lot older,” I say.

 

Tahnee

Tahnee’s so unassuming – pleasant in her appearance, without being overly sexual or unappealing. She’s wears loose jeans, and a cardigan that looks like it belongs in the back of a wardrobe. But she has this gorgeous smile (which I note as she sits down) that’s warm and welcoming and doesn’t imply anything (at least not to me) other than she’s nice and wholesome.

“Do you like kids?” she asks me once the introductions are out of the way.

“They’re okay,” I say.

“I have four,” Tahnee says. “I just want to be upfront.”

She’d be about forty, so I think her kids must be in their late teens. And this must be an assumption she confronts regularly, because she’s quick to sweep on.

“Bobby’s seven, Kat’s six, Jake’s four, and Tommy’s two,” she says.

“You started late,” I say. “Sorry, that sounds awful.”

Tahnee laughs – she has a nice laugh. “That’s okay,” she says. “And I did start late. I think I was desperate because I was in my thirties and I’m not sure I love Craig the way I should’ve.”

“Your husband?” I say.

“My first husband.”

My response – I’m assuming I must express something facially (which, most likely, would be incredulity) – must also be something she’s accustomed to, because she again move on.

“I’ve been married three times,” she says. “Well, twice actually, and the third relationship was more de facto. But I want to be upfront. I’m a romantic at heart.”

I can only think I’m not that romantic.

 

Lana

But she’s not my former Lana – about the same height, slighter around the waist, with a tight face, like she’s been dieting on coffee and cigarettes, and there’s a tiredness around her eyes. But not lack-of-sleep tiredness. Something more like weary-of-everything tiredness. Her hair, tied in a ponytail, has loose strands, like it’s reacting to static electricity.

Her smile lifts about one hundred years from her (although she looks no older than forty) and the dread from my expectation.

And that’s when she tells me: “Hi, I’m Lana,” she says.

She tells me about herself, and nothing’s like my ex – this Lana has never been married, never had kids, works as a primary school teacher, rents a flat that sounds no bigger than mine, and often attends open mic nights, reading her poetry, or singing folk songs.

“What about you?” she asks.

I see now that my initial opinion that she’s harried is wrong. This is somebody who hasn’t gorged on life, who’s not bloated with material aspiration, and who’s just comfortable being herself – that’s such a rare combination.

But her name’s “Lana”, and I just can’t pass the weight that carries.

 

Sofia

Sofia’s in a smart business suit, and while I don’t know shoes, hers – these pointed things that her toes couldn’t possibly fit in – look like they cost a lot of money. When she sits, it’s not like she’s at some speed date, but she’s about to conduct a job interview.

“What do you do?” she asks.

“I work for a publisher,” I say, “and have written a couple of books.”

“You’re an author?”

“I guess.”

“You don’t know?”

“I’m not very authorish at the moment.”

“Believe and you will succeed.”

Oh no. An affirmation person. A manifestation person. Somebody who thinks everything’s about attitude, like they’ve unlocked some secret, ignoring that I imagine kids with cancer have an attitude they want to be healthy, and it doesn’t work, and sometimes, you can try your best, you can really believe what you’re doing is consequential, and it might not just work.

“That shock you?” she asks.

“What do you do?”

“Publicity and marketing,” Sofia says. “I have my own firm.”

She whips a pink card from her blazer pocket so crisply, she’s no doubt practiced this maneuver, just as she’s practiced spinning it, planting it (on the table in this case), and pushing it across to me.

I see the heading in embossed cream text, “Mitas Marketing”, under that her name, “Sofia Mitas”, and in italics under that, “We have the Mitas touch. Let us turn you to gold.”

“You don’t get it?” she asks.

“The Mitas Touch – the Midas Touch.” I nod, then frown. “You don’t really hear about that so much anymore – the Midas Touch.”

She snatches the card back and dunks it in her pocket like she’s deemed I’m unworthy of it.

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just saying—”

“Whether they get the reference or not is irrelevant,” Sofia says, “because I’m good at my job. Can you say the same?”

“No, no, I can’t say the same – I’m not good at your job.”

“You’ve got a smart mouth, haven’t you?”

“And a dumb brain.”

“That’s probably the best thing you’ve said since I sat down.”

“Sometimes I get lucky.”

Sofia looks to her left, then right, making sure nobody’s listening, then leans in over the table. “Dating’s so last century,” she says. “What I’m really interested in are casual physical relationships.”

“Relationships?”

“Monogamy – come on, you serious?”

“You never get attached?”

“I’ve had partners grow attached to me. Strangely, it’s the men who get clingy.”

“You’re bi?”

“Is that a problem?”

“No. More power to you.”

“I’m growing to like you.”

“I don’t know why.”

Sofia laughs, such a rehearsed tilt of her head and a tinkling cascade of syllables. She takes her card out (this time much more casually, and so casually I’m sure this is even more practiced), and instead of placing it on the table and sliding it, she reaches across the table and places it right in front of me.

“Go on,” she says. “You deserve it.”

I pick up the card, lift it to my nose because it seems such a suave thing to do, then put it in my pocket.

“Let’s hook up, huh?”

“Totally.”

“You into kink?”

“How much kink?”

“Bondage. Mild.”

“Me or you?”

“You. You’d be tied.”

I see myself tied to a bed while she builds a house of business cards in the forest of my chest hair.

“Some spanking, too,” she says. “Some pegging. I like pegging.”

