(This is from my upcoming book “How I Became a Dirty Old Man (like Bukowski)”)
Finally, my daughter came back and picked up that demon mutt. Sparky wagged his tail and leapt into her arms like an angel, as if he hadn’t spent three days turning my flat into a war crime scene. She kissed him on the snout and called him “my sweet little baby.” I waved weakly, muttered “good riddance,” and shut the door.
Silence. Blessed silence.
At last, I had time to return to the only true hobby of a divorced man: online dating.
The Hunt
I fired up my laptop like a general preparing for battle. Profiles flashed before me—women between the ages of eighteen and death. That was my filter. Eighteen and death. Nothing more, nothing less.
I crafted the perfect message, a masterpiece of charm and subtle flattery. But I wasn’t stupid—I knew sending the same note to everyone would look lazy. So I customised each one, sprinkling in details from their profiles:
“I also love sunsets.”
“You look lovely in that green dress.”
“I’ve always wanted to visit Portugal.”
Copy, paste, tweak, send.
By the time I finished, I had messaged one hundred and four women. One hundred and four. That was my Sunday gone. By the end, my eyes were red, my fingers were cramped, and my optimism was circling the drain.
The Results
The next morning, I opened my inbox with trembling hands. The gods of romance had surely rewarded my effort.
Three messages.
Three. Out of one hundred and four.
Well, better than nothing, I told myself. Three women were still three more than zero. A full week’s calendar if I played it right.
I clicked the first reply.
The second.
The third.
And then my jaw dropped.
They were all from the same woman.
The same damn woman.
The Devil Herself
She wasn’t impressed. In fact, she was furious. Apparently, she had multiple profiles on different sites (why, I don’t know—schizophrenia? paranoia? low self-esteem?), and I, clever Jan, had managed to message every single one of her alter egos.
She tore me apart. Called me a creep, a desperate dirty old man, a serial dater, a player without the looks or the charm to back it up. She wrote paragraphs, entire essays about how I was “everything wrong with modern men.”
I could almost hear her voice in my head, shrill and triumphant, like she’d just won Wimbledon.
The Punchline
And yet—here’s the kicker—I’m going to meet her tomorrow.
Why? Because that’s how pathetic I am. She insulted me, humiliated me, told me I was a dirty old man (fair enough). But at the end of her rant, there was one tiny sentence: “Still, you seem… interesting.”
Interesting!
That’s enough for me. I’d crawl over broken glass for “interesting.”
So yes, I’m going. I feel I might get lucky.
Or at least, lucky enough to hate myself a little more afterwards.