“This seems to be escalating.”

“Boundaries are for losers – you know that, don’t you?”

“No need to tell me – I’m back from the dead.”

That startles her, but then she laughs again, and jabs her finger at me.

“I’m really beginning to like you,” she says. “And I don’t just say that.”

“How many others have you said that to tonight?”

Sofia shrugs. “Three. Four.”

“It seems you do just say that.”

Sofia leans in again. “You’re a clever one.”

“With a dumb brain.”

“You’re a man. Your brain’s in your crotch.”

“That would make me dumber.”

Sofia nods, like she’s sizing me up. “Let’s get this happening, huh?” She smiles. “You don’t mind it going on social media, do you?”

 

Rachel

Here she comes in faded, torn jeans, a leather jacket, and a blouse with the top button open – it doesn’t tease anything, but just shows how relaxed she is.

It’s Rachel – the stripper.

“I thought I saw you before,” she says.

“I didn’t. You tell Stan about this?”

“I told him I was doing this,” Rachel says. “He play matchmaker often?”

“No. Never.”

Rachel purses her lips, mulling that over – I don’t know what she could be possibly be thinking, or if she’s slighted at Stan manoeuvring me here, no doubt to possibly bump into her here.

“Must be divine intervention,” she says.

That strikes me as oddly germane.

“Why’d you leave?” she asks.

“I’m not so good in those situations.”

“Going back to a stranger’s house? Getting drunk and going to bed with a woman? Waking up with a naked woman?”

“All of them.”

“What did you expect?”

“What did I think I would happen?”

Rachel nods.

“That you’d expect sex.”

Rachel laughs – well, snorts, really, like she can’t believe that’s the response. “I think most guys would’ve been fine with that.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“Is that a shot?”

I see now only after she’s asked the question, her tone growing hard, how it could be construed as such.

“No, sorry, I didn’t mean it to come across that way – more so that I wondered just how much of an outlier I am.”

“An exception.”

“It was a little bit intimidating.”

“How many women you been with?”

“That’s personal, isn’t?”

“Didn’t you just ask me the same thing?”

“Your answer would’ve proven your competence.”

“None?”

“No,” I say, too quickly. “I had a long-term relationship.”

“Just the one, then.”

“A handful split across, like, two eras, with this big, big gap in the middle.”

“Were you in prison?”

“I was agoraphobic.”

“A different sort of prison.”

“I’m sorta on day release.”

“How’d you get like this?”

I take a deep breath. “I don’t think it was one thing, but a lot of little things. How’d you become a stripper?”

“Pays the bills, really.”

“You tell people here you’re a stripper?”

“Fuck no.” Rachel sighs. “Men are judgemental. I’ll have guys here thinking I’m easy, or used, or sleazy. Then there’s you who knows the truth and feels intimidated.”

“So what do you tell everybody else?”

“I tell them I’m in customer relations.”

“What’re you looking for here?”

“Love. Companionship. Completion. You know, the clichés.”

“But you’re building any possibility on a lie.”

Rachel leans forward, not at all intimidated by that truth. “I know. We all have a bane to our existence. What about you?”

“I’m just trying something different.”

“Because you’re looking for something more in your life?”

“I used to look for the fairy tale.”

“Wife, children, dog, white-picket fence.”

“Uh huh,” I say. “It was perfect. Played out like The Brady Bunch.”

“So that’s what you’re looking for now?”

“I dream of a serendipitous meeting,” I say, because when I was young I imagine this scenario so many different ways, and every way seemed possible, like I could will it to happen. “The cool story to tell the kids.”

“You could still tell them.”

“Wouldn’t have kids now – nearing fifty, I become the geriatric dad too old to chase them around, to play football with them, and all that.”

“For somebody with such an uncharted imagination, you fence in your thinking.”

“How would you know what my imagination’s like?”

Rachel smiles, then sits back in her chair. I wait for some sort of profiling – Lana always did that on me. She always read my motivations, my foibles, all that shit – she’d meticulously extrapolate some deconstruction vilifying me, painting in details that were embellishments deserving of the Sistine Chapel. One time, she said I couldn’t live with social media, because she’d decided I was on it constantly. Obsessively. I wasn’t – either way. If I was to bring it up in retrospect, she’d claim I was, refurbishing the past, the way she’d redecorate her house to some ideal she think she needed.

“I’m halfway through your first book,” Rachel says.

“Oh,” is the best I manage, because I didn’t expect that – that somebody would meet me, then go out and read one of my books.

“Like you just write about ordinary things,” Rachel says, “but take them somewhere uber neurotic. That’s you, isn’t it?”

I wouldn’t know.

“What happened to you?” Rachel says.

It’s such a startling question, I don’t know what to say. So far this evening, all the women have exhibited quirks. I wonder how they’re perceiving the men, and what a hapless pursuit this is – for the most part, people in their forties and fifties who relationships have discarded, or who relationships have broken, and yet they still search desperately for some form of connection.

But how have I come across? Rachel’s got a headstart, but maybe everything she’s saying is evident to everybody.

“Let’s go,” she says, rising.

“It’s not finished,” I say.

“Fuck the rules,” Rachel says, grabbing my wrist. “Come on.”

She tugs me out of the chair and heads for the exit; the curly-haired woman rises from her desk at the front.

“Excuse me,” she says. “We haven’t finished.”

“We have now,” Rachel says, dragging me past her.